FRINGE ARTS
31
The Patriarchy-Resisting Power of Female Punk DISHPIT uses music as empowerment in debut album
Stella Mazurek
“Music has this unique power to give voice to those who are silenced, and women have long been silenced.” — Sandi Curtis
It’s not every day that you witness two women in dominatrix outfits dress up their male drummer in a diaper and whip him while walking through their audience to circus music, as Nora Kelly and Jed Stein of DISHPIT once did at a concert. Montreal post-punk/grunge trio DISHPIT uses their moody, eccentric, and ferociously freaky sound to subvert a male-dominated industry and shine a light on the female experience. On March 12, after a long and complicated record label journey and nearly a year of COVID, DISHPIT released their debut album DIPSHIT. Although the pandemic has stifled the band’s ability to host concerts, the trio is finding new ways to empower through performance. The band, a trio of Concordia University alumni, is comprised of front-woman power-duo Nora Kelly and Jed Stein with Ethan Soil on drums. Lead vocalist Kelly writes the songs and plays guitar while Stein writes the bass lines and comes up with the backup vocals. Finished back in November 2019, DIPSHIT has been a long-awaited release for the band. After the rep of their first record label gradually stopped answering to any form of correspondence, supposedly vanishing off the face of the planet, DISHPIT had to wait for their contract to expire before being able to release their music legally. “It’s just been this sort of uphill battle for a long time, so it’s nice that the album is finally coming out and the rights of our music are back in our
hands,” said Kelly. “[We are] being these women who are bold and kinda crazy and take up a lot of space on stage and aren’t afraid to make mistakes and scream and be kind of uncensored in a field where more and more women are playing music,” explained Kelly. “It’s kind of exciting to be like these rocker dudes, but we’re women.” Because the music industry has historically been a male-dominated field, female singer-songwriters have continuously struggled to create music that speaks to them and isn’t influenced by or filtered through male standards. “Music has this unique power to give voice to those who are silenced, and women have long been silenced,” said Sandi Curtis, a professor emeritus at Concordia in music therapy. She is hopeful this is changing, however. “We are seeing more women singer-songwriters getting out there and adding their subversive voices against patriarchy,” she said. Influenced as teenagers by riot grrrl figures such as Kathleen Hannah of Bikini Kill, DISHPIT is currently inspired by bands such as The Breeders, Slint, and Modest Mouse. “[We’re] playing with the genre, not taking it too literally but having that attitude,” said Kelly. Punk aficionado Jeff Parkinson, who came across the band’s music via some early demos for DIPSHIT, has become a fan of the band and their vision. “I think they are kind of like the only band around that is doing music A P RIL 2021
