Murder for Girls

Murder for Girls
Six Stories

Calling all riot grrls: Murder for Girls’ latest EP Six Stories is an infectious, high-energy release that may fuel you to start a petition or organize a (probably much-needed) protest. Following the 2020 Tommy Stinson-produced album Done In The Dark, Six Stories finds the local punk rock band at the height of their gritty, heart-thumping power.

"We think Six Stories is our most polished and diverse work yet in terms of focus and overall production value as a band,” says Stephanie Wallace, Murder for Girls’ guitarist and vocalist. “Our time recording with the great Tommy Stinson and Floyd Fisher back in 2020 vastly deepened our perspectives on the songwriting/recording process, and also our self-awareness as to the sounds and spirit we want to achieve and how to capture them in the studio most effectively. These are the first songs written since experiencing that invaluable growth as a band.”

Since Wallace joined the band in 2015 after seeing Murder for Girls perform live, the group — now made up of Wallace, founder and bassist Jonathan Bagamery, and lead vocalist Michele Dunlap — has released three LPs, each just as crunchy and grungy as the last, but continuously showing an improved, more fun, and more fearless side of the band.

Take the EP’s beginning track, “Monster,” for example. The band throws listeners right into their enthralling, intense music, which touches on challenging topics while engaging the senses.

"Monster is about someone that makes the choice every day to abuse you,” says Dunlap. “Once you finally break free from the monster, life is so good, and the monster gets smaller and uglier and starts to smell like rotten fish guts.”

Six Stories debuted on Aug. 13, and according to Murder for Girls, the CD version of the EP “contains a super special hidden surprise at the end.”

“So visit our webstore or see us at an upcoming show to pick up a copy for a cool fiver,” says Wallace. (Hint: it's a very infectious remix.) - Pittsburgh City Paper

The latest from Murder for Girls is a completely catchy, attitude riddled, punch packing EP that comes to you in a set of hard-hitting alternative rock singles, female fronted.... well, more than female fronted, and exactly what you need to beat this damn heat.

Yes, I said that. And I said it for a reason. This EP, which by the way, is called The Six Stories EP, is cool as hell and every damn song has this heavy backbone that is coated in powerful melodic vocals that you can tell was super fun to track.

This band has an arena rock vibe as the songs just get huge and stomping. You can't help but get down with these rockers and they all have some new element each time.

The basslines are stellar. They drive the songs in a way and the drumming is just heavy as hell. The guitars are full and edgy. This whole thing just has a good vibe to it.

It's meant to played loud. So do that first of all.

You get that feeling that Murder for Girls would be just a face melter live and if you watch some of their videos you can see they certainly are. They are tight, they have a good time, and they play nice and loud.

You get tastes of everything here. From punk to dirty grunge, alternative rock, and a massively addictive style.

You know its Murder for Girls when you hear them. And that's a beautiful thing.

Get ready to sing along with your fists in the air. It's gonna happen. - Buzzslayers

It’s been three weeks since Murder for Girls released its fun-as-hell music video for “(The World is Full of Helpful) Goth Girls,” and not a day has gone by that I haven’t been washed in a wave of nostalgia. It’s as if the Pittsburgh-area garage punk band just stepped out of Club Laga. The Electric Banana. The Decade.

“Black eyes black lips black nails black hair black boots black like her hope in humanity!”

Michele Dunlap is on the mic with lead vocals as she pounds away on her drums, wailing out the song’s tongue-in-cheek lyrics with a delightful screech. Bandmates Tammy Wallace and Stephanie Wallace, more typically seen in the forefront, provide killer melodic vocals and guitars, backed by Jonathan Bagamery’s driving bass line. It conjures up Baltimore’s Mary Prankster. California’s The Muffs. ’90s pop-punk teen sensations The Donnas, if they had been parented by Kim Gordon and Joey Ramone.

They’re a dream band for every Gen X’er sad about Bloomfield’s Howlers closing or finding out the Bloomfield Bridge Tavern has been turned into a weird ass apartment building. (Trust me, Google this if you haven’t seen it yet.) I have half of this story penned out in my head before the interview with the band even begins, talking about how stoked I am to have a Pittsburgh band so reminiscent of everything I miss about that era.

