Words by Jason Lee. Cover photo by Stephen Perry.
Frida Kill is a feminist four-piece punk band making noise about the dystopian nightmare we’re currently stewing in (still!) stirred up by four women of marginalized backgrounds living in post-pandemic Brooklyn. Equal parts post-punk revival, filthy garage rock and experimental noise, Frida Kill’s sound points to a time when rock n’ roll was more visceral than cerebral—tho’ paired with avant-garde flourishes in the tradition of many of NYC’s most iconic bands—delivered with the freewheeling swagger of artists who find refuge in the city’s finest dives, saloons and practice rooms…
…with the band’s second full-length City Gurl (Insecurity Hits / Get Better Records) serving as proof of concept, the album dances nimbly between the primal and the poetic over its ten tracks while at the same time acting as a guidebook of sorts, a lifeline for aspiring City Gurls and those who love them cuz in this case book learnin’ just won’t do it but oral tradition will, long passed down face-to-face, voice-to-voice, a street-level symphony of shared experience with music central to developing the emotional intelligence and the social support systems needed to free one’s inner CG safely and effectively and the patriarchy hates that with Frida Kill sharing a power-pop Powerpoint on their ten-point plan for living your best City Gurl life so with no further ado here’s our Cliffs Notes version (not at all intended as a substitute for listening, duh!) to whet yr appetite for the full-course meal:
All songs written by Frida Kill
Maria Lina Canales – Bass, Vocals
Lily Gist – Guitar, Bass, Vocals
Jeanette D. Moses – Guitar, Vocals
Gaby Canales – Drums, Vocals
Preface: With Frida Kill trading off lead vocal duties between and sometimes within nearly every track (egalitarian!) and w/some trading off of instruments too, City Gurl is like one of those postmodern novels you had to read in AP English or Remedial English with shifting narrators and POV’s from chapter to chapter or paragraph to paragraph tho’ not nearly not as willfully abstruse (we’re looking at you, Ulysses!) cuz even if some of its songs start one place and end up somewhere totally different this is exactly what City Gurls do themselves after all—always going places, in transit or transitioning, dynamic and dialogic w/ the collective adding up to more than the sum of its parts (community!)…
Lesson One: “City Gurl”
Right outta the gate Maria Lina a/k/a Maria Machete calls all aboard! to aspiring City Gurls everywhere with “wounds and scars covered up in stitches” cuz “honey it’s time to move on” and since “the train’s about to leave” you best decide, “would you like to come with me?” and with Metrocards going the way of the dodo this January why not use up yr balance and hop on the City Gurl Express with the train whistle blowing a Donna Summer-esque “toot toot, beep beep” bolstered by Gaby Canales’ propulsive disco-punk drum work where soon you’ll reach the promised land of doods “walk[ing] by in skinny jeans” offering up “bacon, egg, and cheese” breakfast sandies once you reach yr destination and so the journey beings…
Maria Lina says:
“When I wrote “City Gurl” I was listening to a lot of music from the indie sleaze era. Bands like Glass Candy, New Young Pony Club, and Santigold. I wanted to write songs more personal to my actual life and what I was going through and feeling at the time while also being inspired to make more dance, upbeat bangers. Something real but something I can dance to or rock out to. I once felt like if I sang in a punk band no one would listen to me, no one would book us and no one would care. But I realized the music wasn’t only for me, but for anyone who has been silenced and who has felt alone like I once did. You are certainly not alone in this world.”
