#84: Shameless Valentine's Day Money Grab
Platonic Sex; Spite FuXXX; Sister Wife Sex Strike; Sex Prisoner; Sex Messiah; Sex Week; Sex Mask; Crywank; Jerkoff Diary
What are the odds this special Valentine’s edition of Band Name Bureau makes it to your inbox? I guess I’ll find out! Sure, I could’ve searched for names that were less, uh, direct—and thus less likely to trigger spam filters—but I’m working with what I have here. And what I have is a portmanteau of sobbing and masturbating, among others. Do you know I graduated from a prestigious journalism school?
Note: There’s some artwork below that’s kinda NSFW. Nothing graphic, but maybe PG-13?
Platonic Sex
This Valentine’s Day, maybe you don’t have a special someone. Maybe you have a friend you hang out with a lot, but don’t really think of in that way. Maybe they, too, are flying solo this year. Maybe it’s been a while for both of you, and hey, it doesn’t have to mean anything. That’s old-fashioned thinking, anyway. It’s probably patriarchal or something! So what the hell, right?
Just be careful, advises Bridget Brandolini, Platonic Sex’s singer: “Platonic sex can only really exist in an environment with intense communication and boundaries and love and care and empathy and compromise, which is how we run the band.”
Communication, boundaries, love, care, and empathy. That’s a lot of work just to pass the time on a lonely night.
And it feels wrong? I’m a Gen Xer and/or Xennial, whatever, I can’t keep it straight. But in my day, we drunkenly hooked up with our friends, only to regret it and damage those relationships irreparably! And decades later we secretly google them to see what they’re up to! We had some GODDAMN SHAME, youngsters. And you should too!
Spite FuXXX
Consider another scenario for Valentine’s Day: Maybe you’re newly single and smarting from the breakup. You’re a vortex of anger and despair, and eagerly looking to make your ex feel as bad as you do. Enter sexual vengeance.
That concept begat this self-described “trash noise punk” band, which cohered around vocalist MG Stillwaggon and bassist Greg Albert:
A couple years ago, MG was explaining to Greg the difference between a hate fuck and a spite fuck (a hate fuck is when you fuck someone you hate, a spite fuck is when you fuck an uninvolved 3rd party out of spite for the person you hate). Greg says, “we should start a band and name it Spite Fucks.”
Obviously, the traditional spelling of “fucks” wouldn’t do, because you don’t choose this name if subtlety is your plan. “Too Much,” from 2022’s Find Out, offers a mission statement of sorts:
You’re too aggro baby, ooh
Why don’t you calm down
Just a little
You know, you’re really VERY pretty
But this is just
Way too
MUCH
FOR
ME
Well I think I wanna SCREAM
I think I wanna
Make you feel so uncomfortable
I think I wanna
Start
Some
SHIT
Cuz baby, watching you squirm in those jeans is even better than getting you outta them
Unh!
The lyrics are more stylized on Bandcamp, with lots of extra line breaks that I don’t have room for here, which speaks to Spite FuXXX’s overall approach. That’s basically “fuck around and find out,” which I’m guessing is the origin of the album title.
If that is the case, then the title Find Out shows surprising restraint. Don’t worry: There’s none of that in the title of their new album, out this week: Cum in Pieces.
Sister Wife Sex Strike
Do the polyamorous celebrate Valentine’s Day? Maybe their rejection of traditional relationship constructs includes the disavowal of the associated holidays as well. Regardless, poly folks encounter the same relationship problems the monogamous do, and they’re the reason this duo exists, according to the SWSS bio:
Sister Wife Sex Strike is a Seattle-based anarchist folk band comprised of best friends Sister Pigeon and Sister Moth. The band’s name is inspired by real life events: in 2021, Pigeon & Moth were sharing a lover and when they found themselves mutually dissatisfied by his efforts, they went on a sex strike to have their demands met. The band name was derived from this event and an ensuing psilocybin-guided camping trip between the two friends produced their eponymous title track.
What a cornucopia of freakout points for right wing culture warriors! I can just see them bloviating about THE FUTURE THAT LIBERALS WANT, what with its anarchy, culty monikers, sexual deviancy, and psychedelic drugs.
Then there’s the music, which celebrates poor hygiene!
Even Jesus at least wore sandals, Sister Wife Sex Strike.
