Three years ago, Northwest punk band Chastity Belt emerged from the inescapable wheat fields surrounding the water-logged town of Walla Walla, Washington. What started as four college friends playing house shows as a joke has developed into Seattle’s most talked about new act. In 2013, Help Yourself Records released the band’s debut album,No Regerts. With their first LP’s dissonant surf-riffs and lyrics like, “I’m a slut, you’re a whore/We’ve fucked everyone before,” it would be easy to slot Chastity Belt in with their early 90s counterparts like Autoclave or Sleater-Kinney. However, to lazily do so would ignore the catatonic overtones of their latest single “Time To Go Home,” which leans more towards goth-rock than riot-grrl. The band’s much anticipated sophomore album of the same name is set to drop March 24 via Sub-Pop subsidiary Hardly Art.
The buzzy single “Time To Go Home” is exactly what would’ve happened if Siouxsie and the Banshees had written songs about being really fucking bored. The verses stew in post-punk agitation, as singer Julia Shapiro relays her cross-faded ennui in protracted drawls. The chorus picks up into a high-speed, jangling day-dream that reflects that last sentient moment before blacking out. Even with the release of just this one song, Chastity Belt’s forthcoming album “Time To Go Home” is sure to show how the band has grown from a one-time college experiment into a legitimate fixture of contemporary west-coast punk. Stream the single below:
