We’ve written about Penny & the Pits, the new project from Penelope Stevens from New Brunswick alt-rock outfit Motherhood, a couple of times in recent months as the project gears up to release its debut album Liquid Compactor with Forward Music Group. Back in March we shared single ‘Montenegro on Ice‘, a song “Lack[ing] none of the mood or bite of the Motherhood sound,” as we wrote, “Stevens matching head-banging heft with an abstract, poetic lyricism which plays like a personal journey into the strange currents and slacks of this thing we call life.” Then came ‘Pool Party‘, “a surf punk number full of playfulness and bite which again highlights the imagination of the project,” as we put it, “telling the delightfully dark story of a girl gang hell bent on revenge against the men who have wronged them.”
With the album set for release at the end of the month, Penny & the Pits are back with brand new single, ‘Headcrusher’. The label describe the record as an “adventurous punk-rock album that processes feminist joy, rage and revenge,” and ‘Headcrusher’ certainly lives up to the description. A short, sharp track full of bite and momentum, letting up only for the brief lulls which punctuate intermittently, as though Stevens is taking a breath before diving back in. What results is something unapologetically in your face, a style fitting for the themes which underpin it. “This song is about trying to blame yourself for someone else’s bad behaviour,” Stevens explains. “But then it’s also about refusing to do that anymore and just sending them out to die at sea.”
