Pity Sex are an alternative rock band from Ann Arbor, Michigan, formed in 2011 with Brennan Greaves and Britty Drake sharing guitar and vocal duties, Brandan Pierce on bass and Sean St. Charles on drums. Their very first recordings appeared on a split cassette with Brave Bird, and they soon became a key part of the early-2010s crossover between emo, indie rock and shoegaze.
Dark World, home to ‘Dogwalk’, was originally released on Forward Records in 2012 and later reissued by Run For Cover, the label that would put out their full-length debut, Feast of Love, in 2013. Pitchfork memorably summed up their sound as ‘post-coital pop-punk’: fuzzy, melodic and tender, with Greaves’ and Drake’s vocals trading off over thick walls of guitar. St. Charles has said the shoegaze element was never a conscious goal; they simply wanted to write lush songs and became fascinated by guitar tone and texture.
Their influences are an eclectic bunch, ranging from Sonic Youth, the Pixies, Pavement, Dinosaur Jr., My Bloody Valentine and Yo La Tengo to Meat Puppets, the Cure, the Smashing Pumpkins and, more surprisingly, Jewel and Alanis Morissette. Drake has credited Lemuria with inspiring her to pick up the guitar in the first place. On a 2014 split with Adventures they paid homage to the Pixies with a cover of ‘Gigantic’.
After touring widely with bands such as Basement, Tigers Jaw and Ceremony, Pity Sex released White Hot Moon in 2016. Drake left that August to pursue doctoral studies, and the band announced an indefinite hiatus in October. They returned in 2022 for the Sound and Fury festival in Los Angeles, marked the tenth anniversary of Feast of Love with a vinyl reissue, and have continued to play selected shows since, a reminder of how much affection their records still command.
