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If the name True Womanhood sounds a bit familiar, it should. The self-described “avant-pop” four-piece has been playing quite a few local shows over the past several months and the buzz around the band continues to build (a couple examples: on a recent trip to Baltimore to catch The Vivian Girls and Crystal Stilts, I overheard a couple concertgoers gushing about the quartet in between live sets; then less than a week later, I’m at a friend’s party in Arlington when I am approached by a familiar face who asks me if I’ve heard this crazy band called True Womanhood).Of course, even though there’s been a lot of gabbing, many people that have seen them live (myself included) continue to struggle to find the right adjectives in explaining just what the hell they saw. No-gaze? Neo-no wave? Post-avant-indie? See what I mean?

Make no mistake—True Womanhood is one of the most exciting and ferociously unconventional pop bands from the DC area at the moment. The band’s devastating live shows will enthrall lovers of loud, cantankerous guitars and shrapnel-sharp percussion, while challenging preconceived notions of what rock instrumentation can consist of. Regarding the latter, consider, if you will, just a few of the band’s more colorful sonic accoutrements: the infamous “Iron Volcano” (yup, that metal funnel thingy), a “scythetar” (an electric guitar bowed with an acoustic guitar—somehow I doubt you’ll find this on sale at Guitar Center!), tympani, a dulled 4-foot blade (used as a chime) and their latest choice of percussion—a satellite dish!

While it might be tempting to dismiss such odd instrumentation as novelty, the band’s carefully thought-out sounds are anything but. In fact, repeated listens to even True Womanhood’s least accessible songs reveal a band that is just as committed to celebrating pop as they are to subverting it. And as BYT has mentioned before, the band has even received Thurston Moore’s seal of approval.

Plus, as we can see from this YouTube video, the members of True Womanhood are no strangers to boogie-dom. No wonder they’re playing Velodrome! this Saturday

In an effort to make BYT’s Listening Party feature on True Womanhood a little more special, I thought I would stop by the band’s rehearsal room to ask a few questions in the hopes of giving BYT readers a closer look at Thomas Redmond (vocals, guitar), Ross Kerr (guitar, aux), Melissa Beattie (bass, aux) and Noam Elsner (percussion, aux).

BYT: You guys played American University recently. At the show I was talking to a guy who told me all four members of True Womanhood went to the same high school. Did you guys know each other back then? Was that Walter Johnson in Bethesda?

Melissa: Yeah. Actually, some of us knew each other in middle school. I think Noam and Thomas have probably known each other for the longest…

Noam: We met in sixth grade.

Ross: I knew of you guys…

Thomas: We all played clarinet.

BYT: It always starts with the clarinet (laughs)

Melissa: Thomas and I had the same AP English class.

Thomas: Yeah, you gotta throw that in there (laugh).

BYT: So were you talking about making music together even back then?

Ross: We were doing our separate things.

Noam: Thomas and I…probably once every two years or something we would just kind of play around. I mean, this is like long before…I mean…I’m originally a pianist. And Thomas was playing who knows what. Before he took up guitar we were trying all kinds of stuff.

Thomas: Contra-bass clarinet. It was six-feel long (laughs).

Noam: And so it would usually devolve pretty quickly into a comic thing. And it was not until I think you guys had already been playing together. Then it became a little more serious. But I mean we were always trying to do things musically.

Melissa: Basically these two (Thomas and Noam) were always on and off playing with each other and then we all went to college and everything. Then Ross and Thomas eventually met up somehow. I think at Fort Reno or something. ‘Hey, are you in a band?’ ‘No.’ ‘You want to play music?’

Ross: We started talking about Big Black. Thomas was like, ‘I put it on and ran away. I didn’t listen to it for two weeks and then I came back to it and it was awesome.’ And so we were just talking about this noisy music we were listening to.

Thomas: And while we’re having this conversation, the band that was playing at Fort Reno was really bad. I don’t know who it was—I’m not calling anyone out. But seriously, it was just really bad. It was like country, backyard bbq-style music…I’m not going to hold the alt-country thing against anybody but it was bad. So while they were playing, we were talking about Big Black (laugh).

Ross: We were like ‘This sucks but we should do something that’s good.’ And then we got together and started doing this improvisational experimental music where we would go crazy for like 35 minutes.

Thomas: And that was called Portable Shark.

Melissa: And they would play every time there was a break during college. So whenever it was winter break they would get together and mostly play live shows in Ross’ basement. And we made a pact: when we finish college we have to get a band going.

