Colorado political punk firebrands Cheap Perfume might just be the next big punk band you start hearing about. Having formed a decade ago in 2015, they’ve become the go-to local openers for everyone from the Bouncing Souls to Laura Jane Grace. At the heart of the band’s feminist one-two punch is the friendship between lead vocalist Stephanie Byrne and guitarist Jane No who is also referred to as a co-vocalist rather than a backing vocalist, as her vocals do anything but fade into the background. Rather the pair feed off each other in a call-and-response style, putting the furious femme energy front and center. Rounding out the foursome are Geoff Brent on bass and David “Hott Dave” Grimm on drums and—following the viral success for their video for the single “It’s Okay to Punch Nazis” from their previous album—audiences are ready to hear what the band have to say on their upcoming third album Don’t Care. Didn’t Ask., out October 3 from Snappy Little Numbers.
We had a chance to sit down with Byrne and No to talk about the new album and the band’s fiery political spirit.
All right, so we’re here talking about your new album called Don’t Care. Didn’t Ask. and it’s getting a lot of buzz. What do you is there a reason you think this one stands out from other albums you’ve made?
Jane No: I don’t know. It might be because we have a publicist this time. But also, hopefully people are just excited. I think when we released our second album in 2019, “It’s Okay to Punch Nazis” hadn’t gotten super big yet. I think, after that got big, it created some excitement among more people who wanted to hear more music from us. So that is my guess.
Stephanie Byrne: I agree. I think that that’s part of it. And then, we’ve had a lot of discussions about, as leftists, everything that’s happening now. We’ve been like, “Hey guys, if we’re not careful, we might fall into an authoritarian style trap,” and it seems as though that’s what’s happening. It’s encouraging that people are actually starting to understand what going on, truly, and what has been going on. I wish it wasn’t happening, but I think that now is just a better time to be getting involved with your community and with your scene.
So that’s something else I want to ask. You’re one of the more political bands that I know of, at least in like the local scene in Colorado. What is the inspiration? What makes you such a political force in terms of your writing? What inspires that?
Stephanie Byrne: I’m sure Jane has a more eloquent answer, and I will let her give it, but it’s like all those memes that are like, “I’m not going to get drunk and talk about politics tonight,” and then two beers later, and you’re like, “Where is Ronald Regan?” I think (that’s) always who we have been. Yeah, I think that we are just political people. But Jane, I will defer.
Jane No: Yeah, I would agree with that. It’s just what we like to talk about when we’re hanging out. When we got together we just knew we wanted to make music together. We formed in 2015 and we’re just like, “Oh, we should write music together.” We didn’t necessarily say, “Let’s write political music together.” But it’s just what we like to talk about. It’s what we’re passionate about. And specifically at that time, Stephanie and I were reconnecting. We’d been acquaintances in the past, but we were just becoming like actual friends and hanging out more. And we would talk a lot about feminism and other political issues. So that’s just what we wanted to write about.
And that was 2015 so, if you think back to that time, things have just gotten increasingly more fascist and harder for a lot of different people who are being oppressed, a lot of marginalized folks. And so we’ve just gotten more and more passionate, and you can say more and more angry. So we we’re expressing that through our music. We’re also hoping to give those who are feeling similarly to us a way to feel not so alone and, hopefully, we’re sharing some new ideas that people haven’t thought of before. And we know that we learn from people we love to listen to new ideas. So I also see it as an idea exchange.
I am always fascinated by where album titles come from. This one is really interesting, because Don’t Care. Didn’t Ask. sounds like such like an apathetic statement, and that’s the last word I would use to describe Cheap Perfume. So where did the title come from?
Stephanie Byrne: Don’t Care. Didn’t Ask. is like, don’t check the comments. Jane, I feel like you do a really wonderful job explaining this.
Jane No: No, I like that. When you have any amount—I’m, not saying that we’re famous or anything—but when you have any amount of being well-known, even if it’s just in a local scene, you’re going to get some haters. But it’s more than that, because we also get people who are trying to be helpful, mostly cis white men who like to give us advice on how to write or how to play or what we should do differently. And so when you put yourself out there, whether you’re creating art or just sharing yourself in any way with other people, you have to just be like, Don’t Care. Didn’t Ask. about those people who want to tell you how to make your art or how to express yourself.
