PILE:
"...we were obsessed with their previous effort, “Jerk Routine” for it’s exploration of the rock music genre. Pile’s monolithic riffs and massive, unkempt drum sounds clear the bong with ease and blows the sticky smoke into your face. “Jerk Routine” is a wise, sleeping giant that deserves a warm home on the vinyl format. As soon as we hit the scrap yard, Jerk Routine lives." - Woodbridge Records [Detroit, MI]
"PILE rounded out the night with a set that started around 2am to a still packed room. These guys are like celebrities out there! The basement blew up as soon as they hit the first chord. I had forgotten that mosh pits even existed, but there it was. I found myself right in the middle of the chaos, a place I haven’t been in years, because it’s been that long since I’ve been really moved by a live act. If you don’t wanna shake around and slam into somebody during a PILE set you’re probably not hearing it right." - Emerson of Bunny's A Swine
SPEEDY ORTIZ:
"The first listen to Speedy Ortiz’s “Taylor Swift” creates a feeling that’s hard to pinpoint. It’s like stumbling across Cinemax After Dark as a teenager — it may be uncomfortable, it may be beautiful, or it may be something in between. Poignant, and dirty, at times, it is Speedy Ortiz’s sly way of conjuring up interesting emotions, and it is making tidal waves out of Western Mass. Even in their infancy, the quartet already has three releases, the latest of which, Sports EP, they will be touring the country behind all summer long. Speedy Ortiz channels the Gen-X angst that never went stale, both in their grungy instrumental rumble and in the fearless songwriting of lead lady Sadie Dupuis. While their sound may make ’90s kids feel at home, it sticks around to pluck the heads off their Barbies, drink all their whiskey, and send a big “fuck you” to the Man. The result is everything you would want representing our fine commonwealth. " - The Boston Phoenix's "Best New Bands in America"
""Show me mine, I'll show you yours," Sadie Dupuis sweetly sings at the beginning of "Silver Springs," the single from Speedy Ortiz's debut EP, Sports, out this week. But whether it's a come-on or a threat, I'm not sure - the stellar Western Mass grunge-rock group trade in jarring juxtapositions: the main one being Dupuis' innately friendly vocals and the band's sludgy, raucous guitars. Even when she cries out the dangerously catchy chorus, Dupuis still sounds smiley - almost like she's winking at you - much in the way that Stephen Malkmus does." - NYLON Magazine
"It takes a uniquely Massachusetts ear to champion the kind of sludgy, wry guitar scrub-brush of bands like Northampton’s year-old four-piece Speedy Ortiz. Its new record, “Sports,” (the band’s first collection after a couple of Internet-only singles), resurrects the floppy-stringed rock guitar dissonance of old-school Boston bands like Kudgel and Swirlies, or Rob Crow from Pinback’s predecessor Thingy, who forged similar anti-anthems out of the grimiest of chords. Speedy Ortiz takes this ball and runs with it, with strings twisting and tangling like moldy spaghetti, rotten sinews spilling out over dishes topped with Sadie Dupuis’s strangely sweet vocals (performing live must be a chore, as Dupuis handles half the guitar surgery as well). “Basketball” makes a holy deconstructed mess of the sport, Dupuis deciding “I wanted my own hole to crawl through/ Still do.” Buzzsaw guitars and handclaps boost up its gnarly hook, which is equally grating and soothing. The bittersweet “Curling” swings low like the Breeders at their most morose, charting a course into an uneasy future. “Once there was a time I thought we’d take a train across the country/ Never see our friends again . . ./ Well honey, I’ve got the house/ I’ve got the dog/ And I’m waking up mornings and showing up on time for my job/ So don’t bother to call me.” With any luck, the band has plenty more in them before they reach that point." - The Boston Globe
“sweetly woozy vocals over scrappy, fuzzed up guitars and splashes of reverb. While they recall the halcyon days of slacker indie rock, Speedy Ortiz add their own twist of vintage garage to proceedings, creating something that stands comparison with the best that is out there at the minute.” – The Mad Mackerel
“Her lyrics — often creepy, sometimes grotesque, but always poignant — are worth digging out from beneath Speedy Ortiz's catchy, noisy rock. It makes sense that she moved up from New York to the band's current base in Northampton this September to earn her MFA in poetry at UMass.” – The Phoenix
