“The city can often seem like it’s there for tourism, whereas we are concerned with those who are endemic to the city.”
A quote emblematic of New York City hardcore band Show Me The Body’s approach to music-making and community engagement. A statement gravid with decisive intent, delivered by the band’s frontperson, Julian Cashwan Pratt.
Show Me The Body have been around since at least 2013, and since 2014 have been comprised of bassist Harlan Steed, drummer Noah Cohen-Corbett, and vocalist and banjo-wielding- barbarian, Julian Cashwan Pratt. They released their debut LP, Body War, in 2016, following a series of well-received EPs.
However, it wasn’t until 2019’s LP, Dog Whistle, that the band really seemed to come into their own. The dark and twisted album depicted a paranoid urban landscape, plagued by a para-natural blight that seized the spirits of those who lived there, and evaporated them where they stood—all while leaving the surrounding buildings (and their real estate value) intact.
Show Me The Body followed that masterstroke with their latest EP, appropriately titled Survive. It is their first release recorded entirely at their new studio, located at Corpus Headquarters in Queens. The studio space was built during the time the band spent in quarantine, and it has opened up some exciting opportunities for them in terms of writing, recording, and maintaining creative control over their output.
“We feel like we sounded more like what we wanted to sound like than ever before,” Steed says. “We were very pleased with the results. It’s amazing to go to other places to make music, but there’s something really amazing about having this kind of creative space available to us.”
Pratt agrees with Steed’s assessment of the advantages of working out of the new studio space, providing a minor anecdote to prove his point.
“We spent years, and years, and years going to other places to do everything,” he says. “When you go to record, you’re like, ‘Fuck, we gotta, do it real good, real fast!’ Prior to having a studio at Corpus Headquarters, we didn’t have a place to practice. Here, we have a practice space for the first time. Before this, we were practicing in a storage unit.”
To a degree, the EP reflects Show Me The Body’s new, more stable, arrangements, with some incredibly tight, refined songwriting, and a crisp, balanced, and unostentatious production. However, the band are far from settled and satiated by their surroundings, as the title track and its video make clear. The video depicts a montage of folks training in boxing and self-defense in various, actively industrial settings throughout the city. The video’s concept flows from the self-defense classes offered through the band’s affiliated, community-facing organization, Corpus.
“Self-defense is a big part of Corpus,” Pratt explains. “You have to be able to protect yourself, and be able to protect those around you. And a lot of those people who were in the video are trained boxers. We just want people to feel confident that they can protect themselves, and that they can protect their friends.”
The self-defense classes were held over Zoom during the pandemic to avoid spreading the virus. And martial arts training is not the only initiative that Corpus undertakes to benefit their community. They also hold coat drives, host a book club, and do work with local shelters.
One of the programs that they are most excited about is the residency they offer at their studio.
“We’re doing a quarterly residency where anyone can apply,” Pratt explains. “It’s basically a week-long studio session that they can get for free. We just launched it and we’re super excited to get our first person in there.”
Something that the band is also looking forward to doing, after the pandemic, is another community event they call Corpus Jam, a day when neighborhood kids can get together and play with the band’s equipment. Pratt describes the scene from the last event held before virus shut down the city.
“We got some commercial space in a basement, and we set up all of our gear, and kids who we did not know, like 15-year-old kids, came in and blasted out on our equipment. It was super ill. Everyone was freestyling, and kids were down there two-stepping to what kids were just laying down. It was beautiful.”
“New bands were formed that day,” Steed adds, proudly.
Listen to Survive below, and pick up a copy on vinyl here and merch here.
Follow Show Me The Body: Twitter/Instagram
Images courtesy of Show Me The Body. Featured image credit: Michael Thorn.
