Article by Calla Selicious. Mary Shelley photos by Carlos Ramos. Trophy Wife photos by Tori McGraw
There are a lot of good bands in New York. There are significantly fewer that leave a distinct impression. When I first saw Mary Shelley at the Sultan Room on October 3rd, decked out in matching torn button-downs, climbing the banisters, singing variously from the perspectives of nursing home residents, Tinder addicts, and a “pretend bisexual, Timothee Chalamet’s twin incestual,” emanating a curious mixture of musical theatre nerdiness and old-school punk irreverence that shouldn’t work but somehow does, I discovered they were one of these few.
Another such band is Trophy Wife, whom I saw play at TV Eye on October 18th. In contrast to Mary Shelley’s punkish sound and lyrical whimsy, Trophy Wife could be described as more heavily melodic and darkly confessional, but frontwoman McKenzie Iazzetta’s extremely formidable vocal control, stage presence, and the band’s innovative approach to live sound (at one point using an accordion), set it apart from other brooding shoegaze acts playing the New York circuit.
With these experiences in mind, when I saw Mary Shelley and Trophy Wife sharing the bill for a show at Main Drag Music on November 8th, I bought a ticket immediately, curious to see how these aesthetically and sonically discrete bands would play off each other. The venue itself, Main Drag, already set a tone of lawless spontaneity: it’s located on a poorly lit, seemingly desolate side street and is a musical gear shop by day, meaning you inevitably wonder if you’re in the right place upon entrance, and walking through the storefront to get to the hidden dungeon-like showroom in the basement gives you the feeling of reward that comes with being in on a secret (albeit a publicly advertised one).
Mary Shelley took the stage this time in matching trench coats, which were gradually discarded to reveal matching torn wifebeaters. There was a decidedly alive energy in the room; vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Jackson Dockery, 27, reprised his performance of indoor parkour, scaling a nearby staircase by its banister, and the crowd nobly attempted a mosh in spite the small size of the venue. The band’s lyrics, many of which offer some tongue-in-cheek form of social or political commentary, felt particularly timely in light of the recent presidential election; at one point, fellow vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Sam Pinson, 27, urged the crowd to enjoy themselves and keep working towards what they believe in spite of the results and general feelings of pessimism in the air, and I felt, fleetingly, palpably, part of something. The band avoided conveying an overly heavy or political tone, however, by punctuating their set with more playful songs, notably one that mostly consists of the refrain “I was going to the beach with all my friends,” which somehow sounds interesting when repeated over rock music.
Trophy Wife’s moodier sound and more introspective lyricism (“Do you want someone else to fuck me better?”) provided tonal contrast, giving the momentum of the event an engaging dynamism, but the more melancholic feeling of their set made their performance no less alive; the band is masterful at translating raw emotion into sound without losing any of its power and energy. Iazzetta, at one point, took to the floor of the stage and mimed retching, somehow with her retching vocals still adhering to the melody of the song, forcing the audience to almost physically feel her need for catharsis.
It feels increasingly rare that anything makes you feel anything, so when both Mary Shelley and Trophy Wife’s music did, I knew I had to try to get them to let me pick their brains. This was no guarantee given their busy schedules; Trophy Wife just had another show at Mercury Lounge on November 22nd, and Mary Shelley is currently on tour in Europe, but they both found the time to meet me at the Williamsburg Doughnut Plant (my choice–they make an iced latte that tastes like a vanilla bean doughnut). Read our conversations below, and, if you feel so inspired, check out Trophy Wife’s show on December 8th at Cassette and Mary Shelley’s charity living room concert on December 10th.
Mary Shelley
Sam Pinson, 27 (present) – vocals, bass, guitar, synth
Charlie Hull, 28 (present) – drummer
Jackson Dockery, 27 – vocals, bass, guitar, synth
Taylor Yancey, 26 – vocals, bass, guitar
Calla: How long have you guys been a band? What’s the origin story of how you all met?
Charlie: October 2019, we played our first show with me and Jackson, so we’re approaching five years, if not already there. Jackson and I went to school together here in New York, at NYU. He was in an acting program, an acting program. And we lived together our sophomore year with friends, and then after school, we decided to start jamming just for fun, and then Jackson applied us for the NYU talent show, where we played a combination of two songs for five minutes–a mashup. And then…Jackson met Sam that very night.
Calla: How?
