Vinyl Record: The Coathangers

Stop Stomp Stompin’

The band that rolls together holds together, and the Coathangers make the perfect gang. The band’s second full-length, Scramble (Suicide Squeeze), highlights marked growth for Atlanta’s premiere lady punk banshees. When Julia Kugel (guitar/vocals), Stephanie Luke (drums/vocals), Candice Jones (keyboard/vocals) and Meredith Franco (bass/vocals) dropped their self-titled debut in 2007, they caught both heat and praise for penning such juvenile party-punk anthems as “Tonya Harding” and “Nestle in My Boobies.” Scramble finds the group in a darker, more poetic mood, but they’re still not about to get all serious on us.
— Chad Radford

We are all friends and we are a gang, all for one. We keep each other in mind and try to concentrate on what’s best for the group. Even when we write songs, egos aren’t involved. We focus on what’s best for the song rather than who wants to do a solo. That’s why we can switch up instruments between songs. None of us are emotionally attached to one thing. We listen to each other’s ideas, and I would say that makes us a good gang. But there was no blood-in/blood-out.

The main thing that happened between recording the first album and the second one is that we grew up. When we started the band, we were three years younger and in a different mind-set. Meredith was only 19 years old, and we were just more in your face, vulgar and loud. But once we started touring, we grew up and learned how to play our instruments.

When we did the first record, we literally threw it up. With Scramble, we thought, “OK, maybe we are musicians of some kind.” We took it kind of seriously, but with a pinch of salt. We deserved to take ourselves seriously and we didn’t want to write silly songs anymore. It became a matter of diluted content and burying things in metaphors. We weren’t so literal. “Nestle in My Boobies” is pretty literal, but a song like “Pussywillow” makes you say “What?” It’s not really about anything, but it is.
— Julia Kugel of the Coathangers