Thomas: I think we started this band in earnest in June 2007 when Ross finished college. Our first show was like a year ago plus a week. We played with The Plums—Marc Masters’ band, at the Velvet Lounge. Scott Verrastro booked us.

BYT: True Womanhood is an intriguing name for a band, especially when you consider that three of the members are guys. I was wondering if that’s a reference to the 19th century Cult of True Womanhood?

Thomas: Yes it is.

BYT: Why did you decide to go with it as a band name? Do you think there’s something about the name that works with the music?

Thomas: Well, that it works with the music is complete coincidence. A lot of the songs as they are now, were…the ideas already existed and stuff a while before. So that kind of was in my head at the same time when I stumbled across that name. I actually got it from a class in college. I know, so lame (laughs). No, I got it off the back of some tattooed guy at a truck stop. (laugh)

Ross: And the tattoos were moving (laughs).

Thomas: So…I just kind of like the feeling that it brings. It sounds very 19th century. It sounds very prim and proper and everything. But then when you think of what it actually is, it’s just like a social construct for holding women down sort of. Then it’s like…ugh.

Ross: Even though it’s an old term I think that a lot of the problems that women faced then are still extremely relevant. The term to me evokes a lot of things that really resonate with me with a lot of the women I’ve known.

Noam: They had the name of the band already by the time that I joined but…just a lot of the things that we’re doing, I find them to be kind of polarizing. You’re going to have people that are really into it or not into it at all. And the band name, you’re going to either have people that say ‘That’s striking’ or they’re going to say your gender-blackfacing (laughs).

Thomas: Somebody actually said we were gender-blackfacing.

Ross: That was one of the first responses we got online!

Noam: But you know, if you have someone who will take the time to write you like that then you’ve already succeeded.

Melissa: DCist does a weekly music agenda and mentioned when one of our first shows was happening. And all they really had to say about us at first is we were hilariously named experimental rockers. And then we saw this jump in MySpace plays because of that.

BYT: In the write-up for your show at American University, True Womanhood was dubbed “DC’s answer to Sonic Youth.” And BYT’s very own Lil ‘E also mentioned Sonic Youth in describing your sound in her review of your Black Cat show. Personally, I can hear that influence but I also hear other sounds. How do you guys describe your sound to someone who’s never heard you?

Thomas: Avant-pop. That’s it. (laughs)

Ross: If you want to unpack that term a little bit—avant pop—it’s taking experimental sounds and then sane things and taking them together into more socially acceptable structures. To me, Sonic Youth is an influence, but one of many.

Thomas: The way I think about it…we’re putting together the avant-classical ideas about texture and methods for making music…we’re putting that together with pop songs. It goes beyond just being socially acceptable. There’s an artform itself to making pop songs. Look at The Smiths. Those are some artfully crafted songs. There’s no less amount of art going into that then there is by something made by Terry Riley or something. They’re two different mediums almost but they have the same sort of creative energy that goes into them. I think bands like Sonic Youth or Wire—they’re coming from both those directions at the same time.

BYT: And both those bands literally came out of art school.

Thomas: Yeah, both those bands…they’re always doing that simultaneously. There’s something about it—you can’t take the art out of Wire and be left with pop and take the pop out of Wire and be left with art. It’s something that’s fused together when it’s made. And it’s the same with Sonic Youth on albums like ‘Evol’ and ‘Sister.” And I think that’s what people are hearing in our music or at least that’s what I hope their hearing. Another band we get compared to a lot is Radiohead and again, they’re another band that does that.

Noam: Even right before I joined the band, Thomas and I were talking a lot about the concept behind the band. And we weren’t talking about what we would like to sound like or who we would like to emulate, we were talking about stuff like…Blue Velvet. I mean, how do you describe Blue Velvet as music? If that film were to be music, what would it sound like? Or we were talking about Blue Note jazz. You could try to connect how that sounds with how we sound, but again, it’s not like a conscious attempt on our part to sound like that, but maybe to conjure up the same sort of feelings and moods.

Thomas: I mean, Blue Note…that’s such a huge part of my musical influence. I mean, I’m not some kind of crazy jazz collector or anything. I only have a handful of Blue Note albums, like 10 or 15, but seriously, whoever was manning the mixing boards was just amazing because that music sounds so free. And like, it’s so live compared to the other jazz that you would hear today or like the modal stuff. Everyone loves “Kind of Blue” by Miles Davis. That’s a great album but then if you put on Eric Dolphy, there’s like shards of sound coming at you all over the place. And we’re like, ‘Man, if we can get that feeling and mix that with the rock,’ because that’s more of the avant-side.

