Pretty Girls Make Graves

We're three months into 2002 and there hasn't been a single new rock record that's threatening. Where's the cojones, the sweat, the pumped fists? Why does everything that's labeled postpunk, new wave or 80s-inspired sound as fresh as their respective fashion accessories (faux hawks, train conductor hats and huge belts)?

Welcome Seattle's Pretty Girls Make Graves, balancing care and style with punk-rock adrenaline. They've been playing out for just over a year. When asked whether the band is named for the Smiths song or the line from Kerouac's The Dharma Bums, frontlady Andrea Zollo (ex-Death Wish Kids and Area 51) confesses, "I always like it because of the Smiths song," and she's never read the book. The music is actually nothing like a Smiths song, though maybe there's a parallel to what reviewers called Kerouac's "conflicts amid the emptiness of middle-class American life."

The Pretty Girls self-titled four-song EP (Dim Mak) strikes like a hammer to the head. Their upcoming full-length Good Health (Lookout!, April 9) mines the same energies in nine songs and 27 minutes. Think a bit of early Fugazi, a bit of Rocket from the Crypt, but made new. Onstage, they're a blast of fun and self-assurance. Last summer in San Francisco, I watched as Zollo strutted across the stage during "3 Away," the most powerful song on the EP, while bassist Derek Fudesco (ex-Murder City Devils) sang, "Too often we sit back and take/Take what life gives us." Zollo responded, "Like holding a bad hand of cards." Fudesco: "Always folding instead of raising the stakes/Never wanna bluff and go for it." Zollo: "Afraid that you'll lose all you got." And the punchy chorus: "But you can't win big if you don't bet big? I don't wanna live my life in regret/Everything's a learning experience."

The title Good Health came from guitarist Nathen Johnson; Fudesco thinks it's because "We're all so fucking neurotic." Still, he claims that "Pretty Girls is the best project I've been involved with. Everyone is amazing. They're definitely the best people I've played with. Not to dis the people I've played with in the past, but that's just how I feel."

Zollo says that when they sit down to write songs they often "duke it out... The bigger the fight, the happier we're going to be in the end with the results. There's not a whole lot of 'Yeah, cool. Yeah, cool,' because we all have strong personalities. Everyone has something to say about every little thing, so it takes a little longer." Add to this that three of the band's five members (with drummer Nick DeWitt and guitarist Jason Clark, who also plays in Kill Sadie) suffer from panic attacks. When I called Zollo last week at 9 a.m. Seattle time?the earliest any rocker has ever set up an interview?she was up doing her yoga tape. (Fudesco gets up early too?for his day job in construction.)

On "Speakers Push the Air," the first track from Good Health, Zollo and Fudesco remind us why we listen to records: "Do you remember what the music meant/These complications and frustrations they disappear when the music starts playing/I found a place where it feels all right/I heard a record and it opened my eyes/Do you remember when we couldn't put it away?and nothing else matters when I turn it up loud." Zollo and Fudesco cowrote the song on a train in Italy.

Zollo talks about what it's like fronting a band of males. She resists critics' comparisons to Sleater-Kinney or Bikini Kill, and in fact Pretty Girls sounds nothing like either group.

"I think it has to do with lack of role models to compare somebody to," she says. "I've been compared to the most random bands that I don't sound anything like, and it's purely because there's another woman in the band. Like, 'Oh there's a girl in that band, so you sound like them.' Like Velocity Girl." At the same time, she notes, "All my favorite bands?the ones who've inspired me musically growing up?have been fronted by women. Whether it's X or the X-Ray Spex or the Avengers. But that's not necessarily my singing style. The last woman who has inspired me is Beth from the Gossip. She totally blows me away and commands the stage. Her voice is amazing. People go nuts. She has this power of making everyone move. And the Liars from Brooklyn, they're my favorite band right now. They recently played here in Seattle and it was the first show in a long time where I was totally blown away. I couldn't help but dance. I bought the record, I bought the t-shirt and then went home and put on the record."

I found Pretty Girls as entertaining onstage as the Gossip and as fun as the Liars, but in their own unique way. When I ask Fudesco if they're punk or postpunk or melodic punk or whatever, he says, "We didn't set out to sound like anything. I wouldn't say melodic punk. Our sound is difficult to describe. I've heard all kinds of comparisons, and most are funny. It just shows that everyone's different."

Pretty Girls Make Graves plays Sat., March 9, at the Knitting Factory, 74 Leonard St. (betw. B'way & Church St.), 219-3006.