Biography
Australian punk quintet Matrimony operated for just under twelve months during the late 1980s, yet the achievements of that short span created lasting reverberations. The group’s raw, minimal punk eruptions established a direct model for the Riot grrrl movement that emerged in the United States soon after the band’s dissolution, while their only album, Kitty Finger, supplied explicit inspiration to ensembles such as Bikini Kill and Bratmobile. Kill Rock Stars first reissued Kitty Finger in 1997 and returned to the album with a newly remastered edition in 2021.
Friends Polly Williams and Zeb Olsen formed Matrimony in Sydney during 1988. They later invited fellow friends Sybilla Visalli, Michael O’Neill, and Dani Marich to join, and the five began shaping songs shaped by the Stooges, the Cramps, the Birthday Party, Pussy Galore, Sonic Youth, and additional noisy, boundary-testing acts. The ensemble performed regularly in Sydney as one of the few groups active on the local circuit composed primarily of women. Matrimony tracked their first and only album, Kitty Finger, in a single day before Frock Productions released it in 1989. Olsen departed shortly afterward, placing the band in immediate inactivity, though the members did not formally disband until Visalli took her own life in 1992.
Matrimony’s conclusion proved tragic, yet their recordings functioned as a catalyst for the feminist punk bands that surfaced in Olympia, Washington in the early 1990s under the Riot grrrl banner. Prompted by Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna, the Olympia label Kill Rock Stars reissued Kitty Finger on CD in 1997. More than twenty years later the same label issued a newly remastered version to streaming services and restored the album to vinyl for the first time since its original 1989 pressing.
Friends Polly Williams and Zeb Olsen formed Matrimony in Sydney during 1988. They later invited fellow friends Sybilla Visalli, Michael O’Neill, and Dani Marich to join, and the five began shaping songs shaped by the Stooges, the Cramps, the Birthday Party, Pussy Galore, Sonic Youth, and additional noisy, boundary-testing acts. The ensemble performed regularly in Sydney as one of the few groups active on the local circuit composed primarily of women. Matrimony tracked their first and only album, Kitty Finger, in a single day before Frock Productions released it in 1989. Olsen departed shortly afterward, placing the band in immediate inactivity, though the members did not formally disband until Visalli took her own life in 1992.
Matrimony’s conclusion proved tragic, yet their recordings functioned as a catalyst for the feminist punk bands that surfaced in Olympia, Washington in the early 1990s under the Riot grrrl banner. Prompted by Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna, the Olympia label Kill Rock Stars reissued Kitty Finger on CD in 1997. More than twenty years later the same label issued a newly remastered version to streaming services and restored the album to vinyl for the first time since its original 1989 pressing.
Albums
