The Coathangers have always known how to have a good time. Even in their earliest days, when their skills were nascent and they’d play art spaces in Atlanta two or three times a week, they’d make sure that everyone enjoyed themselves by baking cookies for the crowd and throwing themselves into their brash and straightforward songs. Over time, the keyboard melodies have become more jagged and the guitar riffs more complex and Julia Kugel, Candice Jones, Meredith Franco and Stephanie Luke became one of the most reliably must-see live bands.

Lyrically, they’ve never held anything back, often echoing the annoyances most listeners may feel toward loud neighbors (“Stop Stomp Stompin’”, nosy friends (“Don’t Touch My Shit”) and physical pain (“Arthritis Sux”) and put them into the sorts of loud, shambolic post-punk songs that you wish you could yell over. Their third album, Larceny and Old Lace, shows that their wit is as sharp as ever while their songs are more thought out. Rather than speed through fifteen or seventeen songs as fast as humanly possible, they’ve let their raw emotion stew and fester. The results are songs like “Sicker” where Luke growls over guitar tones that hearken back to Gang of Four or sludgy garage-rock gems like “The Hurricane” that their Atlanta compatriots The Black Lips probably wish that they had written.

The Coathangers are back in town tonight at DC9 opening for Girl in Coma. We talked to singer/guitarist Kugel about the direction they’ve taken with their latest album and the drinking and good times that embody The Coathangers’ spirit.

Listening to Larceny and Old Lace it sounds like the velocity of the songs has slowed down when compared to Scramble and your self-titled album.

Yeah, because I think we tended to rush through a lot of stuff before and this time we had just taken our time with stuff and we focused more on the songwriting than making it fast. Every one of our records has one slow song but this one has maybe a few more that are a little bit more chill. I don’t know. Nothing happens on purpose with us. Everything happens accidentally and we were in this really dark place and most of the record’s about death and murder and shit so maybe that’s where that came from.

Is that also where your idea for the “Hurricane” video came from? It looks like a scene out of a scary movie.

Actually, that was just a really cool venue. We played there. It’s a goat farm. Literally, they farm goats and it’s also this cotton gin. So, we had just gone there and it just had this cool vibe — super creepy. So, all that stuff is original, the phones and shit were there from like the ‘40s and ‘50s. It didn’t have on purpose any scary movie reference or anything but it was visually a really awesome place. So, that’s why we did “Hurricane” there.

Going back to songwriting, how does it work in the Coathangers?

It’s a serious group effort. Someone may come in with an idea or we may just be talking. A lot of it involves hanging out, drinking and then maybe someone will have lyrics. Every song is completely different. Sometimes we write lyrics all together. Some of the songs, we had parts for and then once they were recorded, we were like, “No.” Vocally — totally scratch. This is the first record we actually had time to work on. We had, like, weeks. So, we got to kind of sculpt it and make what we wanted it to be like. But, songwriting with us, you never know. Sometimes, like, “Cheap Cheap”, which is not on this record, that was written while we were just jamming out. It just comes. It’s all a fluke.

Well, since we’ve already brought up drinking, are you familiar with the website drinkify.org?

No. I don’t visit websites that often, but, what is that?

The premise is really simple. You type in what music you’re listening to, and it determines what you should be drinking when you’re listening to this music.

That sounds kind of hilarious.

Knowing only this about the site — what should they say one should drink while listening to The Coathangers?

PBR and whiskey. That would be what normally gets drunk at our shows.

That makes sense. Apparently, the website thinks we should be drinking Red Stripe.

Red Stripe? Cause we’re Jamaican, mon! Well, that works, too. It’s a beer.

True. Last time you came through D.C., you had your friend Jason Travis with you with a video camera. Was he shooting the live performances? What was the project?

I don’t know if you saw the trailer for it, but he was working on a tour documentary. If you look on our Facebook, he posted the preview for it. But he was travelling with us, taking pictures and just kind of documenting the tour life. He picked a great tour because it was crazy at some points. But he is an amazing artist, musically, print, photo, movie. He does a lot of our artwork, most all of our t-shirts. He’s just a little genius and we’re so glad to have him. I think he’s super busy right now, so he’s still working on the tour documentary, but it will come out in time.

Wait, what was some of the crazy stuff that happened on that tour?

Well, a lot of it I’m going to keep personal but we had the kids from The Life and Times follow us around and videotape us from Philly to New York and that just got pretty wild. Like, a couple of them — we like to have a good time and a couple of them had too good of a time and woke up on a train going back to New York and had none of their equipment with them and didn’t know how they got there. It was just a wild time. We just like to have fun and be around people that like to have fun. Not always drug or alcohol-based or anything. You can have a good time without drinking but it sometimes gets — fun.

Has anyone given you crap for your album cover art?

