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Since 2009, Ovlov’s transmissions have been sporadic, but they’ve always been impactful. The band’s early run of EPs established the Connecticut four-piece as a modern update on a certain strain of northeastern indie-rock. By the time the band’s debut album Am was released in 2013, Ovlov was getting comparisons to Dinosaur Jr. and Sebadoh tossed in their direction, and while those elements were certainly present in their sound, Ovlov always let catchy pop hooks slip into the mix too. On their third album, Buds, those pop elements are more pronounced than they’ve ever been before.
“I would like to think that the songs on this album are all pop songs at the core,” says Steve Hartlett, the band’s songwriter, guitarist, and vocalist. On first blush, Buds won’t shock longtime Ovlov fans, but on repeat listens, those fuzzy, crushing guitars start to feel less like the central focus and more of a delivery system for Hartlett’s grander ambitions. “For the past few years, the number of rock bands I’ve been listening to has grown smaller and smaller,” says Hartlett. “Unfortunately, it’s the only genre and style I’ve ever really felt comfortable writing. That’s probably mostly because I write everything on a guitar. Don’t get me wrong, I love rock music—there’s nothing more satisfying than playing an E chord through a Big muff as loud as the amp will go—I just want to slowly progress into writing the most perfectly poppy of pop songs.”
Recorded with the same producer and engineer who has handled every Ovlov album, Michael John Thomas III at his Black Lodge Studio in Brooklyn, Buds is the latest document of Ovlov’s slow and sturdy evolution. But this time, the band’s become even more of a family affair. Though Steve’s long been riffing alongside guitarist Morgan Luzzi, the band was started with Steve’s younger brother Theo on drums. This time around, their older brother Jon joined them on bass—and their dad, Ted, even stops in to rip a sax solo on “Cheer Up, Chihiro!” Considering the Hartlett brothers learned how to play music together, it’s a full circle moment as they all come together in service of making Ovlov’s most fully realized statement yet.
Opening with “Baby Shea,” Hartlett lovingly reflecting on the bond’s formed at the beloved Brooklyn venue Shea Stadium, the album starts on a note of bittersweet appreciation. “Just as the majority of my songs are about the loss of either life or love, I think the majority of the songs on this album are as well,” says Hartlett. With a pounding backbeat and thick layers of guitar fuzz, Ovlov show they’ve lost none of their vigor in the years since TRU. But while loss permeates the record, there are moments of celebration, like “Cheer Up, Chihiro!” which sees Hartlett finally finishing the Spirited Away-inspired song he’s had kicking around since the Am days but could never get just right. “It’s always been one of my favorite songs that I’ve written, most likely because I can’t help but picture scenes from Spirited Away whenever I play or hear it.”
For Buds, Ovlov once again turned to Jordyn Blakely of Stove and Smile Machine to add additional vocals to the composition. But a couple chance meetings also brought a couple new voices to the fold. After meeting at Shea Stadium, Hartlett became close with Erin McGrath from Dig Nitty and invited her to sing on two of the album’s tracks, and a random Instagram message from Alex Gehring of shoegaze icons Ringo Deathstarr culminated in her contributing backing vocals to three songs as well. The result of this communal effort is a record that’s harmonious and powerful, as Ovlov work through a heavy few years with some heavy riffing and hearty hooks. Buds is dense and dark, but Hartlett’s assertion is dead-on: these are just big, bold pop songs. It’s still Ovlov, but a more assured version, one that isn’t so shy about putting their ambitions on full display.
Grass is Green are a Boston experimental rock/post-punk band featuring guitarist/vocalist Andy Chervenak, guitarist Devin McKnight, bassist Michael J. Thomas III, and drummer Jesse Weiss. The band’s origins began in a not-too-distant suburb of Washington, DC, and influences of both DC and Boston’s vital underground can be heard in their abrasive music and warped structures. Grass Is Green released their debut, Yeddo in 2010, introducing the basement scene to a discordant and angular blend of punk and indie rock while building a loyal following. The band have since grown notorious for their unforgettable shows, explosive energy and captivating dynamic shifts. A mere six months after Yeddo, Chibimoon arrived with Michael J. Thomas III (who also produced Yeddo) replacing original bassist Dario Olachea. The release expanded their songwriting in unforeseen ways and their tight live performances followed suit while they began playing larger shows.