Sam: Um, this girl that we were both sleeping with invited us to hang out….and, uh, he had just come from the gigs, and he came with his guitar. And I was like, oh, you play? And he was like, oh, you play? And then he, like, lied to me about gigging all over the city, like, once a month. It wasn’t a lie, it was an eventual truth. It was a manifestation. So I was like, oh, you gig around? I just moved to the city in August, so I was like, oh, like, let’s jam sometime. Because I’d come to New York to be an actor, but music was my first love. Even throughout acting, like, most of the acting, there was always some music element. It was what people always wanted my talents for.
So I was like, oh, I’ll jam with these guys, and I got his number. He was talking about how he loved punk music and stuff. He was very into New York punk. He said that we would jam around September, and then I didn’t hear from him until December, and then we jammed. The songs were really simple. Like, they were very classic punk stuff, so it was super easy to pick it up. Like, Jackson would be trying to teach me the song, and I was like, “you guys can just play it all.”
And then everyone was away for Christmas break, and I got a message on the plane. Jackson messaged me, hey, do you want to play the gigs with us in January? And I was like, oh, yeah, I’d love to. And then we started paying for rehearsal time over at Rivington. Immediately I liked how serious and disciplined they were. Particularly Jackson was really on it about rehearsals and scheduling things. I really admired that. I was, like, oh maybe I can have some accountability with you guys.
And then it was right before the first show…they were like, “Sam, you should bring in some of your songs into the band.” And I was like, “am I in the band?”
Charlie: I remember after you practiced with us a couple times, Jackson and I were, like, oh, yeah, he’s in the band. And then we just forgot to tell Sam.
Sam: Yeah, I was left out of that conversation. So, they were asking me to bring in songs and ideas. And I was, like, wait, am I in the band? Or am I just filling in for you guys? Because at the time, I was very, “What do you want me to do? I’ll do whatever you want me to do.” And then they were, like, bring in ideas and you’re in the band. From that point on, it became very democratic.
Then we played our first show and it was oddly packed. The energy was insane. It was shocking. I think we were kind of like, “Oh, this is a fun thing we’re doing.” And then after that first show, it felt like we needed to…It felt like it was giving back to us this pull to go further with it. Then we played our second gig for a bunch of NYU music students. They didn’t like us. It was so boring. They had, like, artisanal meat edibles for sale.
Charlie: Yeah, and you could get tattoos in the back.
Sam: Yeah, it was a bunch of soft jazz music bands and, like, us. Then lockdown happened…We had three gigs, and then it was lockdown. They left New York to go back to where they’re from, Boston, and I stayed in New York the whole time. Then they came back. Pretty soon after, I ended up moving in with Jackson. We were trying to all play together…Jackson and I were trying to get Charlie to move in with us and get a place to practice all the time.
It was unspokenly very quickly our entire passion. Because of lockdown you know, Jackson and I are actors, and there was no acting. Charlie does filming; there wasn’t any filming going on. So we were like, “Let’s just write a bunch of songs and make our first album. That’s the type of art we can make.”
That let us hone in on our sound independent of an audience, which I think is pretty cool. Because I think we really feed off of the crowd, but at a certain point, we got to a point where we had to kind of disappear.
Calla: Wait, so when and how did Taylor come in?
Sam: It was 2022…we just knew we needed to be a four piece. So we had this other guy, and he came in and everyone we’d been auditioning with in the past wouldn’t even compare. He came in and knew the songs we asked him to learn, and, like, every other song on the album, he just ripping and throwing. So he was a member of the band close to a year, but then creatively didn’t feel like the right fit.
I grew up with Taylor. I grew up playing music with her. We took the same guitar teacher. We had the same influences. We lived parallel lives. We both went back to school at the same school in Oklahoma. We were never really tight. We would perform music together and not really talk to each other that much.
But then she came in and did a Doors cover set on Halloween, and I just knew once she moved to the city, we were going to get her in the band. She’s always been one of the best guitar players I know, and I know a lot of great guitar players.
We just knew that she would be such a good addition. Creatively, she knew the same stuff we were into. She came to the band, just immediately fixed everything. She was just the missing piece.
Like, Charlie and Jackson didn’t know her. They were reasonably popular. I remember you [Charlie] asking once, “is she good at playing?” And I was like, “She’s way better than me. Way better.”
Charlie: I remember she came in and I prepared a set. Five or six different songs. She’d come in and nail all the bass parts. And I was, like, whoa.
Calla: Who writes the songs?
