-=- SHGZ -=-
* Shoegaze * Indie * Post-Rock * Grunge * Dream Pop * Psych-Rock * Ethereal *
ARTIST..: Quilt
ALBUM...: Plaza
GENRE...: Psychedelic Rock
STYLE...: Psychedelic Rock, Indie Rock
YEAR....: 2016
LABEL...: Mexican Summer
COUNTRY.: USA
PLACE...: Boston, MA
FORMED..: 2009
ENCODER.: FLAC 1.3.1 -8 -V
BITRATE.: 880 kbps avg
QUALITY.: 44.1kHz / 2 channels
SOURCE..: CD
TRACKS..: 10
SIZE....: 257.89 MB
URL..: http://www.facebook.com/quiltmusic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaza_(album)
- TRACKLIST
1 Passersby 4:16
2 Roller 4:14
3 Searching For 3:07
4 O'Connor's Barn 4:10
5 Eliot St. 4:31
6 Hissing My Plea 4:25
7 Something There 3:46
8 Padova 4:02
9 Your Island 2:49
10 Own Ways 5:25
Total Playtime: 40:45
Quilt are one of the few bands who manage to get this 60's neo-psychedelic
revival correct, using sustained cord changes, modest effects, and balance
themselves between psychedelic folk and dream-pop as if they've got one foot
firmly rooted in the past and one in the present, where they splinter the
night with one luscious song after another. The tracks are more enchanting
and cohesive than ever, slightly atmospheric, with their vocals now crystal
clear, and a presentation that is flawless, as if they've handed out mood
enhancers that sparkle the edges and fill this album with songs that are well
crafted, intimate, and own the space in which they exist ... creating a
package that's downright flammable.
*
The four members that make up Boston's Quilt have always been an
collaborative bunch. Across their first two albums, Anna Fox Rochinski, Shane
Butler, John Andrews and Keven Lareau moulded themselves into an undefinable
group, thoroughly influenced by the improvisational scene that grew from
within their city in the last decade. Now with their third record, 'Plaza',
Quilt have filtered their idiosyncratic tendencies into a melting pot of
alternative-pop, with considerably prosperous effect.
'Plaza' is a culmination of the group's various penchants, whether the
glorious orchestral folk-pop demonstrated on lead single 'Eliot St' or the
immediately following jazzy-stomp of 'Hissing My Plea', there's a lot to
break down across the record's forty minutes. Their expansive arrangements
are fluid and remarkably seem uncomplicated, 'O Connor's Barn' meshing
angular guitar lines into a glossy, smooth composition and 'Roller', with
unsettled guitars, thrives under it's pop sheen.
Quilt don't allow themselves to settle on a singular notion, unafraid to
change paths right in the middle of exploring another. "How can we have
autonomy, if we can't even leave" Anna sings softly through 'O' Connor's
Barn', suitably encompassing the primary theme of the record - finding
freedom from control and being unafraid to divert from a constricting, linear
approach.
With 'Plaza', Quilt have cemented themselves, evolving from an engrossing
prospect to effortlessly engaging personalities. In boldly delving into their
pop sensibilities, the group have created an album that encompasses their
intriguing convictions for different genres and refined it into a record of
high quality
*
The third album from indie/psych/folk quartet Quilt offers a rebuttal to all
those people who argue that every artist steals. Some, like Quilt, know the
difference between stealing from and honoring their influences.
When a band reaches into its box of old demos on hitting the third-album
mark, that's usually a sign that either the ideas have started to run low or
that the musicians are no longer getting together to write songs as often as
they once did. Likewise, groups of songs spanning several years often fail to
hang together as a coherent whole. The third album from indie/psych/folk
quartet Quilt might come from old demos, but it bucks these common trends by
showing that disparity can serve as a creative asset.
Like a kind of musical Bermuda quadrangle, the convergence of pop-leaning
indie rock, psychedelia, vintage British folk, and Americana has lulled many
a band to sink into generic facelessness. Not so here. The only times Plaza
comes across as less than convincing are the moments where Shane Butler and
company tip their hand a tad too heavily, such as on closing number "Own
Ways," which falls just short of featuring faux English accents and sounds
like Quilt's musical answer to a '60s mod costume party.
Elsewhere, though, they steer clear of slavish recreation, cleverly revealing
new wrinkles in the arrangements from one song to the next. When Anna Fox
Rochinski and Butler throw in a key shift on opener "Passerby" that evokes a
sitar-like, resonator guitar tone, it's as if they hit the whammy bar on the
song itself during playback. It's a trick they manage several times
throughout this new set, where the entire band, which also includes drummer
John Andrews and new bassist Keven Lareau, will suddenly go slack before the
arrangement as a whole automatically snaps back like a guitar returning to
its default string tension. At these times, usually the band will be cruising
along at a pleasant pace before swerving toward a jagged, seemingly
out-of-place chord or element, and the overall effect is like a friend
suddenly tousling your hair.
