bay Area Then: Ovarian Trolley & Wife
Ovarian Trolley released three albums of fractured, intense noise rock in the 1990s. Comprised of sisters Laurie and Jennifer Hall and Buck Bito, the band was praised for their “scraggly electric ugliness” in Trouser Press. The band’s intertwined voices, focused structures, and visceral slashes of sound construct a momentous, transfixing funhouse of sound. Throughout their existence, Ovarian Trolley acted as the high-tension heartbeat of San Francisco’s creative underground, a hook-filled articulation of the dire, anarchic, and sublime possibilities of life in the city’s margins. The band found a kindred spirit, also concerned with the possibilities at the margins, in Margaret Kilgallen, who created the cover art for their final single, Romeo, released in 1997. Since disbanding in 1998, Ovarian Trolley has reconvened only a handful of times, each one reiterating the gleeful challenge of music, the vitality of collaboration and the force of shared outrage.
Wife is a San Francisco band formed in 2021, rooted in San Francisco’s DIY music scene. Their music—a desperate, dramatic punk jitter full of howl and laughter and breath-stealing jolts—draws on the memories built through house shows in the Sunset, volunteer shifts at Adobe Books, and the collective happenings of Outhouse. In the band’s own words, “We like to have fun, and emphasize play and weirdness!” This performance coincides with the release of Wife’s album The Importance of Daydreaming, released on vinyl by Recess Records and on cassette by Cherub Dream Records.
Galleries will be open from 5–9pm. Performance begins at 7pm in the YBCA Forum.
This event is part of the programming for the exhibition Bay Area Then. Music programming is conceived by Chris Johanson and Ethan Swan.