That’s really cool. I just it, just some that is a good answer. I just, I was really kind of shocked by the title when I first heard it.
Jane No: I haven’t heard that perspective, but I understand now how it could be seen as we don’t care about anything. But it’s basically us being, like, to anyone throwing shade or telling us how to do our thing. Don’t care. Didn’t ask,
Stephanie Byrne: It could even be explored so much more as even a stance on values. It’s like, I don’t care if you don’t agree with us. We didn’t ask you.
I live here in Denver, so I’ve seen you all perform several times over the years. I think going back to Punk Against Trump was the first time I saw you a long time ago. And I’ve always wanted to ask this about you, Stephanie. Why do you never wear pants while performing?
Stephanie Byrne: The idea came from it being that it didn’t matter how you were dressed. I guess it’s almost like a free form of saying Don’t Care. Didn’t Ask. but saying it doesn’t matter how I look if I’m wearing a lot of clothes, if I’m wearing a little bit of clothes, it doesn’t give you any permission to me.
That’s fair. I remember the first time I saw you, you were wearing a one piece bathing suit, if I remember right. And I thought that’s a really unique thing to be wearing for a concert. But okay.
Stephanie Byrne: I think it’s gonna be renditions throughout the year. And it’s funny, because some of it’s almost my own comfort and journey of self. And also showing that you are allowed to present your body how you would like to present
One of the features I’ve noticed of your live show is always your cover of Le Tigre’s “TKO,” which I am always so happy to hear, because I’m huge Le Tigre fan. But why is that like the main cover you’ve done in your career?
Jane No: We have alternated between that one and “Bad Reputation” from Joan Jett. And for me, Le Tigre is one of my biggest inspirations and favorite bands, and so I wanted to cover a song. But I’m trying to think back Stephanie. Do you remember how we chose TKO? I don’t remember.
Stephanie Byrne: I feel like we’re just fan girls,
Jane No: Yeah, and it’s just fun.
It is a great song. I love that song. So you’re putting out the album in October, and you have have several release shows coming up. What is next for the band after you put this out?
Stephanie Byrne: I mean, personally, I am the kind of person that, if I get you a birthday present, but it’s not your birthday, for three more weeks I’m going to give it to you because I’m so excited. I feel, about this album, it’s really hard to be holding so much of it in because about half of it nobody’s ever heard any of the songs at all. And so I think I just want to get to the place that we can play it for everybody and dance with everybody.
Jane No: Yeah, I love that, because we recorded it in April, and obviously we were writing the songs before that, leading up to it, so I feel like we’ve been working on it for a while. Some of the songs are a couple years old. And so, after we finished recording in April at The Blasting Room, we felt so accomplished and so good about it and excited to share it with everyone. And now this waiting game has been hard. We we wanted to put it on vinyl, and it takes a while, because there’s not a ton of presses. So that’s why it took so long between recording and putting it out. And we’re also putting it on CD and cassette.
But, yeah, it’s just exciting, and now we hope that we learn how to play the songs again. We had a few festival shows in between, so we did play a couple of the songs that we’ve released as singles, like “Woke Mind Virus” and “Down to Riot,” but we’re just really excited to share all of them. And then after that just promoting the album, we really want to share it as much as we can, and so we’re hoping that we’ll do a tour, but we don’t have anything set right now. We would love to tour Midwest and East Coast, especially because we’ve done a West Coast (tour) and we’ve done some stuff in the southwest.
That does remind me of one thing I kind of was curious to ask, because the last show I saw you do is Punk in the Park, which was a really controversial thing because of the organizer being a Trump donor. And I’m obviously not coming down on you for playing it because I went too and I used your guest list spot. But was there ever any discussion about pulling out of that one?
Stephanie Byrne: Yeah, there was. I wouldn’t say per se discussion in pulling out as much as discussion on, does this align with our values and understanding what our intention is when we go and we do things like that. Obviously everybody got gotcha-ed by that scenario, which is pretty shitty in general. But, in my mind, I just know that when I was young I didn’t have like, a super great family life and struggled with my identity and my gender and I know that music made me feel not alone, and music is probably the only reason that I made it. And so to me, if we can go and make people feel not alone and like they are valid in their identity and in their personhood, and there are people that will be with them to continue fighting, and that we can all do this together, then that, to me, far exceeds the value of (playing).
