Perfect Pussy‘s record release show for their debut LP Say Yes To Love took place in a tiny, cramped Brooklyn venue bursting at the proverbial seams with fans, family and friends alike — including opening bands Friendless Bummer and Sarongs. It was loud, jammed and more than a little smelly, replete with spilled drinks and flying elbows and the tightest, most cramped moshpit this reporter has ever seen.
And it was pretty damn fitting for the up-and-coming-band. Totally congruous.
Yup, despite being written up all lovely and glowing-like in publications like Rolling Stone and Pitchfork, the Syracuse noise-punk band chose to let us all stew in our friends’ armpits and stand-spoon with strangers rather than opting for some kind of grander debut. And that’s pretty much their MO: Do what’s fun and do it because it’s fun. (And probably stop doing it when it’s no longer fun, you know?)
It’s an unsurprising POV from a rabblement of musicians who first met when they were enlisted to create a fake band for the Emma Roberts-starring indie flick “Adult World” and chose to stay together afterwards — even though the song didn’t make it into the movie.
Despite their joyously “eff-it” attitude, however, the anatomically monikered band is currently the subject of a kind of critical quagmire of chatter — some critics are all caught up in praising lead singer Meredith Graves’ poetic lyrics (wreathed behind a haze of noise), others lament the “underground” band’s appropriation by the “mainstream,” and still others equate the band’s rise to some kind of lost generation’s desperate grasp at self-identification.
To that — all of that — the band just shrugs and says a hearty, “Thank you.” Or, as bassist Greg Ambler said in the comments of one particularly biting review: “Nailed it!”
According to Graves, the band doesn’t really listen to feedback — bad or no. Or, rather, they listen, but they’re not letting much of it go to their heads. That attitude makes sense when you hear that both Graves and Ambler used to model nude for art classes. Graves even passed out once, naked, in front of a swanky crowd.
If you lived through that, you can probably live through someone jabbing at you because you dig Sonic Youth.
Graves told MTV News about one instance in particular in which the band came face-to-face with one of their detractors.
“Somebody came up to me after our show last night and said, ‘I’m from another city, but I live here now. My friend told me to come see your band.’ And I said, ‘Thank you so much for coming to the show,'” she told us. “And she said, ‘I just wanted to tell you that I hate this venue, I’m super uncomfortable here, and I’m extraordinarily unimpressed.’ And I was like, ‘That’s great! Really, thank you. I’ve never seen anyone stay around after a show to tell someone that they didn’t like their band.'”
In Graves’ estimation, “other people’s opinions are none of your business.” It’s her bandmates and the people that she loves who matter — and how she repays them for what they give her.
So, you see, it makes sense that Perfect Pussy jammed down with friends and relations to celebrate the arrival of their labor of love — the special edition vinyl of which came pressed with Graves’ menstrual blood.
“That’s why we’re doing this band,” Graves said. “At the end of the day, the only reason to do this, whether people loved us or hated us, is because I’m so proud of the people I’m doing it with and I’m so lucky to be able to be traveling around with my friends.” 
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