QUARTERBACKS - QUARTERBOY

QUARTERBACKS
QUARTERBOY
[Double Double Whammy, 2014]














For New Weird Utah nostalgists, upstaters, the tape label kids, people with guts: QUARTERBOY. No record of the last few years has made me feel more like I'm leaned into a corner of the shed at Kilby Court, arms tucked tight against my coat on a neck-snappingly cold winter night in 2006 or 2007. You can see everybody's breath in the house. High-school kids shivering cross-legged on the cement floor in front of the stage. The quietest you've ever heard an audience at a show. Singing right into your young and hungry hearts.

QUARTERBOY is a solo outing from Dean Engle, whose QUARTERBACKS is usually a punky three-piece. It's offered on tape from Double Double Whammy, the Purchase, NY-based label currently staging a full-fledged political takeover of the Eastern Seabord – stacked with bands, shilling Olympian DIY communitarianism, proprietors of David Blaine's The Steakhouse. Get in on the ground floor.

A cursory glance at the credits, liners and thanks of the DDW catalogue sees Engle's name popping up left and right, and you get the sense that QUARTERBACKS is at the core of a swelling movement up and down the Hudson Valley like so many scenes before it. The music is honest and brave and true.

Long live K Records, long live Marriage. Long live Sarah, long live SST. Long live Shrimper, long live A. Star. As long as there's kids there'll be kids doing this, and it'll never stop feeling this good. QUARTERBOY has the distinct emotional affect of one Thanksgiving song that I sometimes listened to more than 60 times in a row on late late nights in college. Or the Navigator CD-R I seem to play every single time I find myself, wistful, on a flight back from my grown-up life to stay in my childhood bedroom, an untouched time-capsule in the basement of my parents' home in Centerville, Utah. Certain songs, they get so scratched into our souls.

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Notes
1. It is perhaps worth noting that this guy looks exactly like McKay Felt, who played up and down the Wasatch Front as The See Through Boy in those beloved mid-aughts years, and whom, full disclosure or at least bringing it all back home, I once played bass for.
2. When you need more, the following DDW releases are especially recommended:
Free Cake for Every Creature - "pretty good"
Frankie Cosmos - Zentropy
SPOOK HOUSES - Trying
Krill / LVL UP / Ovlov / Radiator Hospital - Split 7"

No Kids + Mount Eerie Show 10/19/2009

I've been burnt out on shows lately. Unless the conditions are perfect I usually end up annoyed, tired, bored, or pissed off at something/someone. I've seen way too many live bands to be impressed by much. So it goes without saying that I have recently been skipping out on shows that a year or two ago I would not have missed for the world. I knew that No Kids could get me out of my funk though. I had complete faith and walking into Kilby and seeing it packed with high school hipster youth decked head to toe in anything Urban Outfitters skeptically eyeing me in my old cargo maternity pants and Cosby sweater being followed by Thistle carrying our little 7 month old son didn't even set me back. I went there to be affected, and I was. No Kids played mostly new songs that after hearing I prematurely evaluated to Thistle "best album of 2010." The grooves were thick and bassy as expected, but an unexpected twist was that No Kids drummer was M.I.A. and Phil Elverum was Philling in (get it?) Phil played primarily the same beats, but added his own flourishes on the few songs that they played off of Come into My House. I love that album and wanted to hear it performed as recorded, but when all was said and sung, Phil's addition was very enjoyable, not better or worse, but different and good. The female vocals were replaced by harmonizing piano and No Kids grooved me right into remembering why I love to see bands live, and it felt gooooood.

Now, Mt. Eerie on the other hand, I was not looking forward to. Don't get me wrong I like Mt. Eerie, but I have seen them 4 times already and figured I would just leave after the first song. But then I saw their setup and thought maybe they would keep my attention. They more than kept my attention. The thing about Phil Elverum is that you never know what you are going to get. I have seen him play a show where he didn't even bring his own guitar and had to borrow someones and then sang songs to a cross legged audience out of a sketchbook that he had just barely written and although the songs were pleasant, they were almost always unfinished, botched and interrupted with giggling. This time around Phil's crew obliterated the tiny Kilby Court with an absolute wave of sound on the first note coming from No Kids on the keys, Phil on guitar and two drummers with intense setups. I'm talking gongs, mallets, wire brushes and the works. Let me just tell you, I am a sucker for two drummers playing synchronized beats and I was smitten from the first crash. Phil is at his absolute best when playing his metal sets. As I mentioned before, our 7 month old child was in attendance and even though he was adorned in his noise cancellation headphones we still felt it was WAY too loud for him. Thistle was outside with him, but it was raining and I wasn't able to enjoy Mt. Eerie's entire set. From what I saw (5 songs) they were playing Wind's Poem in it's entirety, start to finish. It was absolutely mind blowing.

We all know that a good Kilby show is the best kind of show. An attentive crowd in a tiny shack getting attacked by noise emanating from right in front of their faces- I love it. I really needed that show and it delivered more than expected. I feel refreshed, inspired, and ready to take on more live sets now. Bring it on.

-Sassigrass

Shows This Week

Thursday (5.29), Casiotone For The Painfully Alone will bring his Eeyore-esque cloud of mopesterness (good word huh?) along with Foot Foot to Kilby Court to start off the weekend a day in advance this week.

Friday (5.30), Joan Of Arc and The Future of the Ghost are playing The Urban Lounge, but to be honest, I am pretty sick of The Urban Lounge with all their late shows and bar atmospherics. I am just an old women though, I’m sure you kids would love it.

Friday (5.30), Kilby Court will have the distinct pleasure of hosting indie rock heroes, White Rabbits and The Furs. Nothing else to say really on that one…er, we like White Rabbits?

Saturday (5.31), Cryptacize will fill Kilby Court with their quaint, off kilter take on indie pop. Oh, did I mention that Chris Cohen (ex-Deerhoof) is in the band? If I didn’t, I’m sure someone else will.