Chile’s Miss Garrison living in a plastic world
03 May, 2013If post-new wave electro punk floats your boat, you could do a lot worse than check out Miss Garrison. The Santiago three-piece mix firey riffs with experimental sounds and beats to create a driving kinetic force that marks them out as one of Chile’s most exhilarating underground bands. Reminiscent of the likes of CSS or Le Tigre, their energy is derived from the distorted basslines of Tomás Rivera, whose effect-laden samples give extra scope to the band’s sound, Matias Lopez Navejas’ howling guitars, and the potent presence of frontwoman and drummer Francesca Straube. It all combines to produce a dynamic live show, which has led them on tour to Europe and Latin America.
The name comes from the invented character that protagonises the band’s music. Miss Garrison is a plastic blow-up doll who provides the lyrical content that channels throughout the songs, developing into a rounded character through various viewpoints and themes presented in the music. This third-person narrative was a defining aspect of their debut album Tire y Empuje (Push and Pull), and was manifested in tracks such as ‘Plastic Señorita’, ‘Ivanna X‘, and ‘Fuck Off’, with vocals in both Spanish and English. Although the song’s not on the album, it is the video for ‘Si Huele de Plástico‘ that best captures the Miss Garrison essence (the character, not the band).
The band recently released their latest video for ‘I’, which again features the plastic world in which the band emerse themselves. By their standards, it’s pretty low-tempo stuff, gradually building up through an ethereal guitar riff and Straube’s radiant vocal melody, but never reaching the aggression levels of previous singles. Not a bad song though by any means. We’ll be keeping an eye on these guys and what their next step involves.
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