The three young ladies that make up The Coathangers look like they couldn’t be more different.
Julia Kugel-Montoya (guitar and vocals) appears like your archetypical relaxed, easy-going, hippie, chilled-out Californian girl. Stephanie Luke (drums and vocals) comes across as a much more fearsome, tattooed, raspy-voiced, brash lady with a strong “don’t mess with me” attitude. Meredith Franco (bass) is the quiet, small, somewhat shy one in the background, who will eye people with a mischievous grin.
They are The Coathangers, they are sisters-in-arms, and they rock.
Hailing from Atlanta, GA they started out several years ago as a punk rock/garage band. And man, what a hot mess they were during their early years. When they played their first show at an Atlanta house party in 2006, they could barely play their instruments. The excuse to get rowdy with their friends eventually got more serious, but their self-titled first album from 2007 is still not easy listening. More or less learning to play in front of their audiences eyes, they eventually signed to Seattle-based indie label Suicide Squeeze Records in 2008 and have stayed with them since.
For as much as I like this band, it feels a little strange to say that their third album is the first one worth having IMO. The second album Scramble (2009) is less chaotic than the first one, and if you like punk with attitude it may still have something to offer.
I feel, however, that Larceny & Old Lace (2011) is the first one where they feel more serious about their songwriting, have gotten some chops into their playing, and their own sound is also starting to emerge. Trailer Park Boneyard is still the standout on that album, and a good sign of things to come.
Fourth album Suck My Shirt (2014) took a further big step forward. The band kept getting more interesting in their expression by the year.
The big breakthrough album was Nosebleed Weekend (2016) which even got distribution in the Norselands and saw them come here and all over Europe on tour. This album reached a level of quality that nobody could have foreseen back in the early days.
My favourite Coathangers song is still Perfume from this album, while songs like Watch Your Back reveal a strong pop sensibility and Down Down reveal musical influences (and a music video style!) harkening back to the 1960s. Where did all of that come from? A lot of things appeared on this album that really cemented a lot of things that were only hinted at before.
I was in fact such a fan of Nosebleed Weekend that I wasn’t sure they would be able to surpass it. Shamefully, I just hoped the quality wouldn’t dip too much. I should have had faith!
I had my reasons, though. Interim EP Parasite (2017) was very much harkening back to their early, noisy garage sound, and the live album Coathangers Live (2018) was also leaning more toward the snappier and louder material in the style of their punk/garage days. There was every indication that they were moving back towards that early style, which I really did not want them to.
The Devil You Know does however see the band continuing the sophistication of their musical expression while still keeping their punk/garage ethos intact. The result is their best album so far overall.
While I still think the previous album has higher peaks, the level of songwriting, performing and arranging has definitely resulted in a more satisfying album overall. The album is more immediate and catchier. They have gotten snappier and even better at honing in on the song. It shows how far they have come as a band since 2006.
In the past, they would often present a mix of song styles. Some were angry and noisy (and usually sung by Stephanie), others were nice, cute, and with a catchier flair (and usually sung by Julia). This album sees them perfect the mix of sweet and sour within the same song. A song can now contain both cute and angry sections, it can embrace sparseness and a more noisy expression. They mix it up, and consequently Julia and Stephanie sing a lot more together (or split a song between them) to great effect. In fact, the album has more vocal harmonies than ever before, and they are satisfyingly precise. With two vocalists in the band that have such unique and widely different styles, it is really good to see them use this more actively.
The album opener is a great example. Bimbo starts with a nice, muted guitar riff and a drum loop quietly ticking along under it, fitting perfectly as a mellow bed for Julia’s sweet-toned vocal delivery. The song shifts into a more jagged riff for Stephanie’s huskier delivery, but the remarkable thing for those of us who have followed the band for a bit is her delivery.
On this album Stephanie really sings more than ever before. She still has her rasp, and the attitude sure comes out from time to time, but it is a mile away from the screaming and shouting she did on the earlier albums.
The ideas on the album reveal that the band keeps growing at an impressive rate. Step Back is a riff-based song, but Julia’s vocal delivery makes it clear that something unusual is going on – and the bridge of the song is filled with unusual sound effects that fires up the song in a way that the band would never have been able to pull off a couple of albums ago.
Crimson Telephone contains a nice call-and-response vocal in the chorus, and even more intriguing arrangements and sounds as the song goes on.
Hey Buddy is more of a straight shooter. It is Stephanie’s song, containing a catchy delivery but also a very stern message about not taking any crap from said ‘buddy.’
She also delivers a similar message in the creepy Stranger Danger, with Julia doing freaky backing vocals to emphasise the feeling of weird.
Last Call share a similar creepiness in the verses, while the chorus is a solid rock-out moment. The album has a few schizophrenic moments like that, with songs changing their colour in mid-flight.
The band carry their opinions on their sleeve, and I can’t imagine I even have to explain what a song like F the NRA is about. They have always been liberal in their views and not afraid to say so, going as far back as the choice of Coathangers as their band name (referring to a method of self-induced abortion), using its irreverent vulgarity to make a point as all of the band’s members are pro-choice.
The album ends with the more straightforward rocker Stasher and the relatively relaxed and quiet Lithium, complete with nature sounds. It just to underline how many-faceted this album is.
Several of the songs appear downright basic at times, but appearances are deceiving. The arrangements and sounds that have gone into the songs frequently makes them stand apart, surpassing initial expectations. The band is frequently showing their imaginative side and have produced a wildly fascinating album. Especially if you keep in mind where they came from.
The band has been through an enormous evolution over the years, and it continues on The Devil You Know. This is clearly something the band is striving for and happy with. When asked to rank the group’s studio albums by the Noisey website, Julia ranked them in reverse order. I concur wholeheartedly. Each and every album has been a big step forward and an improvement on what has come before. That, my friends, is an amazing career trajectory. Right now I am still enjoying this album, but I honestly can’t wait to hear what they get up to next.
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