On "Roller," Quilt re-reappropriates Elastica's appropriation of Wire, but
instead of returning the angular guitar riff to its rightful owner, tosses it
into a dreamlike backdrop of keyboards and Rochinski vocals that smudge out
in trails of thickening reverb, simulating our semi-conscious day-to-day
train of thought as it focuses on banal tasks then blurs into daydreams until
those nagging bits of reality pull our attention back down to Earth. If you
were to stop and take stock of how many times your mind does this in the
course of a single day, you'd likely be surprised because the process unfolds
so smoothly that you mostly don't even register that it's happening. Quilt
executes these transitions with similar ease.
On the chorus of "Your Island," for example, Rochinski's reverb-drenched
vocals scrape the upper stratosphere of shoegaze-only without typical
shoegaze instrumentation. It's as if the band stripped a Lush tune of its
vocals and transplanted them in a stripped-down, downtempo song that could
have been written by the Duke Spirit. "O'Connor's Barn" marries
Whip-Smart-era Liz Phair's cottony impressionism with the slightest touch of
a Pavement-styled guitar hook circa Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. "Padova"
excavates the experimental streak that seemed so promising about Gomez before
that band surrendered to slick pop, while "Hissing My Plea" emulates the
strings that Beck stole from Funkadelic's "If You Don't Like the Effects,
Don't Produce the Cause." Elsewhere, jangly nods to Fairport Convention and
barebones Americana rear their heads as well.
In all of these cases, though, Quilt either significantly expands on or
reframes these references, bringing substance, character and a modern
production sheen to older ideas. They have always been a quietly stylish
band, with diligently crafted songs, savvy arrangement instincts, and a
discreet, almost unassuming way of asserting their own voice while embracing
influences. Without even trying, Plaza offers a rebuttal to all those people
who argue that every artist steals. Wrong-some, like Quilt, know the
difference between stealing and honoring.
*
It's a risky experiment to kick an album off with a mellower resonance than
where it leads you. Yet like every single morning of your entire life, Plaza
begins tentatively, curious in its skin and heavy-lidded. "Passersby," the
opening song, by vibe is an awakening, driven as it is by such lullabying
sonic qualities as wiry guitars and flittering strings, approximating a rouse
from some deep creative slumber. The thing is, Quilt have been pretty busy
since their inception, reinventing their loose psychedelic folk into smarter,
more technical songwriting than was found on their good-but-trite self-titled
debut.
The hypnotic voice on the opener belongs to Anna Fox Rochinski, one of three
Quilt members to contribute songs to this record, giving the album a
delightfully uneven panorama of sound. Rochinski's voice is full-bodied and
sultry, witchy when it needs to be on lyrics like "Knowing eyes of passersby
gaze into mine." In her capable songwriting hands, Quilt can take on the
visage of a cauldron-stirring rock 'n' roll coven, groovy arbiters of trippy
pop on "Roller" or Stax-centric funk-popsters as heard on the up-tempo jam
"Hissing My Plea." Her imprint further bewitches the new wave wham of
'O'Connor's Barn," a strange rocker replete with Tom Verlaine-inspired guitar
leads and a slacker-y chorus that asks "Are you looking for an answer?/Maybe
you should want more."
The dichotomy represented by just one of the Quilters is a good gauge for the
sonic adventurousness of the rest of the band. Guitarist Shane Butler's
"Eliot St." is a dreamy, pining track that uses double pianos and acoustic
guitars to anchor a melancholy narrative about a guy who's mired in the
misery of past love, Butler's alto warbling "Send me the notes/I've been
walking silently through the ghosts of what we've known/They only showed us
the sad signs of our start without the growth."
In "Eliot St.," the band shores up its cadre of emotional vibrations,
plucking adolescent memoir and pairing it with the candor of open-sourced
songwriting, wrenching haunted melodies from the mire of old and broken
wishes.
As alluded to, the second-half of the album comes hot, with drummer John
Andrews' lone songwriting contribution, the ghostly folk number "Something
There," positioning itself as something of a transitional tune, exposing the
strength of yet another co-conspirator with the melodic arsenal to rival and
complement Rochinski and Butler. And as with all of the songs on Plaza, when
the sum of that triptych of voices converges, it's really a beautiful thing
to hear.
