Reckling are punk in its purest form

Reckling appear in our Fall 2024 Issue with cover stars Slipknot, Destroy Boys, Pierce the Veil, and beabadoobee. Head to the AP Shop to grab a copy. 

Your favorite musician might be daylighting as a doctor. Milo Aukerman of Descendents has a Ph.D. in biology. Queen’s Brian May has one in astrophysics. Bad Religion’s Greg Graffin earned his Ph.D. in evolutionary biology. The Velvet Underground’s Sterling Morrison received one in medieval studies. Dexter Holland of the Offspring is a doctor of molecular biology. 

Kelsey Reckling is getting her Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology.

Read more: 5 songs that influenced GEL’s Persona EP

Reckling is just as much a scientist who plays music as she is a musician who works in science. Some days, she’s up at sunrise for a full day of field studies before rushing to a 6 p.m. soundcheck for a 10 p.m. slot at a show. She doesn’t sacrifice either of her trades for the other because, as those aforementioned gods of rock have proven, success in disparate fields can be simultaneous. She plans to make good music while she earns her degree. 

While there isn’t much obvious overlap between conducting ornithological studies in the wild and playing gigs for sweaty crowds in dive bars, Reckling’s scientific side wedges its way into her self-titled project. “P-22” is an ode to the widely beloved mountain lion that once roamed the eastern side of the Santa Monica Mountains (“Find some garbage and a rabbit/Full of poison at worst/We see your scars, but we don’t see stars/In a city of lights”). The band took some of their press photos in an actual lab; and their merch, album art, and show flyers frequently feature birds or butterflies or dogs. In the music video for “Spitter,” Reckling perform for an audience of flies (she herself is costumed as the buggiest fly among them).

The energy of the band themselves is kind of animal — full-bodied and assertive in the way punk is supposed to be. There are some things that just stick — the fundamentals of a genre that remain as it splits and warps and hybridizes over time, things beyond visual and sonic aesthetics (which are, of course, still important). With punk, you can feel those fundamentals. Reckling are fast, dense, and sometimes messy (in a good way). The vocals are cathartic, the melodies easy to move to. The songs are indulgent and aggressive yet sincere. Reckling’s discography fits seamlessly among its predecessors (X, Bad Brains, Hole, Fugazi, to name a few). Their shows have even drawn crowds atypical to the scene — aside from her own labmates, who came at her invitation, other labs have taken to her gigs, like a group of wildlife biologists who attended a festival performance in Davis. 

Punk is explicit: It wears its emotions and ideals proudly. Reckling’s lyrics, music, and performances are emotionally honest and obvious. “You’re a small man/In his small head/Crying, crying/In my bed.” The frontwoman’s words don’t need explaining — they’re totally and completely clear. She’s loud with her vulnerability, opting for genuine exposure of herself over masked meanings. “It’s actually difficult for me to put on a persona, because then it doesn’t feel true to me,” she says. “When I’m performing, it’s a very real version of myself.”

That authenticity was made easy (or, at least, easier) in the sense of community Reckling built before ever releasing any music. She learned to play the guitar as a teen in Houston (entirely self-taught, save for a few chords learned in even fewer lessons). When she moved to Los Angeles more than a decade ago, she almost immediately found her people — many of whom operated in and around the music industry. Watching her friends and contemporaries like the Paranoyds, Together Pangea, Bleached, and FIDLAR finally galvanized Reckling to go public with her practice, releasing music for the first time in 2018 on Wink and Spit, her own tape label.

The music landscape in LA now looks different from the one where Reckling had her creative coming of age. “There has been such a shift in the scene. I can’t quite figure out what it is, or what happened — with TikTok changing the way people release and Live Nation owning everything. It seems like there are no more DIY venues anymore,” she muses. “Maybe there are and I’m just old and don’t have my finger on the pulse. There has to be super cool stuff happening that I’m completely unaware of. But I refuse to believe there isn’t an underground scene anymore.” The crowds have grown bigger, the relationships stronger, but the essentials of the scene she fell in love with remain the same: the sounds at the heart of it, the attitude that it carries, and the people who shape it. 

You’re not meant to outgrow the music that made you. In fact, Reckling urges that you should lean in more as you grow older. “A few years ago, I started to dress exactly like my 14-year-old self, and I realized I’m listening to the same music I was then, too,” she says. “It feels really good to come totally full circle.”