For this Listenings post I’ve decided to change tack a little and talk about a series of relatively niche YouTube videos which made a lasting impression for me.
WVAU seems to be a digital college radio station run out of American University in Washington DC. A quick look online suggests that the station is still running and vibrant, though it seems that their YouTube channel went dead around 8 years ago. In the circa-2014 period they seemed to be getting a lot truly excellent bands to come in and play live in the station, however unlike Tiny Desk Concerts, these were fully amped and plugged-in affairs. As well as Speedy Ortiz, Grass is Green and Two Inch Astronaut, other bands from around this time included Ex Hex featuring Helium’s Mary Timony and Priests.
From what I can gather, snooping around the wasteland of 2014 internet, the three bands in focus were in DC playing what seems like an ill-fated show at a DIY venue called The Dougout. ‘The Speedy Ortiz show was a disaster‘ is one quote I came across, as it seems the band hadn’t quite realised the extent of their popularity and the ‘come early’ ticketing policy of DIY venues meant that far more people ended up on the street than in the venue. It’s hard to glean a decade plus hence whether this was a genuinely disastrous show or if there is some inter-scene resentment (grizzled DIY venue patron vs rising stars from out of town), nonetheless the photos I found from the night look fun.
There is a level of cross pollination between these bands that would put even my town Adelaide to shame.
The obvious connection would be that they all had previously put out music through the truly excellent Exploding In Sound Records. Stylistically, these bands all shared a real affinity for each other, and I can imagine a great deal of mutual respect. There seems to be a number of shared musical touch points: SST era Dinosaur Jr, Sonic Youth, Minutemen and fIREHOSE, Polvo, Self, Helium, Pavement, Unwound, Heatmiser. What a lot of this music shares in common, and certainly is present in the three bands in focus, is a desire for hiding complex musical ideas within the aesthetics and form of the punk rock song. Seeing how much ‘cool shit’ can be tucked away inside what otherwise seems like a conventional, accessible alt rock song. But the true testament to how well these bands got on is the cross-pollination between them. I’ll try to summarise here:
But beyond musical affinities and shared appreciations, these bands went on to share members: within a year of these videos, Matt from Speedy Ortiz would leave the band. He would be replaced by Devin McKnight from Grass is Green. Daniel from Two Inch Astronaut would leave in a similar time frame, replaced by Andy, the vocalist and guitarist from Grass is Green. When Sam went solo after TIA went on hiatus around 2018, he would embark on a fantastic run of releases as Mr Goblin, a number of which would feature Sadie from Speedy Ortiz on backing vocals and she would perform the same role on McKnight’s first record as Maneka. I also believe that Devin was Sam’s high school teacher. I think I’ve covered everything.
As humorous as this all is, it is a testament to the ability of this group of musicians and the shared musical world they seem to all come from. This is some very tough music. There’s no hiding behind pedals, pentatonics, tried and true progressions. Hardly any of it is diatonic. There’s the kind of organised chaos that the best bands of this ilk are able to deal in. ‘Music School-rock’ can often be relentlessly boring (think Black Midi etc), but this music is so interesting both for its complexity, lack of pretensions and, ultimately, it’s accessibility.
Two Inch Astronaut – Part of Your Scene
It was Two Inch Astronaut which brought me to these WVAU videos. I had just come across their Audiotree performance of Foulbrood (taken from the album of the same name) and I was blown away. I remember pausing my walk to immediately forward the track to a friend.
Part of Your Scene is another track from that album. It contains much of what made TIA special: power, energy, detailed arrangements, Sam Rosenberg’s effortlessly full and fluid guitar playing, Matt Gatwood’s dynamic and integrated drumming.
On the surface Two Inch Astronaut are the descendants of post-hardcore. The guitar tones, the grooves, Rosenberg’s vocals, especially when screaming. To a certain extent post-hardcore is a little like shoegaze in the sense that it is a stylistic closed loop… It’s aesthetics and fundamental approaches are so specific that it pulls its participants towards the centre. But Two Inch Astronaut were able to pull out of this orbit through the strength and individuality of the songwriting.
It has become evident through TIA’s discography, and Rosenberg’s solo releases as Mr Goblin, that he is a masterful songwriter in the Elliott Smith mold: meticulously crafted guitar arrangements and wonderfully agile melodies working as one, twisted and intertwined. He’s also, like Smith, a generous user of the II7 chord. On the electric he has total control of harmonics, bends, skronks and a seemingly endless vocabulary of chord voicings, and yet everything he plays feels essential to the song.
I could and probably will do a deep dive into his post-TIA work, where he has released a series of excellent albums, my favourite of which is probably BUNNY from 2022. He has also been playing with art-punk group Deady who released their excellent self-titled mini album in 2023 (which had me sitting up in my chair, Leo DiCaprio style, whenever I heard some Rosenberg shredding in the mix).
The key to unlocking TIA might be Matt Mahaffey and Self. On his Self albums Mahaffey shows a similar kind of undeniable flair which Rosenberg also possesses. What Rosenberg does with his guitar Mahaffey does with his studio and multi-instrumentalism. Whenever I hear a TIA bridge that takes a left turn, perhaps into an off-beat half time feel, I always think of the pre-choruses from the Self song Borateen.
Grass is Green – Vacation 2.0
Grass is Green might be the most challenging band of the three by virtue of the fact they draw substantially from math and noise rock. They make you work and invest musical payoffs, take the paths less worn, construct songs like a series of ‘… and then I got off the bus’ pull-back-and-reveal jokes.
