7 Year Bitch
By Dean Goodman

Two years after the overdose death of guitarist Stefanie Sargent and a year after the unsolved murder of close friend and Gits singer Mia Zapata, 7 Year Bitch is setting out on the warpath with its newest record.

Viva Zapata (C/Z), the Seattle quartet's first album of new material, includes searing tributes to both women, and its underlying intensity—courtesy of feisty singer Selene Vigil—handily picks up where 1992's Sick 'Em left off. That album, released soon after Sargent's death, collected all the songs from the band's previous releases, a three-track single, a 10-inch picture disc and contributions to various compilations. Viva Zapata also marks the recording debut of Roisin (pronounced Ro-sheen) Dunne, who took over Sargent's duties and who has added an easygoing element to a band that is often mistakenly portrayed as a bunch of rabid militants. In fact, Dunne good-naturedly brushes off a suggestion that her band may be considered part of the "riot grrrl" movement, which only irritates Vigil. "We never have been, we never will be," she snaps. "Everybody's just got to lump us in some little fuckin' category, and it's a bunch of bullshit."

As with Vigil, 28, bassist Liz Davis, 28, and drummer Valerie Agnew, 25, Dunne, 28, was a musical novice when she joined the band. Her experience was limited to letting a newly-purchased guitar gather dust for eight years, and once sitting on the lap of a very drunk and randy John Lee Hooker. "[Roisin] can shoot the shit with anybody—things roll off her back pretty easily," says Vigil. "She doesn't get real affected or worked up, but she's high energy."

That's not to say that 7 Year Bitch is repudiating its stand-up-and-spit garage punk roots. Indeed, from the opening track "Scratch," on which Vigil menacingly sings, "I will have my cake and eat it too," you realize it's probably unwise to stand in her way. On "M.I.A.," whose lyrics came to Vigil in a three-minute burst not long after Zapata's death, the unknown killer is asked, "Will there be hundreds mourning for you, will they talk of the talent and inspiration you gave? Who, besides your mother, will stand in sorrow at your grave?"

Says Dunne: "I think all of us can agree that when we play 'Rockabye,' (the Sargent tribute) and 'M.I.A.' live, that's when we get the biggest rush. When I hear Selene sing the lyrics on 'M.I.A.,' I just wanna make sure that everyone's listening really, really carefully."

Vigil herself, who has been churning out "ditties and stuff" since she was fifteen, ascribes her somewhat bleak output to the fact that writing helps her deal with black moods. "I get upset a lot," she says. "If I could sing really pretty, maybe I would, but that's just the way it is and it's kinda weird." She insists she is romantic, but she just cannot express it in her writing.

She contrasts her personality with that of polyglot Davis, who writes most of the music and who is "really spacey sometimes." Agnew, Vigil continues, is similar in a maternal way to Davis: "She's always taking care of people and talking to them and knowing how they're doing, and getting in very intense conversations with people." Fans may conclude that the band is "political": witness the aggressive songs, such as Sick 'Em's "Dead Men Don't Rape," Vigil's stage demeanor, where she circles her mike stand in apparent deep contemplation, and the occasional "good cause" concerts. "We're political people, but we don't use our music and our band as a platform," Dunne says. "We all have different political opinions amongst ourselves, so I don't think we could feasibly stand up and say, 'this is where we stand and we want you to stand behind us.'"

"We're strong in our opinions," she adds, "but we know how to drink beer and have fun and fuckin' hang around. We're pretty excessive-come and hang out..."