Thrill Jockeys

Sexy or scary? It’s the Halloween costume dilemma of our time, but
for Partman Parthorse frontman Gary Smith, it’s no problem at
all—when his band take the stage for their October 31 CD-release show at the High Dive, he’ll inevitably be
both.

Sexy because Gary gets naked or next to it at nearly every Partman
Parthorse show, and he boasts a lean, muscular physique (he and
wife/drummer Lisa Smith do yoga). Scary because once he gets down to
his underwear (or less), Gary stalks through the crowd, lifts monitors
with one arm, writhes around on the floor, and otherwise gets intimate
with his audience on an anatomical level, all while the band beat out
dark, churning blasts of punk rock and Gary sings almost impenetrably
sarcastic, smart-ass lyrics with an all-encompassing sneer. It’s trick
and treat, in line with a hallowed tradition of confrontational
punk-rock frontmen that runs from Iggy Pop and Darby Crash right up to
Fucked Up and Les Savy Fav. It’s both a shake-up of the old
spectacle/spectator dynamic and established enough of an act as to only
reinforce punk’s own peculiar conventions (i.e., in the year of What
We Do Is Secret, no one’s shocked anymore when the cats come out
into the audience).

Asked if Partman Parthorse have an agenda, Gary puts it more simply:
“I just want to shake my dick in your face and see if you like it or
not.”

It’s two weeks before Halloween, and the band have no idea what
they’re going to wear for their show—it’s especially hard for
Gary to come up with a costume that will still work once he strips off
95 percent of it (if nothing else, he could do the best Crash you’re
likely to see this season). Offstage, hanging out (fully clothed) in
the band’s trap-door basement practice space, the band’s superficial
menace and sarcasm evaporate to reveal a funny, smart, and smart-ass
but genuinely nice bunch. (Asked what everybody does for their day
jobs, Gary replies, “Rachel [Ratner, bass/synth] owns KEXP, I own Easy
Street Records, Lisa’s the marketing director of Microsoft, Marshall
[Nall, guitar] owns Tavolàta”—except for Microsoft, these
are their places of employ, but Gary’s a clerk, Ratner’s a DJ
and educational outreach coordinator, and Nall’s a pasta maker.)

“I want to take my clothes off in front of people and yell and throw
shit,” Gary continues. “And this is the only time you can do it without
getting kicked out of a place. I took my shirt off at a bar recently,
[and they] told me not to, because I wasn’t playing.”

“It was also a lesbian bar,” adds Ratner.

“Yeah, it was the Wild Rose,” Gary laughs.

Partman Parthorse have been unceremoniously ejected or barred from
their share of shows. When the band unwittingly found themselves
playing a Camel-sponsored event last year, Gary wrote “Camel Sucks” on
his chest, and the band were subsequently denied another show opening
for the same band at the same venue. A gig at the Columbia City Theater
ended badly after Gary marked his height on a wall and signed it
midset. “The place really sucks, and Chip, the sound guy there, is
really stupid.” (Gary, refreshingly for Seattle’s too-polite indie-rock
scene, isn’t above talking some shit.) “He shut our sound off, and
grabbed the Sharpie and started scraping it on my chest, totally
flipping out. He grabbed my mic and put my mic in water, and he made me
sand the wall,” Gary laughs. “No, it’s a beautiful place.”

The all-ages scene has also proven a difficult hurdle for the ‘Horse
to clear: “Different types of people like us—[even] the yuppie
people that like Audioslave—but not the kids that like Mika Miko,
they think we’re gross. Kids at house parties get it, but if it’s not
underground…. They yelled at me for my lyrics at the Old Fire House:
‘It’s inappropriate, you can’t sing about drugs, can’t say the
n-word.'”

Still, the band are able to get away with some shock and
mischief.

“I’ve been showing my penis lately,” Gary boasts. “It’s fun! I’ve
smoked weed onstage, and they don’t do anything; it’s pretty cool.”

“Last night, before we played, I started chanting ‘John McCain,’ and
people started flipping me off and saying, ‘Fuck you.’ It was really
funny—Lisa didn’t think it was funny—but then I said, ‘Hey,
Tacoma doesn’t smell bad, it just smells like pussy… hot, wet,
middle-aged pussy.’ That was funny, too.”

Partman Parthorse have only been terrorizing Seattle venues for a
few years, but the band’s roots go all the way back to 1996 in
Pensacola, Florida, where Gary and Nall first met and began playing
music together. In 2001, Gary and Lisa eloped to Seattle, where they
met Ratner, and shortly thereafter Nall moved out and joined them.

Of his and Nall’s early efforts, Gary says, “They weren’t songs. We
couldn’t finish a song until we met these two.”

Still, it took the band some time to finish their follow-up to
2005’s self-titled debut, the self-released sophomore album, Year of
the Jerk.

“We had a lot of the stuff done this time last year,” says Nall. “We
just didn’t start recording until January. We were done with it in
March.”

“From concept to finish—three years,” Gary adds. Actual time
spent recording? “Two days.”

As a result of that slack schedule, Year of the Jerk does
have some dated moments. On the growling, evil “Magik,” Gary declares
“2-0-0-7” the “year of the jerk.” On the 8Ball &
MJG–referencing “Can’t Fade the P.M.P.H.,” he scowls about
“ghostrid[ing] the whip,” “grapes,” and getting “dumb, dumb, dumb”
(remember hyphy?). That Partman Parthorse pull off even their more
dubious lines is a testament to Gary’s repertoire of self-parodistic

monster snarls, stoned surfer drawls, stage whispers, and hardcore
speak-singing cadences. For the most part, though, the album’s
subjects—sex, drugs, angst, and the many ways Partman Parthorse
rock harder than all you losers—are timeless enough, and the
14-hour recording session seems to have only intensified their
hazardous punk rush.

Inviting album opener “Disappear,” lays bare Gary’s MO: “I got the
body/And I got the mind/No inhibitions of any kind… Let’s get it on.”
Overdriven drone “At the Mall” confuses adolescent flirting with
consumerism with nudist transgression; it also name-checks Egyptian
Lover, Swatch, and the year 1980 (all of which suggest a So-Cal vintage
that’s equally apparent in the band’s mix of surf, punk, and hardcore).
Reverb and bile-dripping ballad “Mr. Frontman” pokes fun at the rock
star as sex symbol. The tensely groovy “I’m a Book” satirizes
sex-and-drugs burnouts, while synth and guitar wipeout “Significant
Bummer” is just a bad-vibes punk anthem for the ages. “Stash” twists
from a hazy ode to weed-smoking into what sounds like an
age-inappropriate offer of mustache rides. The violent jerking back and
forth of “Shit Hot” opens with a typically abrasive and hilarious
line—”Losers, I hate you!/Die, die, and go to hell/You are so
stupid/Jerks, does it hurt?”—and it only gets more uncomfortable
and entertaining from there.

All the lyrical snark, combined with Lisa and Ratner’s chugging,
stop/start rhythms and Nall’s distorted guitar buzz, reverby tics, and
feedback-pierced riffs, would make Partman Parthorse ideal support for
Sub Pop misfits Pissed Jeans. (Of Sub Pop’s apparent indifference to
Partman Parthorse, Gary readily quips: “Fuck it, they’re
jerks—but, you know, it’s not like they have to like us or
anything, it’s just dumb that they don’t.”) The band would like to tour
more, having never taken their horror show off the West Coast.

As the interview draws to a close, after all the shit-talk and
wisecracks, Gary pauses to reconsider the question of Partman
Parthorse’s agenda, flashes a big grin and declares simply: “We just
want people to like us.”

Really, what’s not to like?