Pretty Girls Make Graves- Good Health

Fri 12th Nov, 2004 in Music Reviews

“Pretty girls make graves,” was my saying, whenever I’d had to turn my head around involuntarily to stare at the incomparable pretties of Indian Mexico. – Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums.

When you lift the name of your band from a Kerouac story about the relationship between sex and death, you’re setting yourself up to be viewed pretty harshly by those disconcerted by the self-conscious literary post-modernism you often see in introverted indie bands. The overlord of introverted, brooding literary geeks, Morrissey, even lifted the same quote for a song of the same name from The Smith’s eponymous debut album.

Those who are disconcerted by this brash, wink-and-a-nudge literary wank are often right to be; there’s a tendency amongst scenester bands to rely too heavily on recycling ideas in the name of art, instead of coming up with new ones. Morrissey got away with it because he had the lyrical acumen to use his quotes and references for a reason, and not just because he could.

There’s a self-conscious knowingness to the name Pretty Girls Make Graves that grates a little. One is inclined to dismiss them off the bat as Arts students dabbling in the heady delights of combining a literary education with vague musical prowess.

But impressively, despite their pretentious name, Pretty Girls Make Graves do good work. Sure, aligning themselves with Kerouac is a little too lofty to justify their largely ubiquitous brand of scenester rock ‘n’ roll, but the band do deliver some great songs on Good Health, which has been reissued here, along with four bonus tracks from a previously obscure EP Dim Mak.

The album begins by lulling you into a false sense of melodic complacency on Speakers Push The Air. An old-school organ arpeggiates, and then a fuzzy guitar joins in. It sounds like the beginning of downbeat emo exploration of emotions.

No dice. The drums kick in and the vocalists – two guys, one girl – start going nuts, screaming and yelling and yearning. The lyrical theme is a little played out – ‘do you remember what the music meant?’ sounds a little too much like Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s ‘whatever happened to my rock ‘n’ roll?’ – but the music and the passionate vocal delivery more than make up for it.

The rest of the album takes much the same course, with pounding, thumping drums from Nick Dewitt and arpeggiated, angry guitar riffs from J Clark and Nathan Thelen. Good Health rarely lets up, throbbing and beating with an insatiable passion. The 13 songs last for 40 minutes, and every minute is taken up with the same kind of passionate, driving, turgid, ugly rock ‘n’ roll, held together and made, well, pretty, by Andrea Zollo’s lovely tones.

The album seems to come and go as it pleases, occasionally holding off on the anger for a brief few seconds of tight, nervous melody, only to inevitably lead to the kind of full-kilter madness that Pretty Girls Make Graves do so well.

This is an angry album, and there’s a time and a place for it. It lacks the lyrical, post-modernism pretension that the band name and the song titles – Sad Girls Por Vida, Bring It On Golden Pond, Modern Day Emma Goldman – would imply, and its all the better for it. When the sun is blazing down on a hot summer day and you’re sweating without even moving, Pretty Girls Make Graves is exactly what you want – it’s fiery, it’s hot, and it punches you in the gut. In a good way.