Matrimony

1. Matrimony were a short-lived but consequential Australian post-punk band that formed in Sydney, Australia, in 1988, emerging from an underground scene largely dominated by male musicians. The group consisted of bassist and co-founder Zeb Olsen, vocalist Sybilla Visalli, guitarists Polly Williams and Dani Marich, and drummer Michael O’Neill. Drawn together through shared friendships, art-school connections, and a desire to participate rather than spectate, the band coalesced around a DIY ethos typical of late-1980s post-punk. Read more on Last.fm …read full bio

1. Matrimony were a short-lived but consequential Australian post-punk band that formed in Sydney, Australia, in 1988, emerging from an underground scene largely dominated by male musicians. The group consisted of bassist and co-founder Zeb Olsen, vocalist Sybilla Visalli, guitarists Polly Williams and Dani Marich, and drummer Michael O’Neill. Drawn together through shared friendships, art-school connections, and a desire to participate rather than spectate, the band coalesced around a DIY ethos typical of late-1980s post-punk. Their early ambitions were informal and social—making noise, dressing up, and occupying space within the inner-city music circuit—but these impulses quickly solidified into a distinctive sound and presence. Operating within Sydney’s vibrant but challenging late-1980s underground, Matrimony absorbed influences from Australian acts such as the Birthday Party, the Saints, the Scientists, and the Go-Betweens, alongside international touchstones including the Velvet Underground, the Cramps, Lydia Lunch, the Runaways, Pussy Galore, and Beat Happening. With little formal musical training among most members, the band embraced experimentation and instinct over polish. Songs often began with Olsen’s basslines, around which the others layered distorted guitars, blunt rhythmic structures, and Visalli’s sharp, disaffected vocal melodies. Their live shows, which were frequently chaotic and uneven, nonetheless generated local attention for their raw energy, confrontational sexuality, and refusal to conform to prevailing expectations of either professionalism or “acceptable” feminist performance. In 1989, Matrimony recorded their sole album, Kitty Finger, at Fat Boy Studios in Sydney. The sessions were brief and intensive, producing fifteen tracks that captured the band’s lo-fi immediacy, including a reworked cover of the Scientists’ “Frantic Romantic.” Produced by Matthew Bright of Distant Locust, the album emphasized dense distortion, feedback, and a deliberately unrefined aesthetic. Lyrically, the material that was shaped largely by Olsen and Visalli combined pop-trash wit with themes of nihilism, desire, religious guilt, and art-school irony. Released on the independent Frock Productions label and distributed by Waterfront Records, Kitty Finger initially left only a faint imprint on the Australian music landscape. Despite the band’s brief lifespan and limited local reach, Kitty Finger traveled through informal tape-trading networks to Olympia, Washington, where it resonated strongly within the emerging Pacific Northwest underground. The album was embraced by figures central to what would become the riot grrrl movement, most notably Kathleen Hanna, who cited Matrimony as a formative and inspiring influence. Through connections between Olsen, music writer and Cannanes drummer David Nichols, and K Records founder Calvin Johnson, Matrimony’s work circulated widely among Olympia musicians, its minimalism and feminist defiance arriving just as a new generation of women were beginning to challenge patriarchal norms in punk culture. By the early 1990s, Matrimony had effectively ceased activity. Olsen’s extended time in the United States and personal upheavals within the band stalled any continuation, and the group never formally reconvened. The death of Sybilla Visalli in 1992 marked a definitive end to Matrimony’s story and profoundly affected those who had been involved. In the years that followed, the band remained largely absent from Australian music histories, even as its influence continued to be acknowledged abroad. Recognition came later through reissues and reassessment. At Hanna’s urging, the Olympia-based label Kill Rock Stars released Kitty Finger on CD in 1997, introducing the album to a wider international audience and cementing its reputation as a proto–riot grrrl document. Decades after its original release, the record continued to attract attention for its immediacy, humor, and uncompromising stance, leading to a remastered reissue in 2022. Though Matrimony existed for barely a year and produced only one album, their work occupies a significant place in feminist post-punk history, illustrating how a small, informal Sydney band helped shape a transnational movement that would soon redefine underground rock music. 2. Matrimony are an American indie folk band from Charlotte, North Carolina, formed in 2009 by husband-and-wife duo Ashlee Hardee and Jimmy Brown. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.

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…shrink me down again