The rudimentary origins of Joanna Gruesome is something out of a John Hughes teenage blockbuster – meeting within the suffocating walls of high school anger management, the band members found a release in the boundless expanse of noise pop. Peanut Butter, their sophomore LP, demonstrates the Cardiff band’s propensity for electric fuzz catharsis messily knitted together with acerbic sentiments and syrupy tiger trap-era refrains.
If the saccharine sentimentality of undiluted twee-pop paired with the heated fury of modern punk rock seems contradictory, you’re on to the right track. The album never fully engages within an internal understanding with itself, and that’s exactly its strong point. Constantly balancing on the precipice between unforgiving angst and velvet alleviations, each song on the twenty-minute LP is trapped within a perpetual battle of tug of war. Though wistful pop-based punk teeters on the murky surface, an ardent sincerity several layers below continues to momentarily break through the protective shield of angst that encases it. It’s a defense mechanism, a quality that so often colors the emotional lives of twenty-somethings. This element is manifested in the final culmination of “Separate Bedrooms” with screaming vocals revealing, “I know that life would be alright if I hadn’t met you/We could spend every single night in separate bedrooms.”
Instead of running from the pitfalls and undulations of complicated relationships, Peanut Butter embraces them with the coalescing of bitter and honey-drenched chords. Youth is tinged with uncertainty, and singer Alanna McArdle, with her snippy, furious vocals reminiscent of Meredith Graves of Perfect Pussy, is here to remind you of just that.
Overall Rating: 4 out of 5
Recommended Tracks:
“Separate Bedrooms,” “I Don’t Wanna Relax,” “Honestly Do Yr Worst”