So imagine my dismay when halfway through interviewing the band, after asking if there are any comparisons people have made that have made their skin crawl, Stephanie says that the most annoying thing she hears is when people pigeonhole them as a ’90s band. “We just wrote these songs, and it's 2020,” she pouts.

Well, fuck.

But here’s the thing. They really do sound like they stepped out of another decade, but it’s not a bad thing. It’s fuckin‘ awesome. And with its newest album Done in the Dark, which just dropped online this past Friday, the band proves it’s still on the top of its game.

One way you can tell it’s definitely not the ’90s anymore is that I’m talking to the band on a Zoom interview at 11 a.m. on a Saturday morning. The four members of the band are all logged in separately from their homes across the greater Pittsburgh region, having not seen each other in person since March. (They’ll meet in person for the first time later in the afternoon for a socially-distant portrait for the image accompanying this story, which Stephanie says might bring her to tears because she misses her bandmates.) Michele oversleeps for the interview and logs in a few minutes late after Tammy calls to remind her about the call. (“Typical rockstar!” I think to myself.)

All four members did grow up in the ‘90s, though, so they can’t help but acknowledge some comparisons to the era. The women joke that Jonathan is their "token female rock bassist," like stereotypical female bassists in so many male-dominated bands in alt rock’s heyday.

One of the best compliments Stephanie said she’s gotten (while admitting later that it might be a bit backhanded) is “even though we're mostly female in the band, we’re not the stereotypically high maintenance type of females. We’re just fun, laid back, rock ’n’ roll chicks.”

Rock ’n’ roll chicks who took over Jonathan’s band, they joke. (Don’t worry, he laughs along.) The bassist is the one who first started the band back in 2013, placing an ad on Craigslist and eventually bringing on the current members. It was Jonathan who named the band too, and almost every Murder for Girls song starts with his bass lines, which he records then sends to the women in the band for them to add on guitar and lyrics.

“I guess I don't want to hurt people's feelings when I say this, but just in general, I enjoy collaborating with women in the workplace and creatively,” he says.

After Done in the Dark’s release show, originally planned for May 9 at Cattivo, was canceled, the band decided to do an online release instead. In some ways, the band says, it was easier because “everyone’s online” right now because of the pandemic. But they say they’re definitely missing the face-to-face interaction with the crowd.

The members talk about venues they want to play when they’re able to play live again: Mr. Smalls, the renovated Thunderbird, “I just want to go to good old Gooski's,” adds Michele.

And the new album, Done in the Dark, the band’s third full-length release, is made to be performed live. It’s packed full of nine rocking songs produced, recorded, and mixed by Tommy Stinson of Replacements and Bash & Pop notoriety. (The band opened for the latter at Mr. Smalls in 2017 and Tammy says he’s been a friend for years.)

The album was recorded in a few short days in New York. Stinson had them play the songs repeatedly just a few times. “He doesn't really believe in, you know, beating a song to death like playing it 20 times trying to get it right,” says Tammy. The result is an album that’s a bit cleaner and more polished than the band’s previous recordings, but Stephanie said she was able to talk him into getting at least some distortion back. “He called it the Lemmy pedal,” she says.

This comes through perhaps the best on the hard-hitting “Patchouli,” with equally savage lyrics: “I want to tell you, I see your ugly face, I want to smash it / I'll be laughing when you go to jail, I hope it's everlasting / I'll be laughing when you go to hell, I hope it's everlasting.” And there are so many other gems. The bass on “Run” kills. “Star” brings up vague hints of Hole’s “Doll Parts.” “Broken” is a surprising mix of grit and glitter.

And there’s that “Goth Girls” song, of course. And there really was a helpful goth girl that inspired it, too. Jonathan said awhile back, he posted a question to Facebook asking for advice on a good place to hang flyers to promote an upcoming show and a goth girl “emerged from the shadows” into his inbox.

“She had a spreadsheet with multiple tabs with different Pittsburgh neighborhoods and where you hang flyers and what time of day you go there and who you talk to,” he says. “After that, one of us said, ‘You know, the world is full of helpful goth girls because it truly is.’” - Pittsburgh City Paper