Charlie: It’s really democratic. There will be a guitar line or a lyric and then we’ll come up with ideas based off of that…it’s always a very thorough process of trying different ideas, so it does take a while but I think it does help us.
Calla: Is there a reason you gravitate more towards social commentary in your lyrics? I feel like in this day and age what’s popular is a more introspective style, so I’m curious.
Sam: We had a lot of debates about what we wanted to be as a band. We had some accidental pushback in the past that made us think about what we represent. On one hand, we’re like, “do we want to be a reprieve from what’s going on in the world, and a safe haven of a good time and a fun time?” Or do we want to be taking all that stuff head on and making it a space for people to talk about these things and take these things on as a group and, discussing things openly and sharing ideas and trying to create a space for that.
I am incapable of not doing the latter. I’m very, like, interested in politics and society. I don’t really know how to not do that. I’m not good at that.
Charlie: The way I see it is…this is all stuff that people are thinking about anyway. We do have personal stories told in character. It’s still fundamentally how we’re feeling about things.
Sam: Growing up, I was interested in politics very young. One of my first favorite bands was Green Day, with American Idiot. I want to help other people have more knowledge about what’s going on in the world, what’s actually going on, and not just propaganda, and then also create a space to process these things that are so fucked up that happen so often they feel normal. I love when a band or an artist can remind us that, like, these things are not normal and are not okay. To me that’s really cool. It helps me process things. I want to also do that.
Calla: Do you ever stray from that? Like, has anyone ever come into practice and just been through a breakup or something and been like, “I want to write about this instead?”
Charlie: The answer to that is Sam with She’s A Star.
Sam: Yeah, She’s A Star. That song, for me, was very hard to write. I think it was really hard to have the depth to it. I mean, we have a song about going to the beach. It’s good to have range. Class warfare, and then also being broken up with, and also for me, being like, “how can you guys not tell that I want to kill myself?”
Calla: That’s very Beach Boys of you.
Charlie: Yeah, Sam’s the Pet Sounds of the band.
Calla: Is there a reason you choose to be a band in New York as opposed to anywhere else?
Sam: I was just talking about this, how we could go somewhere where the rent is cheap and just write music. There are multiple bands blowing up in Oklahoma because it’s so cheap to live there. But also, in the 80s, everyone was too rich and the songs were terrible and Nirvana had to come fix it. But it does make me sad that we can’t write music all day long. But in New York, the scene is so fluid and blowing up in all these different pockets around the city, it’s like, you can just go out every night of the week and see a different band. And you can constantly gig, gig, gig, and get better.
Calla: Do you have any specific gripes with the scene you’ve encountered here?
Sam: The one thing I’ll say is that there are these older guys who are the purveyors of bullshit in New York City…they decide what bands are good and bad. They pretend like they know the scene, but they hardly go out to see shows. They talk as if the past is happening again, and they name all these bands doing bullshit revival stuff. These older guys don’t know about these incredible bands that you need to know about. My Son the Doctor, Dead Tooth, Two-Man Giant Squid, Pons, there’s all these bands in New York that are ten times better than the bands they’re talking about.
If we’re trying to talk about new music, then why do we keep referencing early 2000s stuff? Like, we’re tired of the MCU, we’re tired of Disney, we’re tired of nostalgia. They’re coming up with these new bands that, if you took a time machine from 1960 or 1970 you’re like, wow, they sound exactly like these other bands. That’s not new music. That’s revival.
Charlie: Although a lot of our fans older. So we love you.
Sam: I’m not going after them. I’m going after the people that pretend they know what’s going on in New York.
Charlie: Yeah. Everything with finding music is so insular, you get five minutes on Spotify.
Sam: I find music from my friends. I ask my friends what they listen to. What I want to say is, just because the world seems insular doesn’t mean we have to live with that. People can have a better agency in finding their music. This has been one of the greatest years of new music in my life. Like, I love Magdalena Bay. There’s so much good new music.
Calla: Can I ask what’s up with the costumes?
Sam: As an actor, you know, I think every actor can attest that something magical happens when you put on a costume…you can be rehearsing, and then you put it on and just become that person. You can lose yourself in the process and be like, “I’m not me right now.”
There was this one time we wore women’s nighties for our album cover and people said that was queerbaiting. They said this without knowing any of our sexuality, and let me go on record and say that clothing is not an indicator of sexuality. What we’re doing now is trench coats, and we were kind of going back and forth on what’s underneath for shows. We decided it was burnt holes, like, suits, sort of, but after you come out of a burning building.
