by Giliann Karon (@gilposting)
For years, NYC group Trophy Wife has captivated in-the-know heads with dreary guitar rock that traces a jagged line from Wednesday and Blondshell to Nirvana and The Cranberries. McKenzie Iazzetta (vocals), Christian Pace (bass), Mena Lemos (guitar), and Michael Martelli (drums) met at Berklee College of Music, where they learned the rules of traditional composition and contorted them into brilliant new shapes.
Their debut album, Get Ugly, illuminated the parts of ourselves we’re hesitant to keep in the shadows. With years of DIY support, Pathetic (7/10 via AWAL) lifts them out of the underground.
On “Paragraph,” which follows singles “So Hard and “Kind of Girl I Am,” Iazzetta’s commandeering snarl balks at any attempt to romanticize her life, instead recognizing herself as a “girlfailure.” She says about the track,
“I’ve spent a lot of time wishing that I was a softer, smaller, more romantic version of myself, and have spent the other half of my time coming to terms with the fact that that’s not going to be me. I sent Christian a demo of me singing and playing guitar, and he came back with these bass and lead guitar lines that twisted through each other in such a cool way. It came together when we finally got to the farm to record it.
At one point, Michael suggested Christian change the way he played the main riff on the bass to make the whole thing sound darker. Mena really got to push her lead guitar from the winding lines under the verses to the ugly, abrasive outro. As an album, I think we became super inspired by In Utero by Nirvana and Steve Albini’s work in general.”
Trophy Wife recently joined Irish punks SPRINTS on tour, headlined Brooklyn’s new festival Sounds that Move, and appeared in Rolling Stone’s “Best Moments From SXSW 2026.”
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