dusted

The title of the debut LP by the Gits was always a little uncomfortable to hold in your head, and it became even more so after the tragedy of Mia Zapata. It’s equally uncomfortable trying to listen to this record anew, keeping that awful story at arm’s length as her voice crowds you into various corners of the room you’re in. Forget about elective ignorance, or selective memory. There’s too much pain and rage in these tunes, boiling under the music’s surface of hard-rocking, bluesy and boozy raucousness. Check out “It All Dies Anyway,” which could just about pass for an outtake from Cheap Thrills (1968) — a little sloppy then just as often gloriously tight, spilling over with gutty affect, the sonic equivalent of that last shot of Southern Comfort you probably shouldn’t have done, but the greenish aura at the edges of your vision is sure making the night a lot more interesting.

Zapata’s outsized presence — her inimitable grafting of swagger onto sudden vulnerability — and the Gits’ association with the Pacific Northwest in the early 1990s has led some to erroneously group the band with Riot Grrrl! It’s not an entirely misplaced reference, but Zapata’s presence was a lot more female than didactically feminist. Give a listen to the sensibility articulated by rawkin’ tunes like “Another Shot of Whiskey” or “Here’s to Your Fuck” (a nod to Dean Stockwell’s turn as Ben in Blue Velvet: “So fucking suave…”). For sure, she seems to be arguing her ability to drink hard and love harder, but not with any sort of aim toward gendered equality. Zapata was entirely herself.

For those reasons, we might position her in a long succession of blues belters that also happened to be women: Memphis Minnie, Etta James, more recently some vocalists in metal whose pipes are nearly as impressive as Zapata’s, like Windhand’s Dorothia Cottrell. And we should remember just how much blues was in some of the grunge music that came out of Seattle; see Mudhoney’s “Sweet Young Thing Ain’t Sweet No More” or Alice in Chains’ “Sea of Sorrow.” Inasmuch as the Gits had musical fellow travelers, those songs get close to the snarl and churn of great tunes like “Kings and Queens” or “Wingo Lamo.”

But there are also franker confessions of the agony that moved Zapata toward so much hard drinking. “Cut My Skin It Makes Me Human” isn’t a good-times song, and the longing for a tougher shield, to keep the self safe from the abuse of existing as a person, emerges from “Second Skin” with gob-smacking honesty. The boys in all those grunge bands were likely also doing some hurting (the smack habits didn’t happen without a whole lot of shame and pain), but songs like “Hands All Over” and “Black Sun Morning” projected their aggro energies out onto the world. Zapata let hers come home. She was a blues singer. She frenched the bully, then kicked him in the balls, then picked him up off the floor and leaned in for more.

Jonathan Shaw