![]() Greer embraced lyrics “that felt intuitively fun and good” and tried to shed anxieties about being misunderstood. Jaguar reimagined his guitar playing, inspired by Bowie’s Berlin trilogy and his late-1970s guitarists like Carlos Alomar, Adrian Belew, and Robert Fripp. With nothing to lose, Priests took risks: leaning into a realm of greater poetic license, of surrealism, menace, and pleasure. The uncertainty brought a kind of freedom. “It’s almost like the version of Priests that made Nothing Feels Natural really died we didn’t have time to grieve about that and also had to build a Frankenstein’s monster of a new version of Priests,” Greer says. They had to rethink the interlocking dynamic of their band. Following the amicable departure of bassist Taylor Mulitz (now leading Flasher), Priests was faced with a challenge not unlike “sawing off the fourth leg of a chair, and rebuilding it to balance on three.” The challenge was difficult, something not unexpected for an egalitarian group of strong personalities. They make up Priests’ most immediate and musically cohesive record, a bracing leap forward in a catalog full of them. Its 10 pop songs are like short stories told from uncanny perspectives, full of fire and camp. If Nothing was the reach and conviction of a band pushing beyond itself, willing itself into existence on its own terms, then Kansas stands boldly in the self-possessed space it carved. If Nothing Feels Natural was like an album-length ode to possibility, then The Seduction of Kansas exists within the adventurous world its predecessor pried open. ![]() With fireworks of noise and arresting melodies both, Priests’ 2017 debut LP Nothing Feels Natural was heralded as a modern classic of “post-punk”-but Priests feels urgently present. The high-wire physicality of their live shows, the boldness of their Barbara Kruger-invoking visual statements, their commitment to cultural, political, and aesthetic critique-it’s all made Priests one of the most exciting bands of their generation, subversive in a literal sense, doing things you would not expect. ![]() Bred in punk, Priests play rock’n’roll that is as intellectually sharp as it is focused on pop’s thrilling pleasure centers, that is topical without sloganeering. A band on its own label, Sister Polygon Records-jolting the greater music world with early releases by Downtown Boys, Snail Mail, Sneaks, and Gauche-they are living proof that it is still possible to work on one’s own terms, to collectively cultivate one’s own world. Jaguar-remain an inspired anomaly in modern music. Why would you do it?” The title-like Priests-is a moving target, probing questions about the realities and mythologies of America in 2019 without giving in to easy answers.Įntering their eighth year as a band, Priests-Daniele, vocalist Katie Alice Greer, and guitarist G.L. “There’s something sinister about the idea of seducing a whole state,” says drummer Daniele Daniele. will move-whether leaning socialist in the 1800s or going staunchly conservative in the 1980s. As the journalist Thomas Frank explored in his 2004 book What’s the Matter With Kansas?, the ideological sway of Kansas has often predicted the direction in which the U.S. Divorced from romance, seduction is a tactic of manipulation, a ploy in the politics of persuasion. rock iconoclasts Priests: The Seduction of Kansas. The Priests feel that this is their best work to date and an album destined for greatness.What is at stake in the seduction of Kansas? Like a gavel or hammer, the question rattles across the second LP from Washington, D.C. While maintaining their signature sound, the band has pushed their own boundaries, experimenting with guitar layers, feedback, vocal techniques and time lengths: the album’s scorching closer “Take What You Bring” clocks in at well over seven minutes. The album is a natural progression for the Priests. Tall Tales, the band’s third full-length release and first on Get Hip Recordings, was produced and engineered by Tim Kerr at Saxon Studios in New York. ![]() Sonically influenced by the classic rock n’ roll sounds of yesteryear, the band forges ahead, creating the music of tomorrow in their own image. Hypnotic guitar lines, fuzzed-out organ and tribal back-beat mixed with a dark Cramps-meets-Cynics vibe, form the foundations of their unusual and original sound. Eschewing a codified formula for creativity, the band members seem to feed off one other a symbiosis which, depending on moods, chemicals or mental stability, can be incredibly mesmerizing or cryptically haunting. 2000)–Rochester, New York’s Priests began a career in music inspired by the seedier, darker, almost ungodly aspects of life. With these words–printed on the back of their eponymous debut album (c. They are a negative breed of spite, jealousy, hatred and isolation. ![]()
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