Charlie: It’s good to have a look as a band. People will come up to us and be like, “oh, you’re Mary Shelley.”
Calla: Do you have any specific aspirations for what’s next, or anything coming up you want to share? Besides your world tour, of course…
Sam: We’re looking for a booking agent.
Charlie: Oh, yeah, we should get that out there.
Sam: If you’re a booking agent…talk to us.
Trophy Wife
McKenzie Iazzetta, 24 (present) – frontwoman, vocals, guitar
Michael Martelli, 22 (present) – drummer
Christian Pace, 25 – bass
Calla: Can you start by telling me how you started a band?
McKenzie: I started writing stuff when I was like 19. I didn’t really have a band yet, but I knew that I didn’t want to be McKenzie Iazzetta, so I started using the name Trophy Wife. In 2020, I had written a bunch of songs and my roommate was like, why don’t you record them? So I found a couple of people, Christian and my other roommates, Micah and Mario, and we put out an EP. After that, we played our first show. Micah, who plays drums on the recording, couldn’t play with us on the first show. So we had Michael play at the show, and Michael just kept playing with us.
Michael: It’s funny–it just kind of kept going. Especially in the first year, I feel like we just kept doing shows. It was just something that started in our lives. We just kept doing it. It was fun.
Calla: How did you logistically just start doing shows? Was there a certain venue or a certain person?
McKenzie: We all went to college for music. Everybody around us was musicians, and basically the whole Boston music scene is people’s basements. And the house I lived in, we had a million shows. And so our first show, we played at my house in the basement, and then we played at other houses. We played at bars that we were allowed to play at because we weren’t 21 yet. Yeah, people just asked us to play and we said yes. All our friends were in bands.
Michael: That was the first year of us as a band…it was mostly DIY shows, because that was the scene.
Calla: How was it transitioning from doing more informal DIY shows in Boston to more formal venues in New York? Is there anything that’s stood out about it, either positively or negatively?
McKenzie: In Boston, we played our first bigger show. That was very different for us. We played at Brighton Music Hall, which is a 500 cap room, and then we played at Paradise Rock Club, which is a 1000 cap room. And that was definitely a shock, but we’re all performers.
I moved here in 2022, and Michael was going back and forth from Boston to play shows here.
Here there’s not a huge DIY scene; we all live in apartments. But when we got here, we just decided we were going to say yes to every single gig.
This is what we want to do. So it’s like as long as the people that the band is playing with and that are a running venue are cool, then it’s fun. When I think about the scene right now, I really enjoy it. I love that we get to meet new people, like, every single time we played a show. People in New York just love to go see you live; even if they don’t know the band, they just like to come, and it’s cool.
People love to go out and have four drinks and listen to a band and stare at somebody across the room. That’s, like, people’s favorite thing to do in New York when they’re twentysomething years old.
Michael: I agree with everything. In 2023, when I was coming down like, twice a week. I don’t know how I did that.
McKenzie: At the time it felt like a fine idea.
Michael: It felt like a normal thing to do.
McKenzie: Four and a half hour drive. None of us questioned it. We were like, well, it’s just what’s happening. It felt like it was happening to us.
Michael: That is sometimes how it felt, especially the first year. I mean, now we’ve had more serious conversations and we have an actual manager. But the first year or two, especially, it was just like, there’s some other thing making us all do this. We have no choice. Even when we were still first here, we have just felt pretty quickly embraced…the amount of friends who are musicians who are just so supportive and passionate about their music has been really awesome and I think that’s helped us in every way, just, existing here.
Calla: Are there any things about New York specifically drawing you here? I mean, obviously a lot of people move here, but you guys could have stayed in Boston. I guess I’m asking what, specifically, has set the atmosphere here apart for you guys.
Michael: I can’t think of what would have happened if we stayed in Boston. I think it would have been good. I mean, it would have been different. I feel just super grateful for the scene that we’re in, and the friends we made. Yeah, I think there is something about it. It’s absolutely just…the energy of the people in the music scene here just feels really correct, and it’s gone well. And maybe, like, in another life, we would have stayed in Boston
McKenzie: Yeah, maybe. In a different world. Things either spit you out, or they don’t. You know what I mean? Things reject or accept you.
