Trophy Wife
Patience Fury
307 Knox
August 2010
Trophy Wife played a recent Permanent Wave Girls Rock Philly benefit and listening to them, it’s staggering that they are only two people. Katy Otto and Diane Foglizzo seem so synchronized that they might be one Janus figure, two heads surrounded by animated beams of metal spinning up spires to ignite and trigger celestial disturbances. The layered vocals fall like finely crafted pieces of an installation, invocating literary and queer theory heroines such as in their arrangement of Audre Lorde’s words in “Sister Outsider.” The ferocity of Otto’s drumming spreads ripples past the initial impact. She can tremor out sixteenth notes and evoke contradictions in words while making it seem as she only shifted slightly in her seat to do so. Foglizzo has equal fortitude to convey the urgency and necessity of their messages, as in “Pregnancy” the women seem formed together, one arm circling strings while two voices belt out alarms in perfect compositions.
Listen to this: when it’s time to shatter a litany of compulsions, in an awkward dressing room, before meetings with adversaries, and between uncomfortable silences.
— Bonnie MacAllister