Marissa Paternoster is the kind of singer and guitarist who makes a writer want to deploy all kinds of ridiculous language: "face-melting," "fire-breathing," "guitar-goddess," "shred-queen," etc. Paternoster, you see, is 5-foot-1, she fronts a fearsome power trio from New Jersey called Screaming Females, and she plays a loud guitar very well. Layering the Females' punkish drive with howling solos and searing riffs that are part Tony Iommi and part Greg Sage, Paternoster is, let's say, a pocket missile of a frontwoman. The capabilities of the other two members of Screaming Females -- drummer Jarret Dougherty and bassist King Mike -- make this an essential in-person band: Whatever you think of their recordings (and their excellent latest album, Ugly, was recorded by Steve Albini), to see Screaming Females live is to be instantly converted to its hyperbole-inspiring rock. Before the band plays Bottom of the Hill tonight, we spoke with Paternoster about her guitar work, recording with Albini, and why Screaming Females consider themselves a punk band.
How's the tour going?
Okay. We've played a bunch of cool shows. A bunch of my gear broke. And then we had to drive through a tornado... We drove a little bit through one of the storms and it was horrifying. We managed to pull over right before the rain started. We're all from New Jersey, so I've never seen a tornado, and the thought of being near one was terrifying.
You're known for a visceral live show. What kinds of reactions do you get?
Usually when people come up to me, they say that it was a great show. And that they liked our band. I can't think of anything really weird anyone has ever said. Usually everyone is incredibly polite.
Are the audiences this tour mostly new to Screaming Females or are they existing fans?
Never thought about that too much. A lot of the places that are closer to home on the East Coast, I can recognize a lot of the people who come to see us on the regular. But now that we're all the way out here, I just don't know who everybody is. I'm seeing a lot of people that I've never seen in my life.
When was your last time out west?
I think it's been almost two years. It's been a while.
Screaming Females has opened for Dinosaur Jr. and other big-name artists, but you're sort of known for keeping it down to earth, too. Are you at all conflicted about playing bigger shows?
It's a different kind of satisfaction that you get out of playing for a lot of people that you don't know, rather than a small amount of people who are your peers and friends. Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to show a larger audience what you've been making. I don't feel bad about playing larger shows. And I think it's important to expose people who might only get their music news from mainstream media, to show them that there are alternatives. We've never gotten on any of those shows by any other way than having someone see us play and wanting us on their show. It's not like we had some kind of manager pitching us to play these big opening slots. We just earned those slots.
What made you decide to record the new album with Steve Albini?
We've been talking about it for a while. And we never really had the resources to do it, or an album that we thought would be suitable to bring to him. But with this record, we'd been a band for a long time. We demo'd all the songs -- which we had never done before -- spent a lot of time writing them, making sure that they didn't totally suck. And so we showed up really prepared, which was good, because he definitely expects you to show up prepared.
He does?
Well, he probably doesn't really care either way. But it was a good thing we were prepared, because we had a lot of songs and we didn't have a ton of time.
Is his style more like an engineer in terms of getting sounds, or did he take an active role in shaping the songs?
He'll do whatever the hell you want. If you want him to produce your record, I guess if he felt inclined to do so, he would. But we weren't really interested in that. We just wanted him to hit "record" and take us down really good, and that's what he did. I think there were like a couple moments where we might have asked him to put in on something, and usually he just shrugged. [Laughs] We didn't really ask that of him.
Was he intimidating to work with?
Not really. He was really nice. Charming. Liked hanging out with him.
You're pretty fearless about including guitar solos in your songs, which tends to be a rare feature in independent rock bands. What's your philosophy behind that?
I think that my philosophy for making songs is that I don't have a philosophy. I just do whatever I want, and it just so happens, I guess, that I like playing guitar solos. They're fun. I like listening to them. I like bands that have guitar solos. I like bands that don't have guitar solos. We all listen to a lot of different music. And we never had a pow-wow at any point where we were like, "Well, here are the rules for Screaming Females: You can't do this - there will never be a xylophone on one of our songs." You don't even have to have rules. Someday there might be a xylophone in one of our songs. There aren't any rules. Because rules suck. Every kid knows that.
Which guitarists' solos do you particularly enjoy?
A lot of the bands I like don't really have [them] - it's not like I listen to Van Halen or anything. But I would if it was on the radio, I would turn it up. When I was a little kid I really liked Smashing Pumpkins for a lot of the guitar solos. I just like guitar rock. Like X... Sleater-Kinney. I like guitar-driven bands. I like bands that are full of interesting personalities and everyone plays an important part. I like bands that would kind of fall apart if they didn't have particular members, and I think Smashing Pumpkins are a great example of that.
I know at least one member who would disagree with you about that.
Yeah, yeah, He might.
You call yourselves a punk band. What does that mean to you?
We kind of call ourselves a punk band for lack of a better word. I think a lot of it was borne out of the way that we operate, the way we tour, the way we channel our business, and the way we don't assign ourselves any kind of rules. To me it's not really a musical thing, it's more of like a frame of mind in that you do things for yourself because it's satisfying, because you want to make something interesting, because you want to make friends and be part of a community. I think that's what that word means to me.
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