The Prids

The universal pop-music theme of love takes on intensely personal meaning for Portland, Oregon’s Prids. Guitarist/vocalist David Frederickson and bassist/ vocalist Mistina Keith founded the band after meeting, falling in love and wandering around the Midwest in the mid-’90s. They were soon married and — not too much later — divorced. In spite of the denouement of their romantic relationship, Frederickson and Keith continued living together and making music after a move to the great Northwest. In collaboration with keyboardist Eric Hold and drummer Joey Maas, the erstwhile lovers created their sophomore release, ŠUntil the World Is Beautiful, a tour de force of dark, tortured longing, with a sound that walks the Wire between Joy Division and the Cure like a black-clad Catherine Deneuve. Driven by Keith’s rubber-band bass lines, Frederickson’s twanging guitar drones and the pair’s wonderfully tense, exquisitely angst-ridden vocals, the Prids let their broken hearts bleed as they draw upon thirty years of post-punk, goth and new wave to create a riveting, slashed-wrists-on-the-dance-floor melodrama.