Chastity Belt began as something of a joke when guitarist/singer Julia Shapiro, guitarist Lydia Lund, bassist Annie Truscott and drummer Gretchen Grimm were still undergrads at Walla Walla, Wash.’s Whitman College. After the band relocated to Seattle postgraduation, its first album, 2013’s No Regerts, continued in the in-it-for-yuks vein, with songs inserting a healthy dose of self-deprecating humor into the group’s unschooled, spindly guitar rock. But then a funny thing happened on the way to the punchline: Shapiro found something more than merely “funny” to say, and began writing more sophisticated songs that demanded a closer degree of attention. Which, in turn, pushed the band’s latest LP, Time To Go Home (Hardly Art), toward altogether more fertile creative turf. Chastity Belt will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our new feature on them.
Lund: We recently purchased a 2004 Toyota Sienna for touring, and we could not be more satisfied customers. We bought it from a diehard WSU Cougars fan, so it came complete with bumper stickers like “I Bleed Crimson,” a “COUGVAN” vanity plate and is crimson colored. It drives better than any of our personal cars and has a DVD player to distract and entertain stir-crazy passengers.
Video after the jump.