No. I know we had an ad in Fader and they put a black bar over where her nipples would be, I guess. But, no. We never thought it was controversial or anything. Just an awesome picture from one of our friends, Elizabeth. She takes a lot of nudes. We were looking through her photographs and this photograph had started eating away at itself. That’s why it looks like that. It hasn’t been photoshopped or anything. That’s a natural thing that’s sort of happening to the photograph and the girl — it looks like a really old picture. The girl just has an old face, like she just crawled through and survived something traumatic. It really spoke to us. So, we just used it and we never thought anything about it until the record came out and people were like, “Oh! Controversial!” But we never really got that much shit. We got more shit for Myra Henley being on our t-shirts. In the U.K. people try to fight Candice and Stephanie. Everyone was like, “You love baby killers!” And we were like, “What?” Ridiculous. We sometimes get shit for stuff but it doesn’t really matter.

You get shit for what?

Well for one, our name. People are like, “Is it referencing abortion?” We’re like, “…Yeah.” They’re like, “Oh, I knew it! I totally knew it! Oh my god!” It’s kind of obvious. And then for “Nestle in My Boobies,” that song we wrote fucking five years ago, reviews, even current reviews will still mention that song and say either it’s so feminist or anti-feminist. It had no meaning. It was a true story. People always read into shit. They don’t realize that sometimes it just is what it is. It literally is what it is and it has no hidden meaning or agenda. We’re not an agenda driven band. Of course, we’re thoughtful about what we do and we do a lot of things on purpose, but not in a political statement sort of way. It’s just because we can. The beauty of freedom is that you can do whatever the fuck you want and you don’t necessarily have to explain yourself to people. But, I guess if you’re in a semi-public area of living then maybe you have to explain stuff. But, it’s all good.

I don’t think I’ve even heard you play “Nestle in My Boobies” in a couple of years.

Yeah, we try to avoid it. Unless people request it or it’s a fun, mostly female show in the audience because females tend to respond to it. Like, when we played in Barcelona, there was a lot of tits in the crowd and we were like, “Yeah, let me see your tits,” and it ended up being less playful and more sexual and it’s definitely not a sexual song. It’s the silliest song you could possibly write. Literally, silliest words. Written in three minutes. So, we do it if someone asks for it. It’s kind of part of our set, but sometimes the crowd is just not the crowd you want to say that to. A bunch of dudes, scratching their spots all night.

Do you ever get misogynist crowds?

Mostly it’s the people working at the bar if it’s the first time we’re playing a venue. They’re like, “Which band are YOU in?” kind of like, “Whose hoes are you?” like “You’re not allowed back here,” and we’re like, “No, we’re in the fucking band.” We’re pretty straightforward. We let people have it the way they give it to us. I’m not complaining at all. We can handle our own. We get shit, though, a lot of dudes telling me how I should play guitar or how Stephanie should drum or how, “You should do this here or that here” and they think that you want their input, for some reason? That’s a huge mistake. The Coathangers don’t need your input, thank you very much. But, there’s been stuff like, “Suck my dick!” and a dude bought a CD and shoved it in his pants. It’s really weird. But most of the time, these people are crackheads anyway. They would probably be doing that shit whether you were there or not.

I remember talking with you a couple years ago when you came through D.C. and you mentioned that what you wish you could get out of the Coathangers is the ability to play music and have that be the way that you pay rent. Is that still where you are in terms of your goal with this band?

I mean, it would be really, really nice to come back with tour with money. It would be nice to not have to work and just concentrate on being artistic and creating. Unfortunately, we don’t all want to live in the same one bedroom apartment together to be able to do that. So, absolutely it’s still a goal. It’s still a dream to be able to do just this and be creative. It’s a gift that some people get and they may not even be aware that it’s a total fucking gift to not have to work for The Man or be in the service industry. Because we are all in the service industry in one way or another. That’s why it’s so important for us to go on tour and be like, “Fuck off!” So, someday, maybe. But if not, that’s cool, too. There are plenty of bands that did this for awhile and then had to go back to real life. Whatever happens, happens. But it is a gift that we have jobs that let us leave for a month to go live real life and then come back to the fake life of service.

For awhile at the Black Cat, there was some grafitti in one of the women’s restrooms that had a drawing of a coathanger in the middle of a phrase that said, “The Coathangers Love You.” Was that you?

Yeah, that was probably Stephanie. The Coathangers love you. We do. We come with love, not attitude. But as soon as we feel something bad that’s not positive, we’ll turn on you. But first and foremost, it’s all love. We like people and we like for people to have a good time. We do. We come from a loving place. But don’t fuck with us and don’t tell us what to do or how to do it. Thank you.

See The Coathangers tonight at DC9 with Girl in a Coma and Brothers of Brazil. $12, 8:30 p.m.