Perfect Pussy

Did You Know?

• The band was originally assembled as a "fake band" for film director Scott Coffey's 2012 movie Adult World.
• After the band dissolved, drummer Garrett Koloski formed a new Philadelphia-based band called Empath, whose first album was produced by former Perfect Pussy keyboardist Shaun Sutkus.

History

Before Perfect Pussy, Meredith Graves performed folk music as Mouse and the Love & Light Orkestra and later played in the Syracuse noise rock trio Shoppers. When Shoppers ended, film director Scott Coffey asked Graves to put together a band for his 2012 movie Adult World. She formed a "fake band" with drummer Garrett Koloski from Sswampzz and bassist Greg Ambler from SoreXcuse, writing the song for the film. After filming, the group kept playing together, adding guitarist Ray McAndrew and keyboardist Shaun Sutkus, both from Sswampzz. The band first got attention with their debut demo, a 13-minute EP called I Have Lost All Desire for Feeling, released independently in 2013. Rolling Stone’s Jon Dolan called them "punk-rock revelations" and said their music was "the uncut truth of music that won't hold anything back." Pitchfork gave the EP an honorable mention on its best albums of 2013 list; critic Lindsay Zoladz described it as "the sustained climax of a horror movie" and "the aural equivalent of that moment when the heroine... drives the devil out and is engulfed in a radioactive glow." Perfect Pussy played the CMJ music festival in 2013 and SXSW in 2014, after signing to Brooklyn’s Captured Tracks label.

Say Yes to Love

The band's eight-song, 23-minute debut album Say Yes to Love was released on March 18, 2014, on Captured Tracks to predominantly enthusiastic reviews. Zoladz rated the album an 8.6 on Pitchfork's 10-point scale and a "Best New Music" designation, saying "It doesn't feel corny or hyperbolic to call this record life-affirming, so perfectly does it capture the flashes of gratitude, self-knowledge, and inexplicable joy that often follow an experience of great pain." At Rolling Stone, Rob Sheffield gave the album four of five stars, calling it a "a savagely awesome debut" and "a heart-punch of an album" he compares to Hüsker Dü and early Sleater-Kinney. At The A.V. Club, David Anthony describes Say Yes to Love as "continu[ing] the raging aggression of [Perfect Pussy's] demo [I Have Lost All Desire for Feeling] while also trying to remove itself from hardcore's oft-limiting structures," but argues that some of these departures have "Perfect Pussy getting out ahead of itself, suggesting the band would be better served securing an identity before attempting to redefine it."

Dissolution

The group disbanded in January 2016 after attempts to record a second album collapsed. Graves became an anchor for MTV News and Koloski formed a new band, based in Philadelphia, called Empath whose first album was produced by Sutkus.