This Week in the Mercury
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Comic! Parenthetical Girls' "Sympathy For Spastics"
Posted by Suzette "the Intern" Smith on Sat, Nov 5, 2011 at 1:56 PM
- Suzette Smith
- Fineries.
Much like his predecessor, Britney Spears, Zac Pennington is a born ringleader. He calls the shots. He makes it hot. He wears gold tights.
Unlike B. Spears, Pennington's Parenthetical Girls seem to be in a constant state of ascension, each of their 12" EP Privilege series being better than the last. I am enamored of the latest Privilege pt. IV: Sympathy For Spastics for its varied pop arrangements on class, sexual politics and entitlement.
Pennington is the only songwriter I know of, outside Morrissey, that writes songs from the perspective of imagining he's a woman, imagining he's pregnant and then imagining what everyone must think of that. The cheerful morbidity feels honest from the girls or at the very least true to their aesthetic .
In keeping with that aesthetic, Sympathy For Spastics, like its predecessors, is hand numbered in the blood of a Parenthetical Girl (IV has ghostly Amber Smith as its cover girl/donor). EEEW/COOL.
- Jenny MÃrtsell
Also, of interest is the recent P Girls Kate Bush cover of "Under The Ivy." Nice work, girls.
Parenthetical Girls perform today at Backspace with Lovers and Your Rival.
Full disclosure: ZP occasionally freelances for The Mercury.
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