It’s been a while since I’ve jumped into another genre that sounds made up.
A kaleidoscope of influences — hardcore, post-hardcore, metal, new wave, disco, etc. — consistently infused with cheeky irreverence and borderline-effeminate vocality, sasscore is a truly magnificent musical monstrosity that spits in the face of hypermasculinity. Hipsters before hipsters were uncool.
The Compendium of Sass
A “compendium of sass” posted to the now-defunct website “Stuff You Will Hate” described sasscore as “all about tight pants, pink, snotty attitudes, sweaty dance parties, keyboards, androgynous Asian band members and explicit homoeroticism.”
According to the compendium’s anonymous author, sasscore is, plainly put, “Hardcore for the angry skinny boys full of sexual tension and a great collection of skinny ties and thrift store slim-fit suit jackets before those were even a thing that cool people wore.”
Scathing commentary aside, sasscore seems to perfectly encapsulate a highly-specific and lamentably short-lived era of late 90’s and early 2000’s aesthesis.
Screamo band Ostraca performing live in 2015. Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Just as “twee” describes a brief-but-irrefutably punctuating period of Moldy Peaches-listening, Oxford-wearing, tote bag-carrying proto-hipsterism, sasscore highlights the intersection of “hipster-scenester” male sexuality, “femme arthouse stuff,” and alternative music long before “hipster” became a derogatory term.
And it was polarizing, for sure. People either loved sasscore or absolutely hated it (evidently enough to psychoanalyze its fans on troll websites).
Why Hate Sass?
The anonymous author speculated that one reason the genre was met with such fervent resistance was due to the “latent discomfort hardcore has always had with male sexuality, be it heterosexual or homosexual.”
While there are certainly some points in the author’s manifesto that strike me as conjecture rather than analysis, I do agree that sasscore seems to find its roots in its opposition to the hegemonic masculinity of the hardcore scene.
Cover for “Black Eyes” by “Black Eyes”
As we’ve seen with other genres like riot grrrl, queer/homocore and egg punk, the “boy’s club” atmosphere of the hardcore scene is, to put it plainly, highly divisive. While nonconformity is the alleged crux of punk ethos, the veneration of hypermasculinity overshadows the scene’s diversity.
In a way, sasscore is the antithesis of the hypermasculine. While still majorly male-dominated, sasscore artists never shy away from the “feminine,” dressing somewhere between punks, hipsters and scene kids and infusing their instrumentation and stylistics with audacious and experimental styles.
The Emergence of Sass
Sass rose as a movement in the early 2000s with the work of bands like The Crimson Curse, Orchid, The Blood Brothers, Black Eyes (one of my favorite sass bands) and The Plot to Blow Up the Eiffel Tower.
Cover for “Dance Tonight! Revolution Tomorrow!” by Orchid
At the same time, other bands such as Destroyer Destroyer, Tower of Rome and many others excluded sasscore’s post-hardcore influences, instead fusing sasscore with mathcore and grindcore. The resulting genre became known as white belt.
Some newer white belt bands that mix hardcore, slam, grind and metalcore revival include SeeYouSpaceCowboy, The Callous Daoboys, and .gif from god (who I saw live last year)
The Sound of Sass
According to Phillip Stounn of DIY Conspiracy, sasscore incorporates elements from genres within and outside of punk and is generally considered a post-hardcore style.
Key stylistic features include an “over-the-top, spastic edge, dissonant, chaotic guitars, occastional dance rhythms, synths and blast beats.”
In 2017, writer Ellie Kovach (influenced by “the compendium of sass”) described the genre’s “lisping vocals shouting incredibly erotic lyrics over chaotic guitar runs and keyboards” and “flamboyant, homoerotic clothing and behavior” as being primarily directed at hardcore’s “tough-guy” culture and “the PC crowd’s stifling lack of ability to have fun.”
Final Thoughts
I’m always a sucker for a genre that counters counterculture, and I always jump at the opportunity to elicit some early-2000’s nostalgia.
