“Climb the ladder in the cage,” Simeon Beardsley leads in the opening track of Pry’s debut record, Wrapped in Plastic. Gently packaged in a soft wall of synthy sound, the line is the first of several zoo innuendos the record maneuvers in its exploration of self-sanctioned confinements and external surveillance. These metaphors exist alongside other forms of stifling visual imagery, ranging from intrusive ghosts to grotesque feelings of frozen, refrigerated meat. Conceptually, it’s a suffocating story; though I write that under the assumption you are reading the lyrics to Wrapped in Plastic in silence. If you have caught any of the singles Pry has trickled out thus far, then you would know there is nothing suffocating about the soundscapes they pave. Or maybe there is, but it’s a different kind of suffocation. A pop-driven spattering of sound. Fervent spats of drumming and potent guitar riffs. A hotboxing of synthesizer. Moments of almost silence that exist just as loudly as their maximalist counterparts. Out tomorrow, Wrapped in Plastic finds power in its nuance, shying from insulated timelines and distinct personal details as Pry yields a malleable listen of juxtaposition, sonic dexterity and disruptive wit.
When I met Pry members Amara Bush and Simeon Beardsley – at a coffee shop that happened to share a name with a track off Wrapped in Plastic – they were both a bit tired. Amara from a night at Knockdown Center and Simeon from a day spent estate sale shopping, which concluded with the hauling of a pull-out couch up into a fourth floor walk up apartment. In the face of depleted energy and minimal sleep, the duo’s ability to elaborate on the history of Pry and their trust-driven creative relationship remained unscathed. Between sips of iced coffee, they told me about past variations of the project, sonic shifts and being briefly pigeonholed as a “New York Shoegaze Band” (they are not opposed to this label…it just does not align with their own perceptions of Pry).
“This was my first time ever playing music with anyone. Simeon was just so open and welcoming, and we decided that in whatever context, we should continue creating stuff together”, Amara reflects on the start of their friendship; which began a typical New York tale of haphazard mutual friend introduction, catalyzed through the act of an Instagram story slide up. Shortly after, the two began meeting in the back room of a coffee shop Simeon managed at the time, writing songs, programming drum tracks and dissolving Amara’s apprehensions to creating music collaboratively.
The record is composed of nine tracks, some predating Pry, some written early on in the project, and some that came together towards the end of the album’s recording process. On Wrapped in Plastic, these songs find their most confident and full iterations yet. “It was a very unique recording process for me, I feel like it was the most I have collaborated with the producer”, Simeon notes of working with Ian Rose. “I was so nervous before, I was like ‘I’m going to have to sing these takes over and over again, this is going to be so embarrassing.’ Ian was so encouraging and really helped me break out of my shell,” Amara adds.
Though I noted that the record represents these song’s strongest iterations yet, like many aspects of Pry this verdict is hardly crystallized. In fact, it’s likely subject to change later this week, when the band occupies the late slot at Nightclub 101 on May 31st for their album release show. “I think I will be screaming more. I think before when we were playing shows I wanted to sound like the recording, but now I just want to have fun up there. It’s been really sweet to have Simeon and our drummer, Dave, really encouraging me to push myself. I would only do that in a space where I feel really safe,” Amara tells me. “If something feels boring, we can just change it,” Simeon adds. “That has been really exciting because we want the live performance to feel fun, and maybe we do something we haven’t done in rehearsal. It’s nice to have total freedom and be in the moment and just trust that we have each other’s backs.”
The malleability of their live sets, and the perpetual growth of these tracks represents the ways in which Pry is a space where Amara and Simeon can nudge at previously defined ‘comfort zones’, paralleling ideas of self-inflicted cages that Wrapped in Plastic works to contend. As swelling sonic atmospheres and charged vocals dig the duo’s own personal ruminations into sugary pop hooks, Pry patches gaps between their own multiplicities, or at least creates a space where various sides of themselves can coexist. For Amara, who tells me she never considered herself a singer in the past, this has also meant experimenting with a range of vocal approaches. Her deliveries stretch from tender in tracks like “Greener”, to the hostile feel the duo embraces in “Tether You”.
“I played ‘Tether You’ for the girl I nanny for, and she was like, ‘That’s not you! You sound weird,” Amara says.
Pry probes heavily into this idea of multiplicity on “World Stopped Spinning”, a track where the duo follow an intense guitar solo with a heated dialogue relying only on the word golden. “I don’t know how it’s perceived by people who don’t know me, but I’m a pretty sarcastic person, and I think we want the way we’re singing ‘golden’ to feel sarcastic,” Simeon explains. “I think the repetition makes you start questioning like, is it golden? That’s the hopeful intent. When you say something so much, does it start losing its meaning? I think that song is a hundred percent about that, and having a frame of reference for yourself that with time, you hear the same thing over and over to the point it may not have the same hook into you it once did. I feel like using repetition really makes you curious about what’s being said versus the substance of what’s being said.”
The skewing of a word through delivery is just one of the many ways Pry cleverly dismantles their own cages. It is not necessarily your sanity that they beg you to question, but perhaps the rigid outline of what you deem sanity to be. Or maybe they just want you to get out of your own head and have some synth-filled fun. You can find out tomorrow.
Written by Manon Bushong | Photo by Ivan Lagos
the ugly hug 