Album Review: Chasity Belt - 'Live Laugh Love'
Chastity Belt return with their delightful fifth full-length offering, “Live Laugh Love”.
The ‘Riot Grrrl’ scene has gotten a modern polishing in the form of the Walla Walla based indie outfit Chastity Belt. Sitting in the same genre as bands such as Cherry Glazerr, Ian Sweet and Girlpool, comprised of Julia Shapiro (vocalist/ guitarist), Annie Truscott (bassist), Gretchen Grimm (drums) and Lydia Lund (guitarist), the quartet find comfort in tongue-in-cheeky lyrics, witty narratives and effortlessly cool instrumentation. With four records already to their name, their latest release (“Live Laugh Love”) follows on from their self-titled 2019 effort, recorded over a span of three years.
Their moniker represents their sound exactly, sweet, innocent and delicate – yet their narratives and song titles show a completely different side to Chastity Belt. “Pussy Weed Beer”, “Cool Slut”, “Pissed Pants” and “Nip Slip” (just to name a few) portrays a complete juxtaposition to everything a ‘Chastity Belt’ represents, but cold hold as a metaphor for exactly what music is for a lot of individuals – breaking free from the restraints of daily life to discuss ‘taboos’ and completely self-indulge. Their latest releases, however, do veer away from R-Rated titles, with their fifth record, “Live Laugh Love” opting for bubblier, more sunny track titles (“Funny”, “Kool-Aid”, “Laugh”).
The album opener, and the first single to be released, “Hollow”, offers a delightful reintroduction to Chasity Belt – soothing vocals complement a stripped-back landscape as the narrative of the record is set. “Hollow” talks on acceptance (“The older I get,” Shapiro says, “the more I realize that I might just always feel this way, and it’s more about sitting with the feeling and accepting it, rather than trying to fight it”), and finds itself twinned with the comforting messages of “Kool-Aid” (“it's not hard all day, just sometimes”). “Funny” finds itself rooted in lush surf-rock guitars and delicate vocalisations and sees the quartet at their furthest away from the insistent lyrics veined throughout their debut release (“No Regerts”).
Despite the record so far boasting a melancholy soundscape, “It’s Cool” still manages to go deeper still. Almost-monotonous vocals stand-out atop melodic guitars in a track that wouldn’t go amiss on an Elliott Smith Record. Ironically, a few tracks through the album, “Blue” would be better suited swapping titles with its predecessor “It’s Cool”. “Blue” is the number that comes closest to harking back to early 2010’s Chastity Belt sounds – sauntering melodies that let up for soaring vocals and heavier guitars than “Live Laugh Love” has experienced thus far (only come close to by “Chemtrails”).
The second single to tease the release of the album, “I-90 Bridge” nods to the Seattle bridge that collapsed in 1990, offering a fictionalised version of real-events (“Riding bikes across the I-90 bridge / Nine at night, this feels like flying”) through picture-painting lyrics, sweet chords and innocent reminiscence.
Record closer, “Like That” brings the quartets latest chapter to a delightful and soothing close, complete with lilty melodies and completely encapsulating vocals. At one-short-of-a-dozen, “Live Laugh Love” is an impressive offering from Chastity Belt, and demonstrates the band’s natural evolution from witty indie-rock to cool soft pop.
Words by Lana Williams
