I was a klik, klik and a half from the edge of Lady Bird Lake when the beer began to take hold, squinting through the neon-soaked haze of Austin’s underground rock scene toward a savage three-piece noise engine known as Subpar Snatch. Born straight out of dive bars, backyard benders, and dirty house shows, the moniker itself was spawned from a filthy joke between frontwoman Jess Scott and comedian Rochelle McConnico—a middle finger converted into a rallying cry. The current lineup is a lethal tripod of primal energy: Jess Scott, a native Texan with a voice that hits like a pool cue to the teeth; Cee Cee Email, a drum-pounding force of nature anchoring the rhythm section; and Paris Mygatt on bass, kicking out overdriven, neck-snapping riffs straight into the concrete. Fusing classic riot grrrl snark with thick, wall-shaking ’90s grunge distortion and pure garage-punk grit, they sound less like a band and more like a stolen car, charging downhill. Signed to the queer-owned local label Stupid Monday Records, they’ve laid waste to venues like Hole in the Wall and Mohawk, broadcasted unhinged sessions over KVRX 91.7 FM, and torn through SXSW with crowd-pleasing, fast-paced anthems like “Juicy Booty” alongside venomous pop-culture broadsides like “Adam In Your DM’s”. Between their wildly chaotic Get In Here EP and tracks like “Cletus The Fetus” and “Pukey Brewster”, Subpar Snatch is a manic, loud-mouthed masterpiece—a reminder that real punk rock isn’t dead, it just has a hangover in Texas, and has to get up a few times in the night just to pee.
by the time my intern Oskar pulled up to haul my carcass south to the Subpar Snatch show. I had been cracking cheap beers for three solid hours, floating on a wave of warm buzz and mounting excitement,.
Oskar is a Brooklyn-born, first-generation Polish savage who drifted into Austin a few months back. He lives just around the bend from my place, and the bastard recognized me at a local watering hole after seeing my face plastered on the Matt Cox Show earlier this year.
“I hear about this man living in your attic,” Oskar barked in a thick, broken English that sounded like crushed gravel. “If I were there, I would have kill him for you.” He reached into his coat and brandished the largest, most absurdly terrifying .357 Magnum I have ever seen in broad daylight.
“Well, I appreciate the gesture, Oskar,” I said, eyeing the hand cannon, “but it wouldn’t have been necessary. And it would’ve been a goddamn nightmare to scrub out of the carpets.”
“In America, everybody love to have gun,” he declared, waving the piece with wild, terrifying enthusiasm. “But in Poland, we love to use our guns. It is point of pride in my country.”
“Except in the thirties, right? When you all just stood around and let Adolf and his jackbooted thugs march straight down the boulevard?”
Oskar’s forehead furrows. “What is this mean? Who is march where?”
“Never mind. Forget I said anything.”
“I’m telling you, Ellis Jones… Chainsaw Magazine is the absolute best thing I have ever read in the English language. I want to work for this magazine.”
I looked at him sideways. “What the hell do you normally read?”
“I only read classic Polish literature,” he sneered, puffing his chest out. “The heavy, unsparing stuff forged in the fires of partition, war, and pure madness! I devour the dark, prophetic visions of Adam Mickiewicz, Juliusz Słowacki, and Zygmunt Krasiński; I plunge headlong into the sprawling, bone-crunching epics of Henryk Sienkiewicz, Bolesław Prus, and Eliza Orzeszkowa; I get dragged through the muddy, feverish landscapes of Władysław Reymont, Stanisław Wyspiański, and Stefan Żeromski! I get completely bent out of shape by the savage, absurd, brain-melting modernism of Witold Gombrowicz, Bruno Schulz, and Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz! And then I push the envelope all the way into the cold, terrifying abyss of human nature with Stanisław Lem, Czesław Miłosz, Wisława Szymborska, and the sheer, unadulterated horrors of Tadeusz Borowski!”
I cracked another beer. “Well, I can’t pay you a dime.”
“It’s OK,” he snapped without missing a beat. “I work for free. For pride.”
The assignment was simple enough on paper: head south to the Far Out Lounge, trap the maniacs in Subpar Snatch for a quick video interview, and capture enough erratic B-roll to keep the Chainsaw machine churning.
Now, the thing about Oskar is that he is ferociously, almost dangerously loyal. He hasn’t penned his first article yet, but the man is a total workhorse when it comes to hunting down leads. So before we cut a swath south from Riverside toward the gig, we made a vital detour to a local cocktail joint called “Dumpster Fire” for a round of lethal, high-octane drinks—a crucial fact-finding mission for an upcoming story. From there, we raided a liquor store to mix up a batch of heavy-handed road beverages for the trek. (Far Out Lounge, don’t lose your minds here, but your drink prices are an absolute criminal racket, so we had no choice but to arrive completely out of our skulls.)
