Washington, D.C.’s Priests are Political, But Don’t Call Them “Riot Grrrl”
Photo by Audrey Melton
Priests do things on their own time. Though the staunchly D.I.Y. band initially formed in 2011 in Washington, D.C., they’ve never been in a rush to release a full-length album. In fact, they’re only just getting around to it now. Sitting across from each other in a booth at Sugarburg in Brooklyn, drummer Daniele Daniele, guitarist G.L. Jaguar, bassist Taylor Mulitz and singer Katie Alice Greer point out how demanding the press cycle can be when it comes to up-and-coming acts. “Some people have said, ‘Isn’t it weird that it took so long for you guys to do your first full-length?’” Greer notes. “And it’s like, yes and no. I mean, we’ve already put out a lot of stuff. I also think the unspoken assumption is that you’re just going to get shit out as quickly as possible. That might make sense for publicity or press stuff, but it doesn’t always make sense for the music that you’re making.”
“We’ve always been very preoccupied with being at the helm of crafting our own narrative,” Daniele chimes in. “Which can also feel like an antiquated pursuit in the age of social media where everyone’s uploading photos of you and talking about you or not talking about you and your currency is built on that. It’s always been very important for us to tell people, ‘This is who we are, this is what we want you take from us.’”
Audiences certainly aren’t complaining. Priests have been hailed as hometown heroes in their native D.C. for years, with Metro Weekly declaring Greer a “Punk Priestess,” in spring of 2015. That same year, New York Times critic Jon Caramanica dubbed Priests “excellent” in a write-up of their surf-splashed single “JJ,” which will appear on their long-awaited full-length, Nothing Feels Natural (out on January 27 via Sister Polygon). Additionally, Greer frequently gets tapped to talk scene politics by local publications and radio stations.
In their coverage, outlets are quick to tag Priests as “punk,” perhaps due to the fact that they are noisy, opinionated performers, with Greer growling and groaning more than straight-up singing (think a more atonal Poly Styrene of X-Ray Spex). It’s a label the band doesn’t seem very interested in. “I think a lot of stuff we were drawing from isn’t punk at all,” says Greer. “Like our big touchstone was the Portishead record Third.”
Another genre writers freely assign to Priests, much to their chagrin, is “riot grrrl.” Both Greer and Daniele sigh and shake their heads in unison at the term. “We’re all really conditioned to dismiss loud women,” says Greer. “Anything with feminism has to automatically mean riot grrrl for people, which is so incorrect.”
“I know of male music writers who use ‘riot grrrl’ as a quiet signal to their readers that [this band can be easily dismissed because] it’s a riot grrrl band,” agrees Daniele. “Ya know, ‘push it to the side, maybe your girlfriend will like it.’ It tokenizes [women], which is so nauseating.”
Greer nods. “We’ve never sat down and asked ourselves, ‘What genre band are we?’ We’re just a band. We’re trying to make songs that we think sound dope. If other people wanna call it whatever, at the end of the day that can’t be our primary concern. I would love it if no one ever used ‘riot grrrl’ in writing about us ever again, but whatever. It does feel very condescending. It’s limiting. It’s a way to make us sound dated.”
It’s not that the group, who do draw from a range of influences like jazz, post-punk, the aforementioned Portishead-era trip-hop and Fiona Apple, take issue with the ‘90s-born punk subgenre. It’s just that they aren’t particularly interested in being stamped with any genre. “Genre is such a false concept that has nothing to do with making music,” says Greer. “It has to do with selling music.”
What Priests do want to promote, though, is the idea of collaborative work, which is, Daniele explains, is inherently political. “Pretty much everything is political,” she says. “Talking about us being a political band is like saying we’re a band that makes noise. It’s just such a non-descriptor. Our politics play out a lot of times in the way that we do things rather than what we’re saying. So, for us, pushing the narrative of all of us being a collective and a collaborative effort feels like an important choice that reflects that.”