Perfect Pussy

The Horseshoe Tavern, Toronto ON, June 20

Photo: Shane Parent

BY Ian GormelyPublished Jun 21, 2014

10
It's rare to see a band play a handful of songs, freak out, trash their gear, subject their audience to ten minutes of noise and spoken word mantras and still be able to call it a good set. And yet so it goes with Perfect Pussy, whose barely-controlled onstage chaos on a good night descended into a battle of wills between the band and the house sound people after Greg Ambler's bass amp repeatedly failed. Visibly agitated, he soldiered on, only to have it fail again.

With no sound people in sight, Ambler snapped, and in turn snapped his bass in half over his knee and stormed off the stage. Perfect Pussy's remaining members did what they could to salvage the set, refusing to leave the stage as singer Meredith Graves chanted into her mic while Shaun Sutkins' warbling soundscapes swirled through the sound system. Their fight with the venue ended with the Horseshoe staff passive aggressively tearing down the band's gear while Graves remained on stage kneeling at her mic. It was a close call, but point: Perfect Pussy. The only problem: How do you rate what basically amounted to performance art? This was as good as it gets.

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