Mary Shelley - "Look At You"

Words by Zach Romano

Brooklyn's Mary Shelley have capped a series of strong singles with Look at You, their debut album released yesterday. The record is frenetic, funny, and really surprisingly eclectic for a post-punk three piece. Throughout the ten tracks here the band blast through aughts dance-punk, leisure-suit surf rock, shoegaze, detective noir (!), and more. Though Mary Shelley can bring the scowling skewerings with the best of them, it’s always with a wink, and the band is the butt of their own barbs more often than not.

 Album opener and lead single “Bourgeois de Ville” leads with jagged guitars and a dancy drumbeat, over which singer Jackson Dockery excoriates the pretensions on display at Brooklyn parties through shouts, yelps, and punning in French. The song immediately brings to mind the (barely) controlled chaos of The Birthday Party, with a touch of Mark Mothersbaugh and…Jim Morrison? If you gave him a triple shot red eye?

 “Brother” follows with a demonic fraternity induction (aren’t they all), with Dockery channeling a young Glenn Danzig as he growls, bites off the ends of his phrases, and occasionally pulls an extended vibrato out of nowhere. These first two songs are of a piece, but Look at You takes a few left turns from there. “Mr. Jack” is a slinky noir describing some sort of illicit rendezvous, and “The Nursing Home Jig” is a December-December romance that starts with a take on the “Under Pressure” riff and moves on to all-timers like “I used to fight the Nazis, but now all I play is Yahtzee.”

 “Paddi Smith” has a go at poser punks who act tough at shows while covering up their tattoos when they go home for holidays and pine for an idealized ‘70s NYC that maybe never actually existed. If you look back at the band’s influences, it’s pretty clear who is longing for the ‘70s here, but that’s the joke, right guys? Right? As far as modern comps, the best one is probably Swedish post-punks Viagra Boys, who share Mary Shelley’s frantic energy and talent for cutting just-beneath-the-surface menace with demented humor.

 Speaking of contemporary comps, “Blasé,” sung by bassist Sam Pinson, is a bit of an outlier on the album. The vocals are much lower in the mix here, and they’re more vulnerable and less consciously witty than on the other tracks on the album: “Can’t you see I’m drowning?”, Pinson repeats as the song closes. Taking Dockery off vox gives him more space to wail on his guitar, and the overall effect here recalls bands like Weekend and Ringo Deathstarr.

Stream the album below!

You can also listen to Look at You on Mary Shelley’s Bandcamp or on your platform of choice. Also, lucky you, you’re reading this in time to catch their album release show TONIGHT (Thursday, May 21) heading a stacked bill at Bushwick’s Sultan Room. Doors are at 7:00 and you can snag tickets here.  Keep up with the band by following them on Instagram.