Lesson Two: “La Rosa Peligrosa”
Bret Michael once observed, “every rose has its thorn” (just the one?!) whereas Shakespeare once inquired, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” and they both have a point as confirmed on “La Rosa Peligrosa”, a song about a self-proclaimed “dangerous rose” by any other name (with two thorns at least!) that weaves its spell/smell over a sultry, stripped-down thumping phunk groove that gets more rocked-out as its goes (sounds like ESG w/extra MSG!) which is a friendly reminder that City Gurls can be both carnal and cosmopolitan so don’t try to put ’em in a box or a corner cuz they’d just as soon burn you as kiss you or grind you into a pulp and serve you for dinner (“te quiero comer, te quiero besar / te quiero moler / tte quiero quemar”)…
L: photo of Gaby by Genevieve Snaps, originally posted on @bipoc_punk
Lesson Three: “The Crowd”
I mean, sure, being a City Gurl’s all about individual choice and autonomy, mobility, carnality, but you gotta find yr tribe too with track #3 reminding us to “make the rounds” and if yr a little shy just remember to “breath in and breath out” as yr weaving in and out of the faceless crowd at least until you find yr new bestie to be and work on some trust exercises just to be sure (“will you take a shot here with everyone?”) with the song evocatively capturing the sense of alienation that even an independent City Gurl can feel with the vibe pretty quickly moving from chill to “coiled anticipation” to mild stress to outright anxiety but hey no one ever said making new friends would be easy pus it’s reassuring how vocalist Lily Gist floats above of it all with a sort of preternatural calm…
Lesson Four: “Chinatown Bus”
City Gurls may be self-possessed and not easily distressed in general but they got feelings too just like the rest of us simps cuz if you dig deep enough under their tough exteriors yr likely to find the same reservoirs of grief, longing, nostalgia, dread and yes even love that we all hide away and look we don’t know this for a fact but “Chinatown Bus” sure sounds like the narrator’s on a journey to visit a bedridden loved one, catching a bargain commuter bus from Chinatown only to get “lost in the hospital / praying for the impossible” with “monitors beeping all hours of the night […] barely asleep, barely alive” with the heavy, introspective vibe only further intensified by the droning musical backing that drifts and swells in tandem with the our narrator’s state of mind where “patience is pain” but worth it all “just to see your face“…
Lesson Five: “Burn It Down”
Sometimes it’s all enough to just make you wanna burn it down cuz if there’s one constant to city living it’s what some call “creative destruction” which for good examples just look at New York City in the 1970s or the 1930s or the 1890s, all decades of social and economic crisis that ultimately fueled major societal and artistic changes and so-called “golden ages” and since we’re talking music consider how ’70s Gotham at its most down ‘n’ out birthed punk, disco, hip hop and even salsa in a single decade—musical revolutions still reverberating today so yeah no wonder it’s tempting to apply the same principle individually which is what this song is about tho’ with “fire burning all around” it’s all too easy to “lose [your] cool” which is maybe why this song goes from uncanny calm to palm-sweating frenzy to calm again…
L: photo of Lily by Kelsey Wagner
Lily Gist says:
“[This song’s about] starting from scratch over and over again, living whole lives in fractions of lifespans. When I moved to NYC I burnt my life to the ground. I changed my name for the third time and cut off old contacts. The life that I tried to build wasn’t what I thought it would be so I burnt that down and tried again. And again, and again. With time and debt my life learned to burn itself down despite me. I built it up again to favor stability then burnt it down to protect my community. I built it up again, tying together gigs and living close to the edge, then the world caught fire and burnt it down again.”
