Mary Shelley + Delicious Monsters

Punk music you can dance to. That’s what you get from the genre-hopping, instrument-swapping members of Brooklyn’s Mary Shelley. Post-punk rhythms are imbued with elements of dance/disco beats, shoegaze, hip-hop and more, while influences stretch across generations, sounds and styles, ricocheting in range from IDLES to Talking Heads, Radiohead to Kendrick Lamar, Dolly Parton to Viagra Boys. Always, the electric four-piece scraps rules in favor of creative impulse, ensuring each new song sounds nothing like their last and crafting a surprise-packed catalog that has caught—and kept—people’s attention. All resulting in a rapidly growing following that has led the band to share stages with the likes of Gogol Bordello, Tigercub, Boy Jr., Sheer Mag and more.

Of Mary Shelley’s debut single “Bourgeois de Ville”, The Deli wrote, ”It’ll probably make you wanna dance the pogo or smash things, or maybe just topple over a vase due to your spasmodic dancing” while Look At My Records! declared it “brings to mind the (barely) controlled chaos of The Birthday Party, with a touch of Mark Mothersbaugh and…Jim Morrison? If you gave him a triple shot red eye?”

It’s this undeniable energy that powers Mary Shelley’s live shows and has drawn loyal fans to pack venues, theaters, basements and backyards alike. From New York to the UK, people have come out to move and be moved as the band serves up songs that pack a punch while probing preconceptions, the artists examining the unsavory elements of human nature while poking fun at themselves and those that they know. From joyously leaping off amplifiers and moshing with the crowd to tearfully holding audience members’ hands in moments so tense they could only be cut with a six-string, a Mary Shelley show encompasses the human experience at-large.

These emotions, observations and criticisms are captured on the band’s debut album ‘Look at You’ (2022), where each track offers a glimpse into the psyche of a character on the verge of a break, incorporating a diverse cast of narrators, from addicts in love and beleaguered fraternity pledges to nursing home residents who feel their world falling apart. These subjects—and their stories—collectively embody what Mary Shelley really means: To look deeper into what you see… to not miss the human being inside the monster.