Originally aired November 16
Full Episode list available here
About Beautiful Freaks:
Seattle’s Beautiful Freaks represents punk at yet another generational shift. It’s not safety pins or green hair, and it’s not thick necks or masculine posturing. Instead, it’s defiantly genderqueer and untethered to any one style: glam rock flamboyancy, hardcore punk, regional sludgy grunge, metal’s intensity, and the melodic sensibility of jazz all find their way into the mix. But genre is a concept for the “mediocre millennial butt-rock rockers” that singer Meg Hall (they/she) chastises on live staple “Loser Sellouts.” Vibe is ultimately what matters now, and the vibe they bring to the table — especially at their chaotic, caustic live shows — is one of an impending apocalypse. At shows, scores of young punks validate their anxieties in the therapeutic physicality of an unceasing mosh pit, over which guitarists James Bonaci (they/she) and Cyra Wirth (she/it), drummer Peter Bryson (he/him) and Tony LeFaive (he/him) conduct the mayhem. It’s all part of a return to the raucous Seattle known to history, albeit one ready to answer for its previous transgressions.
Originally a loose childhood collaboration between Bonaci and Bryson, Beautiful Freaks found its footing within the incubator of Bellingham’s Western Washington University. There they played with a host of college-age musicians, most notably Hall, an Oklahoma-raised punk who fell in love with the chaos of Freaks. After recording and releasing their debut LP *Cameo Artist* in the squalid confines of their college squat, the band moved to Seattle in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic and spent quarantine sharpening their attack. They reemerged haunted by the weight of grief — from the era’s political turmoil and countless deaths — and channeled that grief into the explosive, newly urgent songs of 2022’s *80HD* EP.
Today, Beautiful Freaks have fostered a hardcore following, in more ways than one. The music they make is in lockstep with a burgeoning wave of restless, vitriolic, predominantly queer punk acts in the greater Seattle area. The Freaks endeavor not to lead this charge so much as foster it from the frontlines. Like the painting of the vexed clown on *80HD*’s cover, they (and their music) straddle the line between the conventional and the absurd — in the words of writer Riss
Obolensky, “providing an opening to the chaos that underpins life.”
