CONTENT WARNING: Sexual violence, sexual assault, and discussions of trauma. That’s obviously meant to be a ridiculous rhetorical question. But Vancouver quartet PISS — vocalist/lyricist Taylor Zantingh, guitarist Tyler Patterson, bassist Gavin Moya, and drummer Garreth Roberts — and their debut album you made me / skin on linen, have got me thinking some big, ridiculous things.
Why do a gnarled scream and grating guitars sound so good? Why do we turn pain into sound? What do I get from seeing someone else’s pain?
These are only a very minute fraction of the difficult questions that PISS’ music brings to mind. you made me / skin on linen stopped me in my tracks. It’s an assemblage of guttural yells, engrossing poetry, samples of feminist thinkers and activists, grueling bass, unyielding drums, and landmine guitars. In just over 30 minutes, the album articulates the evolution of personhood in a world that seems to welcome sexual violence, the societal norms that have allowed such violence to continue throughout history, and the oppositional viewpoints on how to move forward and prevent that injustice from continuing.
Each sample feels like a doorway to some new level of both understanding and unraveling. The album opens with children's voices expressing what they want to be when they grow up. On the following track “i wanted to be a singer,” Zantingh relays one line about how everything, any idea of the future or who can be, changes based on another person's abhorrent actions: "I wanted to write romance novels/ Now I need perfect control over my victim narrative/ The story of a girl who was silent and powerless/ But it's cliche to write about being powerless as a girl." The album then shifts between recordings of different feminist voices: Andrea Dworkin on her argument of pornography as a human rights violation; Manon Garcia discussing the Gisèle Pelicot case and the vastness of sexual violence; Toni Morrison speaking on morality, self-forgiveness, and grace.
PISS expose the different ways to deal with pain and injustice. It’s more than just noise. It’s violent sound about violence inflicted on a body, a person, a future, a life.
It’s a piece that’s about contradiction and tension, and how life moves forward as a result of constant friction. For two years, PISS performed the same set. Now, a version of it has become their debut album for Sub Pop.
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