Calla: I like how here and now there’s a lot of love for actual instruments instead of computers, and, really expressive performing styles and rock in general. Because there was an era where rap was more of the thing people listened to, and even within indie rock people were not super emotional; it was all kind of ironic. And I know what draws me towards listening to this music, but I’m wondering what drives you guys to perform, like, this kind of music, or this kind of style?
McKenzie: I just write what I know. I grew up on sort of angry, I guess, lyric-forward music. My parents would play Liz Phair, Tori Amos, and Ani DiFranco. People like that. Fiona Apple. I grew up hearing that. And yeah, there was a time when there was a thing of people being sort of too cool for it all. But when it comes to a live performance, I think there should be something people are getting that they’re not getting from listening to it in their headphones, and we care. We really care, so why act like we don’t care? It’s not cool to not care about what you’re doing.
Calla: Who writes the songs? Is it collaborative?
McKenzie: I write the songs, and then I bring them in, and we sit in the practice room, and we try and make music. But, yeah, I write the lyrics to the songs. I’m not super good at collaborating with that part. I prefer to do it in my dark bedroom after not talking to anybody for many hours. But the songs come together when I bring them in.
Calla: So you usually write the lyrics first? I feel like a lot of people say they don’t listen to music for the lyrics, but I’ve always paid a lot of attention to them when I listen to a song…I guess I’m wondering where they come from for you, or how.
McKenzie: I always want to write about the parts of myself that are the worst and most embarrassing and shameful. That’s sort of where all the lyrics come from, and any time I have any sort of idea I just write it down in my phone, which is very unchic, but that’s where it is. I usually start from a line or two and then I try to think of some chords and put the lyrics on top of the chords, and sometimes it’s a mad-lib where I’m filling in with other lyrics I have written down, or I’ll have three out of four lines and I have to fill one in, but it sort of happens all at the same time for me. I definitely put an emphasis on lyrics. I was always listening to music when I was younger, where somebody would be singing about something that I’ve felt or experienced in my life, and I would have never heard anybody talk about what was thinking, like, I didn’t know somebody else was thinking that.
Lyrics and songs were super important to me when I was in high school, and anytime that I’ve felt stupid, or an asshole, or alone. It sounds corny, but…we don’t talk to people in our lives that much about stuff that truly makes us feel stupid, and embarrassed, and gross. It makes everybody think that they’re the only asshole, the only 20-something year old asshole that lives here and in the world. I think that’s weird, and I think it’s weird to not share what you’re capable of.
I understand lyrics not mattering to some people. Some people are just listening to it for the sound, and the sound of it definitely matters. But I think that in a lot of it, it’s supporting the story that we’re trying to tell.
Michael: I feel like as a drummer, I’m always trying to support McKenzie’s vocal melody and lyrics. I don’t want to alter it or disturb that.
Calla: What has been your biggest challenge as a band? Honestly I hear people mention TikTok a lot when I ask this question, but I’m curious what you guys have to say…
McKenzie: Yeah, you kind of do have to content-mine your brain a little bit. Sometimes advertising feels like I’m plastering my naked body to the window, and I really don’t want to do that. It’s definitely challenging having to do all of that extra stuff, like, I didn’t think that I was a video creator or an Instagram vibe curator, but at the end of the day I usually don’t find it that horrible. It’s also a cool way to get to talk to people that you usually wouldn’t get to meet. It’s really cool that we can be a band that’s played mostly on the East Coast, and I can get a DM from somebody in Kansas because they found us on TikTok or they found us on a Spotify playlist, and to me that’s crazy. I remember being sixteen years old and finding a band, and having a way to reach out to them…it’s cool.
Calla: Is there anything that’s more or less effective for posting on social media?
Michael: Sometimes it feels kind of random, but I think what works is having more of a general thought that’s put to our music. Maybe people resonate with that more than just saying, like, “oh, come listen to our song.” But also, that makes it sound so calculated.
McKenzie: Yeah, people really hate knowing that they’re being advertised to. Nobody wants that. At the end of the day, you can’t make people like a song that they don’t like, and I feel like once we set a song right into the world, it’s like we just have to hope that people like it. You can’t convince people to enjoy your music. You can convince them that they might seem cool if they do...
Calla: Do you have any specific aspirations for what’s next, or anything coming up you want to share?
McKenzie: Getting to play the album out, and getting to go a little farther out and meet more people. And people hear it. Getting to do a lot more live performance….and then we’ll write more songs. We’ll just keep writing more and writing more songs. Yeah.