Lesson Six: “Inevitability”
A prime (mortgage) slab of Frida Kill at their most riot grrrliest, “Inevitability” has to be the most raging/rhapsodic-sounding punk song ever to rhyme “financiers” with “profiteers” or to namecheck credit default swaps with lead singer Lily speculating on speculative malfeasance and on whether our current affordability crisis is really inevitable when “the world is yours” crowd taking everything that’s yours while we’re left “surviving til the next catastrophe” with peals of squealing feedback and slashing guitar cutting as deeply as a DOGE-employed groyper slashing the EPA’s budget to ribbons…
R: Frida Kill as Bush Tetras at Jonathan Toubin’s Haunted Hop, Halloween 2025
Lesson Seven: “Pain Killer”
Opening w/a spoken intro that may’ve been inspired by the death of Mahsa Amini, this one’s another barnburner that arrives as a timely reminder to City Gurls and to other concerned parties that “victories” for women’s rights can never be taken for granted to last in perpetuity whether it’s appearing in public without a head covering or the right to a safe and legal abortion and with City Gurls long used to scrapping for every scrap then finding ways to get more we’d all be well-advised to learn from their orally transmitted example esp. now that even our most fundamental rights seemingly seem at risk of being stripped away faster than you can say Posse Comitatus so best pay heed…
R: photo of Maria by Kelly Canales (Maria’s sister!) at Tomahawk Salon
Lesson Eight: “Every Way”
“Every Way” is Frida Kill in slow-burning, fast-igniting grunge anthem mode to the point you’ll wanna grab a plaid flannel and lace up yr Doc’s so you can walk to yr local diner and read this paragraph aloud to Matt Dillon, erm, Frida Kill, who just happen to be hanging out in your best Eddie Vedder voice just be glad we didn’t slag off City Gurl as “pompous, dick-swinging swill” (hardly!) with this one starting off as a moody if slightly menacing lighter-waver (“have I hurt you..is there something / in my head / that isn’t right?”) before upping the tension (“I tried every way to tell you / every way to tell you”) with dirtier, grungy guitar tones and fitful rhythms (“and it’s too late / it’s too late!”) not to mention those convulsive drum fills until finally it explodes into a boot-stomping, moshpit-forming rave up (good thing you got those Doc’s!) chanting “die die die! die! die!” all Lord off the Flies-like which speaks to the song’s larger theme of communication breakdown…
L: photo of Jeanette by Mike Borchardt (Nihiloceros) at City Gurl release show; R: pictured at Our Wicked Lady (RIP)
Lesson Nine: “Therapy”
We already wrote about “Therapy” in relation to sleep therapy here which features Jeanette D. Moses on lead vox and let’s face it, just living in this crazy city may very well mean that yr crazy already and could stand to see a therapist (plus it’s got the word pist/pissed in it!) a fact yr average City Gurl is unlikely to dispute cuz mental health matters w/it being more a sign of strength than weakness to seek help when needed even if the process can be painful at times or then again you could just listen to this song on repeat which is therapeutic in itself…
Jeanette D. Moses says: “The idea for this song came to me during the come-down of having a panic attack in public. As I was “doing the work” to try and ground myself I realized that I was extremely thankful for the tools that therapy had given me—but also feeling extremely uncool as I was doing the thing that would make me feel better…Humor has always been a way for me to process the painful moments in life, and this song fits into that. Therapy is a song that acknowledges that sometimes doing the work feels bad.”
Lesson Ten: “Queen of the Thrill”
And with this the LP’s final track opens over a hearty “ha-ha-ha-haaaaa!” cuz when it comes right down to it, City Gurls just wanna have some fun, and so they do as they leave you with this barely-over-a-minute-long punk stomper complete with a quickie guitar solo that’s like “Johnny B Goode” meets “Jeanette B. Badd” that’s sure to leave a wicked smile on yr kisser…
Postscript: Doing this writeup is a full-circle moment for us seeing as 5 yrs ago when we first started writing for this scrappy lil’ rag Frida Kill was sitting pretty atop the “emerging artist of the month” poll that’s since been abandoned (pitting local musicians against each another always felt a bit perverse tho’ fun while it lasted) and here we are half-a-decade later again giving it up for the beloved foursome of City Gurls turned intersectional feminists (exact same lineup no less!) to whom we say you’ve come a long way baby which we mean literally cuz they just got back from a West Coast fall tour so welcome back ladies!
CITY GURL
Recorded at Serious Business Studios
Recorded and Mixed by Travis Harrison
Mastered by Jamal Ruhe
Album Cover Art Direction – Maria Lina Canales
Photography – Jeanette D. Moses
Album Cover Design – Gwynn Galitzer
Album Cover Model – Chantal Savaresse
Sandwiches – Aleya Deli Grocery Corp.