*
After spending much of 2014 on the road touring in support of Held in
Splendor, Quilt began working on songs for their third album in a historic
building in Atlanta -- a long way from their Boston home base. Being so far
from home may have contributed to the rootless, restless feeling underpinning
Plaza; nearly all of its songs are about being in flux. "Are you looking for
an answer? Are you looking for a cure? Maybe you should want more," Anna Fox
Rochinski sings on the prickly "O'Connor's Barn," while Shane Butler sighs
"I'll be fine in confusion" on "Padova" as a harp underscores his fragile
state of mind. Paradoxically, this searching and indecision result in some of
Quilt's most focused music yet. Reunited with Woods' Jarvis Taveniere as
producer, the band sounds less mystical than it did on Held in Splendor.
While drifting tracks such as "Passersby" and "Your Island" recall that
album, Plaza's most attention-getting songs have a little more bite. The
standout "Searching For" is a throwback to classic psych-pop that falls
somewhere in between "Paperback Writer" and "Pleasant Valley Sunday";
"Hissing My Plea" dresses the album's concerns up in groovy strings and go-go
boots; and "Own Ways" closes the album on a note somewhere between triumphant
and defiant as the band ultimately finds its path. Fittingly, Quilt's
wanderlust is also reflected in expanded musical horizons that range from
"Roller"'s crisp pop, which provides one of many fine showcases for new
bassist Keven Lareau, to the more wistful territory of "Eliot St." and
"Something There." Even if Quilt don't always find the answers they're
looking for on Plaza, they've found some of their most confident and cohesive
music.
*
About:
QUILT was formed in late 2008 in Boston, MA.
Shane Butler, Anna Fox Rochinski and Taylor McVay met at the School of the
Museum of Fine Arts, and spent the next couple of years honing a strange yet
magnetic ramshackle sound in the smoke-filled basements and living rooms of
Jamaica Plain and Allston. They released a home-made tape in 2009, touring
DIY style around the northeast in a 1993 Buick Roadmaster.
In Spring/Summer 2010, the trio recorded a collection of seven songs in the
home of Jesse Gallagher, in Cambridge. The following winter, after Taylor's
amicable departure from Quilt, John Andrews was recruited and subsequently
plucked from the suburbs of New Jersey to join the band on a tour to SXSW.
It was around this time that those seven songs had made their way to the big
guy's desk at Mexican Summer records in Brooklyn, via former Captured Tracks
label manager Katie Garcia (a friend from the college years in Boston). The
band returned to Cambridge and recorded three more songs, now with the
songwriting input and drumming from John.
Quilt's self-titled ten-song debut was released in November 2011 on Mexican
Summer to positive reviews from critics and the band began touring in support
of the record on and off for the next year or so.
The band considers itself a New York-based band that formed in Boston.
The 4 members reside in Brooklyn, Upstate New York, and New Hampshire.
And as lovely as it was to tour in a 20-foot station wagon with faux-wood
panelling, they eventually upgraded to a 12 passenger Chevy Express van. His
name is Big Earl.
*
Originally from Brookline, Massachusetts, Anna Fox Rochinski is the daughter
of jazz guitarist, composer, arranger, author, and Berklee faculty member
Steve Rochinski, and began to play guitar at the age of 13 with her father
teaching "the basics right off the bat". She "started going to DIY shows when
I was 15 or 16" years old and became part of The Whitehaus Family Record
scene, which led to a chance meeting with Shane Butler and Taylor McVay, who
were then playing as the folk punk duo The Good Party. It was "where our band
formed and where we had our first practices""Fader Interview 2014" Emilie
Friedlander, 'Interview: Quilt', The Fader, January 30, 2014. towards the end
of 2008. Rochinski, Butler, and McVay all attended the School of the Museum
of Fine Arts, Boston. They began to play live gigs locally, mostly on the
improv circuit. Rochinski thought of the name while 'looking around the room,
and somehow Quilt appeared, and somehow Quilt stuck'."Revolt Interview 2012"
Ryan Muldoon, Quilt - Interview, Revoltoftheapes.com, January 3, 2012 In
August of the same year, they released a 7 track demo-tape with the help of
Peter Nichols at Spooky Town.
The band made their first SXSW festival appearance in March 2010, followed by
the first EP Agents of Play released on a local Bostonian label in May of the
same year. A low-key release on vinyl, it contained five tracks that
highlighted the improvisational style of the band. Both Butler and Rochinski
graduated in June 2010 to fully concentrate on their music, while they began
playing shows along the East Coast. McVay left the band in February 2011 and
was replaced by John Andrews, a New Jersey native.
-=- SHGZ -=-
-=-=-==-=-=-
Shoegaze
is a genre of alternative rock that
originated in the late 80s. The genre is very
difficult to define, and it is even more difficult to evaluate music
within it. Generally, the genre is characterized by its
shimmering vocals, reverberating guitars, and
textural distortion that create
a tranquil, opaque
feeling.
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