In 2012, Grass is Green joined the Exploding in Sound Records roster and delivered Ronson, their most fully realized vision. Produced by Alex Prieto, the album featured a noted maturity in songwriting marked by their signature intensity and delivered at a satisfying pace. The band began taking on a personality of their own and emerged as one of Boston’s best live bands. Ronson was followed by Split Dicks, a split 7” with their friends and tourmates Two Inch Astronaut. They spent most of 2012 touring the country in support of the two releases opening for the likes of Melt Banana, Tera Melos, Joe Lally (Fugazi), and DD\MM\YYYY. They continued to tour throughout 2013 even being hand selected to open for Girls Against Boys w/ David Yow, …And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead, The Coathangers and more while also taking time to prepare their next release. Vacation Vinny, coming in January 2014, was recorded at Silent Barn this past September with Julian Fader and Carlos Hernandez of Gravesend Recordings / Ava Luna. The effort promises to be another unpredictable auditory journey that captivates listeners with evolved musicianship. Ready your ears to experience the adventures of Vacation Vinny, arriving on Exploding in Sound Records.
“Rabbit rabbit” is a superstitious incantation repeated on the first of each month to bring good fortune—a belief practiced by Sadie Dupuis, the guitarist, singer and songwriter of the Philadelphia rock quartet Speedy Ortiz. As a child with OCD, she followed arbitrary rituals, a coping mechanism commonly triggered by early trauma, and “rabbit rabbit” was one that stuck. When Dupuis began to parse difficult memories for the first time in her songwriting, it felt like kismet to name her band’s resultant fourth record after an expression of luck and repetition: Rabbit Rabbit. Instead of re-treading old routines, the record finds Speedy Ortiz interrogating conventions, grappling with cycles of violence and destructive power dynamics with singular wit and riffs. Rabbit Rabbit finds Speedy Ortiz at its most potent: melodically fierce, sonically mountainous, scorching the earth and beginning anew.
Speedy Ortiz debuted as Dupuis’ home-recording outlet in 2011, but the solo project quickly blew up into a full-fledged band beloved around the world for its pointed lyrics, disarmingly hooky choruses, and musical ingenuity—as well as its activism. The group graced festival stages from Bonnaroo to Primavera, supported heroic artists from Foo Fighters to Liz Phair, and brought acts including Mitski and Soccer Mommy on some of their earliest tours. In 2016, the band relocated from Massachusetts to Philadelphia, with the lineup changing shortly thereafter to include sonically inventive guitarist Andy Molholt (Laser Background, Eric Slick), drivingly melodic bassist Audrey Zee Whitesides (Mal Blum, Little Waist), and heavy-hitting drummer Joey Doubek (Pinkwash, Downtown Boys). Rabbit Rabbit is the first Speedy album to feature the longtime touring members as full contributors, and Dupuis and her bandmates blaze with unpredictability, their intrepid playing thrusting songs in exhilarating new directions.
The gnarled guitars and imagistic lyrics that defined 2013’s Major Arcana, 2015’s Foil Deer and 2018’s Twerp Verse are still present, but Rabbit Rabbit’s recordings feel as vast as a desert landscape. “As I was channeling scenes and sentiments from decades past, I wanted to honor the bands I loved when I first learned guitar, ones that taught me to get lost in the possibilities of this instrument,” Dupuis recalls. Speedy Ortiz delved into its members’ most formative musical favorites—post-hardcore, the Palm Desert scene, alternative metal—pushing the agile complexity of the guitars and forceful rhythmic interplay between the drums and bass to unprecedentedly tricky extremes. “Every voice has a narrative,” offers Doubek of the arrangement process. “There is so much feeling and melody to interpret, and so much room to express it.”
