12.18.2008

True Womanhood

My favorite band in DC right now is True Womanhood. Though they only settled into a lineup this year, they've made pretty serious waves in a short amount of time. They've been name-dropped by Thurston Moore, depicted in a show writeup on Pitchfork, and have been playing 3+ DC shows a month, all of which are reasonably well-attended.

Because of some "no wave" associations and the aforementioned Thurston Moore name drop, everybody and their mother seems to want to compare them to Sonic Youth. This comparison is okay; you can certainly hear some Sonic Youth influences on certain songs, and they have a female bassist, but that's about the extent of it. I also hear substantial amounts of shoegaze and dream-pop influences in what they are doing, but ultimately, their sound is uniquely their own.

They are a captivating live band, although not in the traditional sense. Less jumping around and sweet-talking the crowd, more strange instruments and weird noises soaked in heavy reverb. I've seen them about three times now, and I've always enjoyed it. I was originally going to chop up their WMUC set from a few weeks ago for this post, but since a) the sound quality is subpar, and b) I have realized that I am never going to do that, here are a couple sweet videos recorded by All Our Noise instead.


AON Sessions: True Womanhood, "Rubber Buoys" from All Our Noise on Vimeo.


AON Sessions: True Womanhood, "Shadow People" from All Our Noise on Vimeo.

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