PRETTY GIRLS MAKE GRAVES: The New Romance
September 2003
If you missed last year's debut from post-Riot-Grrrl darlings Pretty Girls Make Graves, now's your chance to play catch up. While 2002's Good Health was a frantic blur of rage, catharsis and celebration, The New Romance manages to channel all those qualities into a more sophisticated and epic vision, gaining focus without sacrificing the band's singular intensity. Guitarists Nate Thelen and Jay Clark still flail at times, but they also build spiraling towers and paint in vivid color, helping create a detailed world where emotions can really spread out. And vocalist Andrea Zollo brings them in spades. Her voice swoops and soars, reaching heights and surveying depths only hinted at on Good Health. If the new album flashes nothing quite as incendiary as "Speakers Push the Air" from the debut, on songs such as "This Is Our Emergency" it demonstrates a hard-as-nails maturity. We should all grow up this fearlessly.
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Page Last Modified on: May 1, 2004