The desert’s guidance extended to their choice of recording locales: Rancho de la Luna in Joshua Tree (Mark Lanegan, PJ Harvey) and Sonic Ranch in Tornillo, Texas (Sparta, Fiona Apple). They worked with engineer and co-producer Sarah Tudzin (Illuminati Hotties, Pom Pom Squad), who imbued the riff-heavy record with righteous heat. She also helped carve space for the electronic tones of Dupuis’ ornate pre-production, completed using a synesthetic constraint in which she immersed herself in a different color to arrange each song. Former bandmates Darl Ferm and Devin McKnight added overdubs to fill out the record’s already-teeming sound—an homage to Rancho’s sprawling, collaborative Desert Sessions project. David Catching (earthlings?, Eagles of Death Metal), Rancho’s owner, also added mesmerizing lap steel, a favorite moment for the whole band.
In her past few years of work as a writer and interviewer, Dupuis recognized a recurring thread among artists with parallel backstories to her own: music had provided escapism from childhood abuse, but those same turbulent circumstances had normalized the grimmest aspects of the music industry. These were flashbacks she’d shied from, and constant touring enabled that avoidance. But Rabbit Rabbit pulls no punches, either in its self-reflections or its call outs. With a Touch and Go-indebted maelstrom of distorted solos, lead single “You S02” trains its gaze on apologists, union-busters, and other ex-punks who don’t live up to their public ethos. Sing-song verses explode into a candy-tipped arrow of a chorus on the danceably off-kilter “Scabs,” a critique of those who cross picket lines. Jagged-cliff-dwelling riffs and thundering drums punctuate the kiss-off waltz of “Plus One,” while dry-lightning guitars and skewed bass groove turn “Ranch vs. Ranch” (a nod to Rabbit Rabbit’s two studios) into a vivid origin story for a horror movie hero. The darkly hued “Cry Cry Cry,” written about Dupuis’ inability to feel safe with tears, is a classically-composed tumble of contrapuntal riffs and electroclash timbres. And “Ghostwriter,” already a staple of Speedy’s live set, is a call to dismiss unproductive rage, delivered with the shimmering bash of the Y2K alt renaissance. “I hope we captured the total joy I get when I hear bands like that,” says Whitesides.
The record’s most scenic lyrics come from “Kitty,” an urban pastoral about the all-night noise on Dupuis’ block. “It felt important to ground the record in our shared location, especially since being at home and the friendship of my bandmates is what helped me reckon with this album’s themes,” says Dupuis. But a sense of fight is still at the forefront of Rabbit Rabbit; another catalyst was Speedy Ortiz’s efforts as community activists. Molholt and Dupuis are organizers with the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers and its Philly local, which has worked to place instruments in state prisons. The band has also collaborated with harm reduction organizations, Girls Rock Camps, and other grassroots groups while on tour. In addition to her production work with electropop project Sad13 (Backxwash, Lizzo), Dupuis is also a poet; her second book Cry Perfume was released in 2022, and its subject matters of grief and harm reduction put her in the frame of mind to write Rabbit Rabbit’s intimately nuanced lyrics—a confessionalism explored on the meta “Ballad of Y & S,” which teasingly ponders the market utility of semi-autobiographical art.
The record’s cover is Dupuis’ mixed-media painting of a fire-engulfed pickup truck, an image inspired by the trucks on fire she drew compulsively as a kid in therapy. Drawing from literary influences that include workplace apocalypses, magical realist family dramas, and artists’ biographies, Rabbit Rabbit is Speedy Ortiz’s most ambitious and expansive record to date. “I turned 33 while writing this album, a palindrome birthday and a lucky number associated with knowledge,” explains Dupuis. “I wanted to mark how I was making better choices as I got older, letting go of heedless anger even when it’s warranted.” The album’s stirring immediacy owes much to the band’s strength as a collective, working together toward a better future—or, as Molholt puts it, “constantly surfing the highs and lows in search of a stable place to land.” With considered muscularity, captivating earworms, and genuine solidarity, Speedy Ortiz is equipped to confront the world’s indignities—with or without a good luck charm.
Music project from Philadelphia, PA.