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Music

Your Job Is Boring as Shit, but Clean Girls' "Magic City" Is Here for You

This is the sound of the service economy gripping its guitar, knowing full well dead languages like rock ‘n’ roll won’t keep the lights on.

Photo courtesy of Clean Girls

Imagine if Unsane’s video for “Scrape” was, instead of images of skateboarders eating concrete, about daily commuters eating their own souls. Imagine if Cop Shoot Cop’s name alluded to, rather than the vicious cycle of heroin addiction, desk sergeants shooting desk sergeants over some sort of menial union dispute. Imagine if the kittens of Free Kitten were never, because of the crushing rent responsibilities of late era capitalism, truly free. Imagine Surgery but with actual surgery. This is the sound of the service economy gripping its guitar, knowing full well dead languages like rock ‘n’ roll won’t keep the lights on. This is the sound of Williamsburg, Brooklyn via Williamsburg, Virginia’s Clean Girls.

A wise man once said that repetition and physical labor can be meditative. Clean Girls (guitarist Chris Tracy, bassist Stephanie Monohan, and drummer Stephen Reader) reject the rote aspects of their lives by working through them, channeling the ennui through thundering bass and SST guitar stabs, filtering the crushing boredom of the big city hassle through clattering drums and muffled screaming. All this (and more) makes up the vivification of Clean Girls' noise music. Kicking against the pricks is a full time job, but it beats working.

And so: Listen to their new track, “Magic City,” which Noisey is premiering below. It’s off their debut album, Despite You, which comes out on Accidental Guest on May 5. It’s the sound of the subway, specifically the third rail. Get into it.

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