While sasscore certainly isn’t for everybody, I find that it’s my particular flavor of so-weird-it’s-almost-bad music. Would I play Black Eyes for my family? Probably not. But have I listened through their self-titled album more times than I can count? Absolutely.
If you’re someone interested in music with a “spastic edge,” then perhaps you should check out sasscore. If you like things a bit on the heavier side, check out white belt.
I never thought Squeeze would be a divisive band, but I thought wrong.
Whenever the band appears in conversation, it’s accompanied by a chorus of groans.
According to a certain subset of the population, Squeeze is a girl’s band.
Did the band garner an audience of young women? Of course they did; they were halfway decent-looking young men singing love songs.
But how does that change the sonic validity of a group?
Historically, teenage girls have always been on the cusp of greatness with who gets their fandom.
Sinatra, Elvis, The Beatles, Duran Duran, Madonna and Taylor Swift all captured teenage imaginations and were partially propelled to stardom because of it.
Now, we socially recognize the legitimacy of some of these artists as important to the fabric of pop-culture, but that was only until they gained a more adult audience.
So, what makes Squeeze different?
They ran in the same circles as Nick Lowe and Elvis Costello, being produced by the former and the latter appearing on 1981’s “Tempted” and “There’s no Tomorrow” and 1982’s “Black Coffee in Bed.”
The Official Music Video for “Tempted” by Squeeze from the Squeeze YouTube page.
Audio for “There’s No Tomorrow’ by Squeeze from the Squeeze YouTube page.
The Official Music Video for “Black Coffee in Bed” by Squeeze from the Squeeze YouTube page.
Argybargy:
For all intents and purposes, they ran with a cool crowd and played cool music. But because of their designation as a radio pop band for teenagers, they lost their luster.
I was going through my own record collection, and I stumbled upon my beat up copy of “Argybargy,” the band’s third studio album released in 1980 – and I fell in love.
It was a dollar bin lark because I liked “Pulling Muscles (From the Shell)” — a slightly dirty ditty about naughty diversions at the beach — but I never really listened to it until I pulled it from the stacks.
It’s jazzy, it’s fun, there’s almost a doo-wop flair to the dueling vocals of Glen Tilbrook and Chris Difford and there’s a delightfully working class flair to the stories they tell — even with inconsistent songs — across the board it was a fun listen.
The album did well; they found an audience as young and spunky as their sound and they found their stride – good for them, because other bands would kill for a glimpse of that success.
So yeah, chicks dig squeeze (this chick certainly does) and maybe you should, too.
Perhaps we put too much weight on how popularity affects the “coolness” of something — a prevalent WKNC conversation — but I beg that something is popular for a reason…
You can call Squeeze whatever you want — New Wave, Pop, Airheaded-Teenie-Bopper-Love-Songs — whatever you want, but if the music sounds good and the band is respected by contemporaries, maybe we should respect it, too.
Double Virgo’s album cover for “Foolish Narratives,”
Bar Italia began by accident. The members were all living in one building in Peckham, England in 2019. Jezmi Tarik Fehmi and Sam Fenton lived downstairs in a single shared apartment, making music as Double Virgo. Meanwhile, Nina Cristante lived upstairs, teaching pilates.
The name Double Virgo is self-referential, as Fehmi and Fenton share the same star sign. Their sound is rhythmic, emotive and dark.
Bar Italia formed later on, first signing to Dean Blunt’s music label Word Music before recently switching over to Matador Records to release their new project “The Twits.”
I was lucky enough to see Bar Italia play at Motorco Music Hall last March. Fehmi, Fenton and Cristante seemed to revel in their mysterious presence. They came on stage thirty minutes past nine p.m., played for strictly 50 minutes without pause and then left abruptly with a briefly whispered thank you to the crowd, only stopping to pass the set list off to a person standing near the front of the stage.
Summer semester has started, which means less DJs and more music from the automation playing. Which means it is now as good a time as any to talk about the music that plays on it and is new and good! Here’s albums that got put on the rotation recently that you can hear in the Afterhours block on WKNC right now.
