Chastity Belt - I Used to Spend So Much Time Alone (2017) [Hi-Res]

The music of Seattle's Chastity Belt often feels like internal monologue: plainspoken but personal, lived-in but a little mysterious. Their third album explores scenes of romantic miscommunication (“What the Hell”) and self-doubt (“Stuck”) with hazy grace, mixing lyrical directness with fuzzy, often gorgeous washes of guitar. “Out of the fog and finally feeling fine,” Julia Shapiro sings on “Used to Spend.” “My doubts are all gone and I’m having a pretty good time/Feeling like a champ, but for how long?”

Taking cues from both the politics of the riot grrrl scene and the intricate, moody guitar-based sound of early-'90s Pacific Northwestern indie bands like Sleater-Kinney and Autoclave, Walla Walla, Washington-based Chastity Belt formed in 2010. The band consisted of lead vocalist/guitarist Julia Shapiro, bassist Annie Truscott, drummer Gretchen Grimm, and guitarist Lydia Lund. The group quickly integrated irreverent humor into its seemingly serious musical presence. Apart from witty and cutting lyrical content, the band named its first locally circulated demo recordings Fuck Chastity Belt and later shot press photos that portrayed Shapiro wearing a chastity belt made out of a raw steak. They continued this trend when releasing their proper debut, No Regerts, in 2013, subtly but intentionally misspelling "No Regrets" as one might on a horribly, ironically botched tattoo. The band toured heavily in support of No Regerts, and returned in early 2015 with sophomore album Time to Go Home on their new label home of Hardly Art Records. Chastity Belt traveled to Portland, Oregon to record fresh material with producer Matthew Simms in the summer of 2016. The result was I Used to Spend So Much Time Alone, a moodier and more personal third album from the group that was released by Hardly Art in June 2017.