lundi 6 juillet 2020

P22



picture by Sophie Weil

P22 is from Los Angeles, California, and plays some nice female-fronted punk rock since 2015.
The guitar player is also part of the fascinating band Behavior which adventurous album, 375 Images of Angels, obsessed me for a while a few years ago (I am not so fond of their recent releases though).
Sofia also sings in the psych rock band Wand.

Accoding to their bandcamp page their discography contains 3 tapes on top of their recent 12" EP.
I could only find one, so let's start with this one.

By the way P22 doesn't refer to the gun but to "the famed Los Angeles mountain lion who crossed both the 405 and 101 freeways to disperse in Griffith Park."



The Beat Sessions are tapes released by Shout Recordings and recorded by Mike Kriebel in his studio, The Golden Beat.
It's basically Mike recording (mostly good) punk bands and releasing the result as tapes called Beat Sessions Vol #.

The P22 Beat Session was released in 2017 and I assume contains most of their songs composed between 2015 and 2017, which would be 11 tracks including a Chumbawamba cover.

At first sight P22 delivers high energy straight forward female-fronted poum-poum-tchac punk but if you take time to give it a few listens you will notice the weird arty breaks, the noisy guitar in the background, the chaotic but controlled vibe that the guitar and the vocals, switching between imploring laments and resistance speeches, manage to create.


Sofia's singing makes me think of JJ Doll but there is also something of Moron with a slight pinch of post/anarcho punk...
In a nutshell: it's a great tape!


The band released in april this 12" EP called Human Snake on PPM (Post Present Medium) Records.
So first of all I'm sorry guys to say this but the cover art.... is not a success!
ok it's said!

After a long intro starting like a movie instrumental soundtrack (with violins) and growing into a slightly uncanny song, P22 jumps back to punk rock with great short songs like Farrowing Crate, Reprise For Steer or Shortly which immediatly recall the Beat Session tape... but this time the band has worked on the drumming and has learned how to bring the bass upfront (which gives a strong anarcho punk vibe at the beginning of Human Snake, 1978 for example)... which is good but I also feel that the guitar is not playing the noisy trouble maker role as much as before, which I regret a bit.



The band  is obviously more creative, I love the clac-clacs on Reprise For Steer and the vocals on Endling Chorus for The Terminach for example, and more at ease with more complex songs structures but I have the feeling that the main atmosphere is a bit "down", Sofia sounds tired and resigned and the overall energy is below what the Beat Session had...
I like this EP but it lacks a bit of consistency and energy to really makes me super enthusiastic.


You can listen to P22 on Rien à Faire #12.

N,J'Oi!




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