'Together for this ride': Albuquerque rock quartet to debut full-length studio album on March 5

Rozanna M. Martinez, Albuquerque Journal, N.M.
·4 min read

Feb. 28—ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — 2020 was to be the year Prism B!tch catapulted its music career.

But the pandemic put the Albuquerque rock quartet's plans on ice and it had to find alternates to touring to promote its debut full-length studio album "Perla."

"And the plan was, you know, see our families for Christmas and stuff, regroup, go back to our jobs and make money," said bassist and vocalist Lauren Poole.

"And then come March 2020 we were gonna start touring like, every other month and just be gone half the year touring more than we ever had building, off of the momentum we had started to pick up from touring."

The plan was to release "Perla" in March or April of 2020 and tour in support of it.

"We just had this album that we were so excited to release and couldn't figure out what to do," Poole said. "Because if you're not a big, famous band, that's how you put your music out there. You tour it to different places and play it and show it to people and make your money selling merch at those shows, and, you know, no bands, were able to do that for a year. So we're just excited to finally put this out there."

"Perla" is due out on March 5 and can be ordered via prismbitchband.bandcamp.com/merch. The album features 11 tracks, including the recently released single "Starlight," that has a deeply personal meaning to the band's members. The song features a guest solo from Built To Spill frontman Doug Martsch.

"Around the time that we wrote this song, we were just individually going through some personal losses as well," said drummer and vocalist Teresa Cruces. "There was a lot of grief and processing, but I remember us just getting closer as a band, because we were experiencing these losses and are trying to support each other through some hardships. And, and that is the universal kind of grounding human message is, you know, we're not going to get out of this. No cheating the system. But we can really get closer and be together for this ride."

The video for "Starlight" was directed and conceptualized by the band's guitarist Chris Walsh.

"I just wanted to do something really simple with like, you know, with space helmets, you know, being like stars and stuff passes across the helmet, you know, in the reflection," Walsh said of the "Starlight" video. "And we just kind of sing the song and do like one or two takes, you know, and then as we started talking about it more, we had more visuals for like Mission Control and people looking up at the sky, and then eventually, you know, it evolved into a music video rather than a lyric video.

"And, and we only had one day to film everything. And this was after we had a grueling two days working on our other music video. And so we, you know, we pulled together and rallied. And this is the first music video I've ever storyboarded and thought about the images for a long time. And I think as low budget as it is, we were able to, you know, visually get the feeling of kind of a big space movie."

The band's videos including "One Shot" can be viewed by searching "Prism B!tch" on youtube.com. "One Shot," directed by Rebekah Wiggins, is the band's "irreverent punk ode to their Southwest upbringing and love for cinema and theater, inspired by the visuals of spaghetti Westerns and old-school music videos that feel like short films," according to a band news release.

The videos are a means for the band to connect and entertain audiences since live shows are currently on hold due to the pandemic.

"For every musician, it's just such a bummer, because you can't do what you love," said Lilah Rose, keyboards, guitar, vocals. "We love connecting with audiences. Like our number one favorite thing to do is create friendships with audience members and meet people at the merch table. And so without any physical connection, it's been I'm sure for everybody, very hard, but also you remember how grateful you are that you were even given that experience to begin with. It's like, the whole philosophy you don't know what you have till it's gone."