Plus, Also, Too

Initially a young, fierce all-woman trio from Columbus, Ohio, Scrawl took the punk credo that ‘anything goes’ to heart and hashed out this debut album on the cheap in 1987. Short on musicianship, but long on enthusiasm, anger, love and general passion, Plus, Also, Too is a rollercoaster of emotion at its rawest edge. Singer Marcy Mays relied less on perfect pitch than honest emotion and the contributions of bassist Sue Harshe adding her own interpretive harmonies to the mix. The effect is something just to the left of the Los Angeles punk band X. The group’s messy dissonance — the guitars clang in equal velocity as the drums — is heightened by the uncompromising and direct quality of the lyrics. The titles tell the story: “Sad,” “Slut,” “Loser,” “Gutterball,” “I Can’t Relax.” These are songs born out of anxiety and frustration, delivered by women barely out of their teens, figuring out how to be a band and how to exist in a world they can barely relate to.