And I don’t blame anybody for making any decision that they wanted to make. I think that the autonomy of that was super important, but it just outweighed, to me, the cons, being around, especially for younger queer kids who the landscape right now is telling them that they are not okay in who that they are. And I think that that is ridiculous.
Jane No: And for me, I personally did consider dropping off. I felt really torn, actually, and we had discussion as a band, and I was weighing all these things. And ultimately, there’s two reasons that we decided to play, from my perspective. One was, I figured we have this forum. So first of all, when we agreed to play it, none of this had like come out yet that he had donated to Trump’s campaign. I don’t think we would have agreed to play it if we knew that. But this was after people have already been buying tickets. And so one reason was, I was like, “Okay, we literally have a stage. We have this forum to share how we feel about this, so we can share this with hundreds of people.” We were the first band, so there were fewer people there. So we can get up there, and we can talk about this, and we can talk about why supporting Trump is not punk and and it’s not okay, and how Trump is like ushering in increased fascism and and causing a lot of suffering. So there was that. I was like, “Let’s use the forum that we have.”
Another thing is, and I don’t think that this should cause people to stop going to shows run by certain companies or something, but if you look into the people who organize other festivals and other shows, you might be way more dismayed and in the grand scheme of things. For example, AEG is owned by Philip Anschutz, who is a millionaire, at least, maybe a billionaire, and he donates millions of dollars to Republicans every year. I started to feel like, well, we’ve played AEG shows, we’ve played other shows. To me, it didn’t feel like that big of a conflict, and we wanted to use the stage, like Stephanie said, to be there for people and to share our thoughts. So it’s not like we’re gonna go there and be silent about it.
Stephanie Byrne: I was talking to a very good friend who also performed, who is a POC, and it felt very much like the Trump administration wants to silence voices of POC and women and queer people, and that just seemed counterintuitive to me.
I will say, you say you’re the first one up there, and there weren’t that many people, but I was there for all three days, and you definitely had the biggest crowd of any first band of the day.
Stephanie Byrne: That’s so nice!
Especially of local bands. I don’t think there were a lot of local bands that had a huge following, and you definitely did. I definitely saw a lot of people with Cheap Perfume shirts and everything. I wasn’t so much judgmental of anyone for playing because I was going there, but the people who didn’t speak out I was a little bit like, “Really, you’re not going to use this stage to speak out.” Especially Screeching Weasel who said everyone should get over it.
Jane No: Yeah, I was not into the Screeching Weasel statement. I heard it, and I was like, fuck that guy.
I imagine they’re going to have a harder time booking next year if they are trying to do it again next year, because now that bands know about that ahead of time I think it’s going to be much harder.
Stephanie Byrne: Yeah, agreed.
So that’s all the questions I had. Did you have anything you wanted to add, or anything I didn’t talk about that you want to bring up?
Stephanie Byrne: Not really. I think I’m just excited for people to hear this. I think that there’s really a couple of really strong songs that have very big, loud, important points, and then there’s a couple songs that are cutesy, and I like that. I think that this album has the opportunity and potential to be very rageful, and that’s how I hope it lands. We’re excited.
Jane No: Talking more about the album, we didn’t choose a theme, but it ended up being a lot of anti-capitalism, because, as we say before we play our song, “Probably It’s Capitalism” on stage—which is on the album, but we hadn’t recorded it yet—Stephanie usually says something along the lines of “This song is about how all of your problems are probably caused by capitalism.” Because the patriarchy needs capitalism; capitalism needs the patriarchy. And so basically, any system of hierarchy that we have is tied to capitalism, and so a lot of our frustration and thoughts about that are coming out in this album. So that’s one thing that I think is unique about the album as compared to the other ones. Of course, we’ve always railed against capitalism, but maybe more so on this one.
Don’t Care. Didn’t Ask. is out tomorrow and you can preorder it from Snappy Little Numbers. Follow Cheap Perfume on Facebook and Instagram for future updates.
Photo Credit: Roxanna Carrasco
