Nothing Feels Natural: Interviews in 2016

By Jenn Pelly and Priests

Nothing Feels Natural is an abridged editions of the zine that originally accompanied Priests' debut LP of the same name in 2017. It features a series of interviews conducted with the band by journalist Jenn Pelly in Washington, DC during the first days of November 2016.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rough Trade Books
• Release date: Jun 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781912722488

Jenn Pelly

JENN PELLY is a contributing editor at Pitchfork and author of The Raincoats, a volume in the 33 1/3 series on the feminist punk band. Priests is a musical group based in Washington, DC. The band’s first full-length album, Nothing Feels Natural, was released in 2017 on its own label, Sister Polygon Records.

Book preview

Part One:

6th St. NW + Constitution Avenue NW Daniele, GL, Katie, Taylor, Jenn

Jenn: What kind of teenager were you? What would your teenage self think of Priests and Nothing Feels Natural?

TAYLOR: I was always going through an identity crisis. At 16 I was really into Bloc Party and Tegan and Sara. At 17 I started going to punk shows at houses around DC—seeing local bands in basements like Ingrid and Turboslut. It was my first time seeing women make aggressive music in unconventional spaces and was a paradigm shift for me. I think teen Taylor would be impressed. I probably wouldn’t recognize myself.

When I was 15 I applied to the DC Free Recording Project. It was for teenagers in the area who had bands and wanted to record a demo. It was at Inner Ear, and Hugh McElroy from Black Eyes was our engineer. He recorded the first Priests demo there, too. Priests is the first band I’ve played bass in, and Hugh is definitely an influence. I like the way the bass sits in those Black Eyes recordings. It’s louder, funkier.

DANIELE: As a teenager I wanted to be left alone. I had a high pressure childhood being a competitive athlete. I was a figure skater from age three to 16. I had no friends because I woke up at six in the morning for practice, went to school, went to practice after school, and in the summer just trained all day. I was a socially awkward child, I spoke too quickly and had a lisp and sucked my finger until I was 13. But I always liked creating routines, costumes, personas. It really makes sense that I am the drummer in this band. Thinking about movement to music, pouring a lot of yourself in. So much of figure skating was good training for this—working by yourself for hours for one chance to get it right in front of people.

In high school I wasn’t going to shows or making music but I was into the idea of an alternative. My three friends and I met up once a week to smoke weed and watch Smackdown. We grew up in the suburbs in a stultifyingly boring cultural context. We were the cliché kids who shopped at Hot Topic and listened to Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson. I also tried to find God when I was 13. It was this strange thing where I’d go to church on Sundays by myself.

KATIE: I was an angry teenager, but at school I liked being friendly and funny. I was involved in a lot of after-school activities to stay out of the house, everything from mock trial to theater to organizing efforts, like a blood drive or book collections. My parents were strict. A lot of times my Mom’s answer to our disagreements was that I could just go to my room and stay there. Sometimes I would sneak out. My bedroom was on the second story, so that was dumb. I also spent a lot of time alone. I was very sad but not very good at talking about that with people. I spent a lot of time just looking for new or old music on the internet. My parents bought me an acoustic guitar from Costco. My uncle gave me the electric guitar that came with his Volkswagen. I think my teenage self would be excited to see what I’m doing. I wish I could go sit with my 13-to-18-year-old self and be like [ghostly voice, gesturing] ‘look into the futuuuure.’

T: It’s interesting to hear Katie and Daniele talk about being sad. I was like that, too, and I couldn’t name it. I’ve always veiled insecurity with humor. I was always the class clown. Especially struggling with gender stuff around people I knew in high