We caught up with Julia Shapiro lead vocalist from the Washington punk band Chastity Belt.
Bypassing all the mundane topics we got straight to the deep shit— from getting fucking annoyed every time someone mentions women in music like they’re a rare unicorn, to their new album, to cheesy family portraits.
So Julia, you’re coming out to Australia in October for Yours and Owls right? Have any of you been to Australia before?
Yeah we are, our Melbourne show is actually sold out so we are looking forward to hanging out there! All our friends are in that area too like Courtney Barnett.
We saw Courtney Barnett wearing Chastity Belt merch at Glastonbury, how did you guys meet?
Courtney always reps our merch, she loves it *laughs*.
It’s a weird story- we had a record label wanting to sign us at the time and we mentioned that we liked Courtney Barnett, it turned out they knew her and she was playing around the corner. The next day they had organised for us to met her at the record label and the guy actually introduced us as ‘the best band in Seattle’ *laughs*.
Introduced to Courtney Barnett as ‘The best band in Seattle’ that is some pretty cool shit.
Yeah it was! We just really hit it off but we didn’t think anything would come of it— a few weeks later we got an email asking us to tour with Courtney Barnett and that’s when everything started.
Yeah it definitely seems like you haven’t stopped since then.
Yeah it’s all going really well, we have just finished touring our album now so we are hanging out in Seattle.
So with your most recent album do you find you had to step back from your songs and censor them? Just for your own sake of people not knowing what is happening in your life or is your music just as uncensored as it sounds?
I am not super personal when I am writing. It’s just not me and I’m not eager to do that, but my friend Jen has a song that one line of it is ‘I know about the girl you fucked in North Carolina’ *laughs*
That is straight to the point, I wouldn’t want to be that guy…
Yeah, so little details like that we do censor out; whether it be the name or description of a specific person. I wouldn’t feel comfortable letting such specific things about my life out in public, but I do love it when other people do.
You still seem to just talk about whatever the fuck you want still. Do you find that a lot of the music industry are just writing songs about what they are told to write about?
I mean I have never have really felt that pressure that a lot of people do in the music industry. Our label really let’s us write about whatever we want to write about.
Yeah you can really tell that in the song ‘Cool Slut’.
Yes exactly, but if anything I have really felt the pressure in the opposite direction. Our last album was labelled feminist which is cool, don’t get me wrong we are feminists and we feel strongly about it— we just didn’t want to be labeled a feminist band and that’s it.
Everyone seems to be kinda boxed into that one element of what people think they are, especially in the music industry right?
Definitely, it was really felt in our lyrics to our new album. When we were writing it all I could think about was how it didn’t have that centralised feminist theme. I was thinking ‘are people going to like this?’ because it is so different.
Speaking of feminism, it seems that every female in the music industry keeps getting asked that one question ‘how is it being a women in the music industry?’
It is really annoying, in my experience it went from ‘what’s it like being a girl in a band?’ to ‘what’s it like being an all girl band in the music industry?’. And even though that question has evolved, by the media asking that they are essentially asking what it is like to be a women in the industry in a roundabout way.
I hope that one day it won’t be something that comes up in conversation, that it’s just expected you know? But we aren’t there yet.
And I heard that you guys recorded in an old church that had been now turned into a recording studio. How did you guys find that— did it add a bit of rebellious fun to your recording or did you see it solely as just a place to record?
It was pretty cool but it definitely wasn’t the greatest recording. Whereas the new album coming out, recording it felt a lot more relaxed and so much less stressful then that church experience.
Should we be expecting a drastic change in sound for your new album then?
This new album is less of a drastic change then it was from the first to the second. Our sound is definitely still us though, that’s one thing we have always tried to keep consistent.
Yeah there was a massive change in sound between you first and second album!
*Laughs*. Yes, we barely play songs off Time to Go Home now… We have almost forgotten about them!
I think all the albums put together shows our growth as a band. Chastity Belt was our first band for all of us, so we have definitely gotten much better at songwriting and we have learnt so much together that it would be hard not to hear change in our music.
Finally, even though you guys have grown up you seem to all have fun with it still, especially in your press shots mimicking almost a cheesy family portrait. Should we be expecting some more like this for the new album cover?
We haven’t done any press shots for this one yet *laughs*, we will definitely make it interesting. It would also be funny just to do a really boring picture because people will not be expecting it. We do have some funny ideas in mind, but I will keep them to myself for now.
You can check out Chastity Belt in all their glory at Yours and Owls in Wollongong this October long weekend or at their shows listed below.
Thu. Sep 29, 2016– Brisbane @ The Brightside
Fri. Sep 30, 2016– Gold Coast@ Elsewhere
Sat. Oct 1, 2016– Sydney @ Oxford Art Factory
Sun. Oct 2, 2016– Wollongong @ Yours & Owls Festival
Thu. Oct 6, 2016– Melbourne @ The Curtin
Fri. Oct 7, 2016– Melbourne @ The Curtin **Sold Out**
