Prissy Clerks

After stumbling through minor success and heartbreak in her teenage twee band Total Babe, Clara Salyer traded her Softies records for Sebadoh and began exploring a heavier, scrappier side of the 90s with Prissy Clerks. After recruiting fellow Babe drummer Tim Lieck and Minneapolis vets Howard Hamilton, Dylan Ritchie and Emily Lazear, Prissy Clerks quickly carved out their own niche locally, opening up for acts like The Corin Tucker Band, Caveman and Young Prisms. After a trip to SXSW, the band returned to record their debut album, splitting recording duties between Ali Jafaar (Hollow Boys) and Brent Sigmeth (Unreset, Low, Superchunk). Bruise or Be Bruised brings the listener into Salyer's fragile self-conscious, tracing her resurgence from a dark isolation into uncharted beginnings, all wrapped in punchy pop songs. [Forged Artifacts]

"the quintet is steeped in fractured, reverb-heavy guitar work à la '90s indie-rock bands such as Sebadoh and Pavement. That's balanced out with accordion-buoyed melodies and the girl-gone-mild, slacker-poet frontwoman quality... defined by confused, stuck-in-a-moment lyrics with timeless, universal appeal." [Minneapolis Star Tribune]

"'Blast Off Girls', her [Salyer] first offering from new band Prissy Clerks, is a propulsive, indie Siamese Dream-y anthem that leaves nothing behind but the afterburn." [NME Magazine]

In Prissy Clerks, we found a band with just the right mixture of pop-power sugariness and sneering 'tude. Sure, some pretty experienced hands are in this group — the fingerprints of former Red Pens ace Howard Hamilton are all over the place — but this is first and foremost Clara Salyer's vehicle, and she navigates it well through a minefield of youthful confusion and expectation. She coos about getting older, falling in love, and making bad decisions, her voice blending into near-harmonies with the slashing, buzzing drone of electric guitars. [City Pages, Best Rock Band 2013]