Sex Prisoner
Sex Messiah
Sex Week
Sex Mask
Let’s do a lightning round of two-word band names that follow the hacky tradition of “Sex! Now that I’ve got your attention…” There isn’t much about Sex Prisoner online, but you can find some of their releases in Europe on, sigh, Regurgitated Semen Records. “Oh, you mean that label that released those Pissed Off Orgasm and Entrails Massacre albums back in the ’90s?” Yup, the very same!… Encyclopedia Metallum tells me Sex Messiah hails from Japan and explores themes of “suicide, satanism, death.” That tracks with 2018’s Eastern Cult of Sodomy and its songs “Priest in Suicide Forest/I.A.O.,” “Killed By Judas,” “Salved by Terrorism,” and that evergreen thematic staple, “Nuclear Armageddon.” No disrespect, but Sex Messiah is a name better suited for the purveyor of the most sensual R&B jams…
Brooklyn duo Sex Week released its first single, “Toad Mode,” last November. Says the UK’s Neon Music, “The song captures the essence of being so enamoured with someone that their mere presence can transform you and make you go ‘toad mode,’ if you will.” Oh I will, once I know what “toad mode” means. Googling brings up the semi-useless Urban Dictionary (“when a person gets into a state of intoxication where their body [mainly face, mouth and eyes] droops to become similar to that of a toad”) and a link to the Bored Ape Gazette, and I refuse to devote any mental energy to NFTs, even indirectly… Sex Mask is not what we call optimized for search engines, as even adding “band” to the query still brings up a bunch of bondage/Eyes Wide Shut stuff. “Sex mask interview” gives me results about Ed Sheeran telling James Corden (strikes one and two) about how he gave Courteney Cox a sex mask as a joke. Their Bandcamp turns up eventually, where you can learn the group is from Melbourne, Australia, and self-describes as “churners of vague pop” and “souls without a cube.” That sounds better than anything involving James Corden.
Crywank
Sometimes a name puts an image in your mind, and the band delivers. While I wasn’t picturing an anti-folk duo per se, I definitely anticipated the irony Crywank wears on their sleeve. Check out some of the album and EP titles of their discography:
Tomorrow is Nearly Yesterday and Everyday is Stupid
Don’t Piss On Me, I’m Already Dead
Egg on Face. Foot in Mouth. Wriggling Wriggling Wriggling.
Wearing Beige on a Grey Day
Fist Me ’Til Your Hand Comes Out of My Mouth
I Will Freeze Time and Shit in Your Mouth
And look at this: an EP called Shameless Valentines [sic] Day Money Grab!
What song says Valentine’s Day better than “Nostril Tampon”?
Like their album titles, Crywank’s song titles skew jokey and wordy, full of non-sequiturs and seeming inside jokes. “Nostril Tampon” is shockingly concise next to, say, “Commodified Dissent as an Act of Resistance (Or the Many Disappointments of the Fictional Band of Hypocrites Known as Ultra Bono)” or “Trying to Pass Off Playing Merge Games as a Form of Meditation.”
The surface jokiness belies the unironic emotion behind the songs, which AllMusic describes as full of “sadness, paranoia, misery, and dry humor.” Even the jokey name carries a deeper meaning, according to singer-guitarist James Clayton. An interview with Punktastic notes the moniker came from a mean nickname based on “what his friends thought he was doing when he wouldn’t leave his room in his underground flat.” So when Clayton started writing songs, he had a name ready.
“Crywank accurately described what I was doing with my music, and what my intent was with it. That being a cathartic exorcise [sic?]; releasing the most over-dramatic elements of my emotions, whilst also trying to maintain an awareness of the triteness and performativity that comes from being a solo songwriter who largely sings about themselves.”
Though he had some other ideas too.
Jerkoff Diary
Mercifully, searching “jerkoff diary”—even without quotation marks—delivers results about this Canadian “bubble grunge” band. You have to scroll way down to find the expected disgusting shit, which counts as a victory in 2024.
However, I can’t find anything about the origin of their name. Judging by “Online Dating,” the opening track from Jerkoff Diary’s 2023 debut, it may not be what you think:
That’s when you realize
Who you thought he was is one big lie
Write it down in your douchebag diary
Make a note in your asshole diary
Another entry in your jerkoff diary
Looking at song titles like “Dump Him,” See Ya Never,” and “Men Explain Things to Me,” a theme emerges. And this, from their Facebook:
Looks like they had a new entry after that.
POST-SCRIPTS
My mom has been dead since 2002, but I still feel like I should apologize to her for this edition.
Line for free: “Sex week is every week when you’re with the sex messiah, baby.” Pause. “You know, me. I’m the sex messiah.” Hmm, you may not need that second sentence.