Review Summary: No Wave - I
Right around that moment in 1981, when Californian gym punks up and ran away with the underground, the East Coast started cultivating a scene of their own, a glut of jagged young bands of aural androgyns, that in the most acerbic of twists, actually walked all of the lines that hardcore’s middle class Caucasian progeny was thrashing for. The entirety of the ever-widening spectrum of gender, race, non-binary identity, outsider culture and the fringe all found a welcome home in the small dank rooms of niche New York, Philly and Boston punk clubs. Obscure and short-lived as it remained, the movement sparked off and moved with such force, that it almost seemed a conscious countermeasure to the butch revolt of hardcore, a scene that, quick as it began, was already buckling under the weight of angry white men.
This is where we find Bound & Gagged. Little information can be found about the band, aside from the fact that they were one of the key pillars of Boston’s then-hypertrophied art punk scene. They were at one point or another mentored and produced by both local icons The Girls and wonky-eyed Cleveland pioneers Pere Ubu. They were label-mates with other through-the-cracks Boston punks like Native Tongue. And they briefly toured with fellow female-led no wave trailblazers Pink Section and UT.
The self-titled EP, their only studio output is a four-track assembly of spiked nervy guitars cut through with strictures of campy synths. From the opening screech of “Clutter,” the band sets the method early. The song curtly shifts tempos and pitch in lieu of transitions, Barbara Britto shouts away, as Marcia Maglione punches high note keys like she’s scoring a B-horror movie. The elastic rhythm section and craggy guitars round it all off. “Chains and Polymers,” the best cut here, changes nothing and ups the stakes. So it goes. The EP slinks in and out in 12 minutes flat, marking one in a multitude of brilliant strokes of creative punk genius from the decade, from bands that came up from mud, cut an EP or two and then died off with hardly anyone noticing, leaving yet another rarefied document for completists, ageing scenesters and hungry aficionados to drool over.