We sat down first with Jess Scott—lead singer and life partner to power-hammer drummer Cee Cee Email —to probe the dark, twisted origins of the monster. Jess confirmed what I already suspected: the band was birthed straight out of a late-night inside joke. She nodded along as I laid down my assessment that their track “Juicy Booty” sounds like Karen O if she were the singer of Bratmobile instead of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, all while getting hurled through a plate-glass window, agreeing that folks only slap the “garage rock” tag on them because the square music critics simply have no other box to shove them into. Their sound sprawls across a wild, unhinged spectrum of genres, a chaotic energy you can expect in spades on their upcoming nine-song debut LP. The record is currently nameless, though floating in the ether are two equally magnificent titles: The Last Lick in Texas or It Has Teeth—a sharp ode to the band’s vaginal symbolism and a sly tip of the hat to the cult horror flick Teeth (which may or may not have been filmed right down on North Loop in Austin). The whole manic opus is being helmed by producer Charles Godfrey out of Point West Recording, a man they revere, who has guaranteed the band that their madness is his top priority.
What I respect most about these savages is that they care deeply about heavy, dangerous causes—including ICE abolition and trans rights—but without any of the insufferable, whining self-righteousness of an aggressive Olympia punk act. Instead, they deploy razor-sharp humor like CIA-level counterintelligence, subverting minds and winning hearts from the inside out. Take, for instance, their self-crafted costume work and the raw, pro-choice agenda packaged into “Cletus the Fetus”—a radioactive subject in the Lone Star State, surrounded by a local population Jess unsparingly describes as “staunchly small-minded.”
Then the real engine of the outfit materialized: Cee Cee Email, a Midwestern force of nature who lays waste to the drumkit in Subpar Snatch. My first instinct was to ask if she came up through the violent ranks of classic hardcore bands, but the answer was a surprising no. The illusion comes from her deep roots in indie music, where she mastered a delicate, wide-ranging versatility; when you take that intricate style and crank the throttle to maximum velocity for a project like this, it creates a blistering sound that mimics prime-era hardcore drumming. While Cee Cee worships heavy music, her true north on the drums remains the atmospheric crush of the Deftones.
In the movie Get Him to the Greek, a “Jeffery” is an unholy, hyper-chaotic cocktail of stroke salt, weed, heroin, coke, morphine, and drain opener that hits like a freight train, completely incapacitating anyone who takes it and forcing them to stroke the furry wall just to survive the insanity. Genre-wise, that is precisely what Subpar Snatch is—a volatile, head-spinning overload of erratic garage-punk energy that leaves the audience completely floored and clinging to the nearest wall for dear life.
Eventually, the conversation veered into cold, hard cash and the infamous financial “glass ceiling” suffocating the Austin scene. The city’s economic reality is one of the most glaring paradoxes in Texas culture: an aggressive marketing engine selling the “Live Music Capital of the World” while trapping the very artists who build that reputation under a hard, systemic cap on local earnings. For decades, the financial baseline for mid-tier working bands across East Austin and the Red River Cultural District has remained stubbornly frozen, routinely packing joints like Hole in the Wall or The Far Out Lounge only to walk away with door-splits or small guarantees of fifty to two hundred dollars per member. Meanwhile, hyper-gentrification and surging rents have turned this ceiling into a full-blown crisis, driving full-time musicians out to distant suburban fringes or out of state altogether. Without major record label hubs, publishing powerhouses, or lucrative sync-licensing machinery in town, once a local band tops out at the headliner level on local club marquees, there is nowhere higher to climb financially within the city limits.
Yet, Subpar Snatch harbors zero delusions about what they have or what they’re “owed.” Success to them isn’t measured by a corporate line-item or a bloated budget; they find their absolute fix in the pure, unadulterated act of creation. They have no interest in chasing false hopes or decaying into jaded, indignant cynics if mega-stardom never knocks on the door. In short, just doing the damn thing is—and always will be—enough.
We chewed on the absurd, bank-breaking costs of hauling a band out on the road, and touched briefly on their past and present day jobs, though that’s a snooze-fest you can go watch on the video if you feel so inclined. Instead, we closed on real boots-on-the-ground activism: the band works hand-in-glove with Austin Artists Against I.C.E. and the Trans Education Network of Texas (T.E.N.T. @transtexas), proving that while the financial deck in this city may be stacked against the righteous, Subpar Snatch is going to keep raising hell anyway.
Then it was show time. They ripped. But unfortunately there wasnt much of a turn out.
I dont think it was their fault. The city had just endured two long weekends of ACL. and if im being honest it was the first brisk evening in central texas. Its been in the 90s most of october and texans are pussies when it comes to cold weather.
Paris Mygatt has been friends with Cee Cee and Jess for years, hailing from Connecticut but a fixture in the Austin Scene. He was well aware of Subpar Snatch and a huge fan of Cee Cee’s drumming. While having more of a background in metal he is excited to switch from guitar in his band Bat Lips to the colossal bass rig he operates in Subpar Snatch.
after the conversations and the music ended Oskar and I remained in the Green Room and had a Chat with the People in Black a trip hop band. then it was just the two of us.
I expressed to Oskar that if you are ever granted to a backstage area while working with the magazine make sure you get as much of the complimentary craft services as possible.
youre serious? all of this free?
oskar loaded his pockets with candy and warm beers and we enjoyed the rest of the evening at Farout Lounge.
