CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE ISSUE 2: PLATFORM

THE BABY SEALS
sound a bit more.” Bassist Jasmine
Robinson agrees: “It’s hard to get
your frustration out when you’re
just doing ‘la la la la,’ whereas,
with the last one, you can rock the
fuck out.”
On a deeper level, when writing
about heavy political topics like
The Baby Seals hope to do, it’s
hard to be sensitive and appropriate
when your sound goes along those
lines. “This year, there’s been some
really big political things in the
news that we wanted to reflect on,
and doing that in a poppy way can
sometimes undermine what you’re
trying to say,” Kerry explains.
“We’ve written about the Harvey
Weistein thing, and that’s definitely
got more of a dangerous sound.
Having a song about sexual harassment,
you can’t be like, ‘la la la!’”
Conveying humor and a fun atmosphere
through their songs about
below-average porn and body hair
seems to be working well for them,
though.
It’s refreshing for a crowd to hear
songs about these observations,
especially when they themselves
have perceived them and felt alone
in their self-judgment. After a
show in Peterborough, a woman
approached the band to express
her gratitude for writing a song
about something she had been so
ashamed of in the past. “She was
nearly crying, saying she’d been
worried about her body and nipple
hair, and hearing us play that song
made her feel better,” Kerry says,
“and I said to the girl, that’s why
we’re doing it. That’s it – that’s
the whole thing.” It seems taboo,
talking about things like body hair
and the shapes of genitals in public
because of how society has perceived
these topics for so long, but
when people do begin to talk, just
as The Baby Seals have, it opens
up the floodgates, encouraging
conversation and acceptance. The
beautiful thing about delivering
such messages in a fun manner,
then, is reaching an audience in
an accessible manner that doesn’t
come across as “teaching” them
anything. “You have to remember
the audience you’re delivering that
message to probably already know
that message,” Kerry explains.
“It’s like me sending a message
on Facebook saying ‘racism is
bad’. Everybody who I’m friend
with knows that it’s bad.” Instead,
they’re reaching out to the people
who are also searching for that validation,
and pursuing an attempt at
reevaluating their own internal misogyny.