BYT: Can you talk about how your songs come together musically?

Melissa: A lot of times Thomas will come to practice with a guitar part and then from there it’ll just build off of that. Ross will come up with a crazy part—he’s got a million effects pedals and plus he’s a fantastic guitarist. And then Noam…when Noam joined the band, he immediately started hitting a lot of metal…like the Iron Volcano (laughs). We got that off Craigslist and we don’t have any idea what it is.

Ross: If anyone can tell us what it is please do! This is a message to all internet people: Tell us what this thing is (laughs).

Melissa: I’ve only been playing bass for less than a year.

Ross: And you do a better job that I ever could—it’s kind of insane.

Thomas: Ross is actually trained on bass.

Melissa: I hadn’t even picked up an instrument until Thomas and Ross were like, ‘You need to start playing an instrument.’ So anyway, we’re all coming with all these different ideas and from there, I’ll hit a nice note and…

Noam: Like you’ll just play one note and then we’ll all look at each other and that’s it.

Thomas: There are so many riffs that are just like thrown away and then with just one note Melissa pulls everything together. Everyone has something that gets them excited about music. For me, it’s always the bass. The bass is where the emotion comes from. I think it also has a lot to do with the range. It’s the thing that you feel more than anything else.

BYT: I’ve noticed that your sound is evolving as time goes on. Can you talk about how you see the band changing as you continue to write and play?

Thomas: Definitely in terms of playing our instruments we’re becoming more conversant. We’re also becoming more out of control in a good way (laugh). Like, we just found that satellite dish today on the side of the road and we thought…

Melissa: …perhaps we can use it for something (laughs).

Thomas: So…we’re definitely evolving. And I think we’re evolving in the right way. We’re all so green at this but I think we’re getting better at capturing a mood. And a lot of our songs are becoming more mood-based and less reliant on the mere impact of hitting funny things on stage. I mean, that’s part of it, especially when nobody knows who we are, that’s what they’re going to notice. But now that people have seen us a couple times, they’re like, ‘Oh, there’s actually something to these songs.’

This is the most recent recording in the True Womanhood Demo series and is, for now, a BYT exclusive. It underwent a total transformation in the studio, changing from one our most traditional numbers into a sugar-pop stillborn-nightmare. Thomas sings about casual encounters with clergy. Like all the tracks on the demo, everything on this track aside from vocals was recorded live. It took over 3 hours of takes.

This song used to be called “Dopesmoaker.” The main thrust of the song is provided by Thomas’s guitar and Melissa’s bass. Melissa’s bass part, played high up on the neck, is at times indistinguishable from Thomas’s guitar. The percussion is a hazy cloud of Ross and Noam’s double drumming. It is the only song on our demo (thus far) to feature Iron Volcano.

Easily our longest song to date, “Five-Colored Hands” has two distinct parts connected by an ambient wash of guitar and percussion sounds. Of all the demo tracks we recorded this summer, this is the one which benefited most from our recording space. While Thomas’s family was on vacation, we took over his living room, which has cathedral ceilings, and rigged it with a collection of the cheapest mics available on musciansfriend.com. The vertical space allowed us to try some interesting recording techniques including pointing guitar amps at the ceiling and ambient-ly micing the tympani to catch the sympathetic resonances of the surrounding drums and guitars (basically using the tympani as a reverb tank for the entire band).

This song is about the time when Thomas had an allergic reaction to some mock meat in Ireland and went into anaphylactic shock. The line “why are you laughing?” is directed at Melissa who laughed hysterically the entire time Thomas was vomiting in the streets of Dublin, drawing ever nearing to his final breath. His guitar and Melissa’s bass are duplicated and heavily manipulated live by Ross using a small microphone. The delayed and warped sounds create a haunting soundscape that gradually takes over the song. Melissa makes her vocal debut in the song but since Thomas often sings like a castrato it may be hard for you to tell which part is hers.

http://www.myspace.com/truewomanhood

Be sure to catch True Womanhood live tomorrow night at the Velodrome dj night and then at DC’s Wall of Soundfest, slated for Fri. Sept. 26 at the Velvet Lounge!

(An extra special thanks to Bill Jenne from www.billjenne.com for taking such wonderful photographs.)

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