“lovingly steeped in 90's flannel (ala a melting pot of Pavement, Nirvana, Soundgarden, Helium- kinda) but sounding more stripped down in a raw garage band sort of way, Speedy Ortiz is head bangingly awesome.” – American Pancake
“Speedy Ortiz might fall under what you'd call post-grunge. The classic elements are there, muddy, deliciously murky messes of instrumentation, dudes in hats, and a badass lady sounding sassy and snarly at the same time. These Massachusetts rascals have just released a little two-song taster, and the more I listen to it the more I'm drinking the Kool Aid.” – Fuzzy Logic
“noisy guitar rock, modeled off that earliest phase of math rock that came from the start of the '90s. Dupuis is carefree and mildly mopey in her delivery, as were Timony and Liz Phair seventeen years ago. And it all comes together perfectly.” – Choir Croak Out Them Goodies
GRASS IS GREEN:
"In a scant two years, Grass Is Green has already committed more deconstructed blasts of rock to vinyl than most bands manage in 10 years. Its MO over the past two albums has been to jam scads of dissonant riffs (yanked from the noisiest corners of ’90s record collections, from Sonic Youth to the Dismemberment Plan) right up against each other and shake them up like a hornet’s nest.
Grass Is Green’s latest, “Ronson,’’ out this week, finds the band honing this craft to its most thorny, aggressive, and somehow tuneful degree. “Three Little Chickens’’ whips up a frenzy with stop-start drumming and rubber-band guitar squeals trading punches with lurching knots of seasick chords. “Jesse’s Fashion Show’’ creeps along with spindly guitars picked up from old-school grim reapers like the Jesus Lizard and Jawbox. The giant anti-anthem “Riff Sibling’’ takes all these rotten ingredients and builds a genuinely catchy piece out of them, adding sweeping vocals with the scope of Jane’s Addiction. “It might not be so bad,’’ says a gang of wistful voices, calmly shaking off the chaos around them. Listening to them getting out of this mess unscathed feels like the whole point." - The Boston Globe
"I've been listening to Ronson, the third album from Boston post-punk/post-hardcore band, Grass Is Green, on and off since its release. Many times I've sat listening to it and attempted to perfectly distill my reasons for liking it, which hasn't been easy. Speaking objectively, Grass Is Green could serve as the functioning successor to Disc 2 of Dischord Records' 20 Years of Dischord compilation, their own sound the perfect culmination of many of the bands featured on that disc, namely Fugazi, Faraquet, Branch Manager, Smart Went Crazy, Jawbox and Lungfish. Ronson captures many of the elements that shaped and informed early pre-Alternative 90s America, the sort of off-kilter rock sounds that epitomized the shift from hardcore to indie rock. The combined efforts of guitarist/vocalist Andy Chervenak, guitarist Devin McKnight, bassist Michael Thomas and drummer Jesse Weiss, despite their allegiance to point and sound in time, are refreshingly guitar-driven and loud.
But, saying that a band simply "emulates an already established sound to supply its output" as opposed to "embraces an established sound to inspire its output" shortchanges their abilities. Derivations and nostalgia be damned, Grass Is Green is a good band, capable of being somewhat whimsical ("Three Little Chickens"), melodic and pop-driven ("Nice Guy of the Year Award") or a little esoteric ("Devin's Lament"). Ronson provides a musically well-versed collection of songs that can appeal to both appreciators and casual listeners, the funk-laden tone of "Dance Punk Revival School" or the Thurston Moore-based strums of "Panera" contrasting nicely with the more ballad-toned "Somebody's Something" or straightforward and catchy "Riff Sibling." Other songs like "Life Of Mike" and "Baby Prieto's Big Score" will have an audience with alterna-heads and listeners that latch onto college radio like newborns suckling mama's instant breakfast, but to the absolute exclusion of nobody. Even at its most experimental, Ronson is just a fun and entertaining album, which is something you can't really explain with an academic's perspective and a lexicon abundant with five dollar adjectives." - Letters From A Tapehead
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