A little like TIA though, they carve a genuine niche within a genre that can be a little stifling at times. Their song Vacation 2.0, which they performed at the WVAU session, is a great example of this. They borrow a lot of melodic sensibility and tone from Polvo, but they’re tighter, more deliberate. They lock-in and groove at points like Unwound, but the music is less earnest, more ironic and tongue-in-cheek. The guitars will almost fight each other for who gets the downbeat like a Shudder to Think verse, but without the big alt rock chorus as payoff… Grass is Green offer their catharsis in smaller doses, blink and you might miss it. The band can seriously play, but none of the music centres their instrumental virtuosity the way math rock often does while pretending it doesn’t.
I’ve taken a lot of inspiration from GIG and Vacation 2.0 specifically. The intro and verse riff is so addictive, woozing between a busy 4/4 and 6/4, and yet we never get a second verse, that section hinted at before the song jumps to a Polvo-esque whispered section. The chorus itself is just so ingenuous, using displaced on-beat hits around the bar to create a stumbling head-banging section.
One influence which I haven’t seen cited anywhere might be Pie. There are moments on their 1995 album Strictly Seance which I hear echoing in Grass is Green: cross-rhythmic and intensly delivered chord stabs, the discordant picked guitar line in the verse, the melodic delivery which, like Polvo, has something of a throwaway sarcasm to it. Strictly Seance is an essential listen for anyone who likes the angular side of 90s alternative rock.
Grass is Green recently got back together for a celebration of their debut album, which received a vinyl re-pressing. One can only hope that this might inspire them to try making some new music, life permitting. It does appear that vocalist and guitarist Andy is playing with Devin still in his Maneka project, yet another brilliant Exploding in Sound-affiliated band.
Speedy Ortiz – American Horror
Speedy Ortiz are still going. They still put out excellent music. Sadie Dupuis is rightly recognised as a major figure of 21st century alternative music, she’s in the Rolling Stone 250 Greatest Guitarists list, she’s a published author. As someone approximately her age, she’s the kind of person you’d be jealous of if her work wasn’t so damn excellent.
Having said that, and as a major Speedy Ortiz fan at this point, Speedy Ortiz has become somewhat of a Ship of Theseus, with all original band members now replaced aside from Dupuis. I certainly don’t want to assign undue credit… she is clearly the engine room of the band and creative force (there are a couple of early demos of Speedy songs floating around the internet featuring just Dupuis on acoustic guitar, and the entire song is there). But this first iteration of the Speedy Ortiz lineup was something else.
On their WVAU appearance they performed American Horror, the lead single from their Real Hair EP. It was a strong follow-up to their acclaimed 2013 debut album and contains everything that made that first album great: most of all an ability to work genuinely complex harmony and guitar interplay into accessible alternative rock, thanks to Dupuis’ gift of writing sweet, nimble, catchy melodies over the harshest harmonic terrain. Add to that a rhythm section to die for, both tight and assured but with a feeling that it could all fall apart at any time.
What pushes this iteration of Speedy towards greatness, however, is the presence of Matt Robidoux on guitar. The circumstances of his exit of from the band seem unpleasant to say the least, with barbs traded in the indie press. The band pressed on with Devin McKnight from Grass is Green on guitar and made the excellent Foil Deer album. But in retrospect the band’s output with Robidoux in the band hit heights you feel they haven’t quite been able to reach without him.
It’s difficult to capture the essence of what made this group special. Looking back, what really stands out is that they simultaneously have the brilliant songcraft of Dupuis, at once descendant of Malkmus and Timony, and a band that challenges it, improvises around it, risks letting the songs fall apart before elevating them. In the WVAU clip we get a close look at the energy Robidoux brought, like a jazz-school Sonic Youth complete with atonal noise solo. It makes sense that he studied music composition with, among others, Art Ensemble of Chicago’s Roscoe Mitchell. Since leaving Speedy Ortiz he has gone on to have an acclaimed career in contemporary music and performance art. Regardless of the circumstances that led to his departure, it seemed inevitable in one way or another. Yet, during his time in the band, the clash between their style and his art-music inclination produced something truly special.
We also hear the impact of drummer Mike Falcone despite the fact that he, like the drummers of all three groups, never graces the camera. Falcone served as the longest member of the band besides Dupuis, playing on all the records except Rabbit Rabbit from 2023 and his absence on the recent record is felt. Like all the great drummers he has a distinctive style, both in terms of the tone he gets out of the drums (he often holds the sticks backwards), the parts that he writes and his execution of them live. If I had to define his playing I would say he’s a drummer that gets inside the songs. There is rarely any time-keeping. Instead, he’s busy setting up and catching the chord changes or playing along with a melodic phrase. He has a great Grohl-esque kick drum approach, often using 16th note syncopations in the bass to give the drum parts a ‘whippy’ quality. And he plays f@cking hard, something I saw first hand when I followed his new band Jobber around SXSW for a few of their shows.
These videos were an introduction into a world of excellent, left of centre guitar music and to the label Exploding in Sound records: bands like Kal Marks, Ovlov, Jobber and Mr Goblin have become favourites since. It’s been really enjoyable to track these musicians and their bands, their intertwined projects, and SXSW 2023 was a cool moment where my own musical work briefly passed by theirs. I’m fairly confident that all these musicians would have day jobs and yet they have created and invested in making a substantial body of excellent and uncompromising music. It’s a standard that I have great respect for, one I would love to live up to myself. I know I can. I just have to get these reports done.
referent 
Leave a comment