Rolling Stone asked Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo to review a handful of songs from new and old artists. The mag tossed him a dudely assortment of tunes by Rush, Nirvana, Hozier and Eric Church. Then… Priests!
Yes, D.C.’s own Priests, the punk-rock fourpiece fronted by (recent Kojo Nnamdi Show guest) Katie Alice Greer. This is what the ever-bespectacled power-pop celebrity had to say about the band’s “Doctor”:
There’s a lot of guitar riffage without a real chord progression – but there’s also super-interesting and unique counterpoint between the instruments. And the lyric “You put your fingers in other people’s mouths” is super-provocative. With the sound of her very raw, unpolished vocal performance, the net result is very charming and attractive to me. It seems like they’re not super-interested in melodies, and I was wondering if they came up with the lyrics on paper first, before she sang them. That would be my guess. I also wonder how Morrissey wrote with the Smiths – it’s almost like there were pages of writing and he almost talked them over the music.
“Charming” and “attractive” strike me as misplaced descriptors for a sociopolitical punk band, but hey—Rivers Cuomo just compared Priests to The Smiths. Super-sweet.
Hear Priests play Cuomo’s new favorite song in the band’s recent Bandwidth session:
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