Skip to main content
Someone done pissed off Summer Cannibals' Jessica Boudreaux real good. "I'm dreaming of this city on mute," she snarls on "Sounds," the fuzz-bomb that opens the group's self-produced debut, "where I can't hear your band/And I don't pretend to care." Yikes. As anonymous fuck-you's go, that cuts as deep as "You're So Vainââin a city like Portland, anyway.
Boudreaux doesn't scream her anger: Throughout No Makeup, she seethes with raw tunefulness rather than open-throated rage. She leaves the aggression to her band. Guitarist Marc Swart plugs directly into the shared amp of the Cannibals' Pacific Northwest garage-punk forebears, from Dead Moon through Sleater-Kinney, heaving chunks of concrete-heavy power chords over the rhythm section's bulldozing swing and strangling his leads like the Pixies' Joey Santiago. The band's stomp is as big as its grooves: See the dinosaur-blues slither of "Wives," with Boudreaux growling, "Since when are you virginal? Since when are you pure?â
No Makeup
isn't all vitriolic insinuations. "The Hand" and "No Makeup" are choked
with self-loathing, while "Wear Me Out" bursts with sexual angst.
Through her perpetually curled lip, even Boudreaux's come-ons register
as threats, but she makes both sound equally inviting.
SEE IT: Summer Cannibals play Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., with Grandparents and XDS, on Thursday, Aug. 1. 9 pm. $5. 21+.
WWeek 2015