101 Avenue A - New York, NY
101 Avenue A - New York, NY
Quivers, of Melbourne, Australia, have a third release of cathartic jangle-damaged pop, Oyster Cuts, coming out via Merge Records and more North American dates than ever to celebrate. Mostly headline, there’s also some support dates for David Kilgour (The Clean), and Merge pop leaders Superchunk. The road to this moment has been a winding one, the best kind, with a performance for KEXP, US and Australian tours, and even R.E.M. sliding into the band’s DMs with fire emojis after their full cover of the band’s Out of Time. For musical reference points this new album is propelled by melodies that recall Galaxie 500 and The Pretenders, with both Sam and now Bella taking lead vocals and group vocals from everyone. It’s sunshine pop with blood in the water, with tape loops that circle like sharks, and twin guitars that glisten while the bass and drums roll in like waves. Pitchfork described Quivers' last record as “the sound of bedsit 1980s college-rock thrust into the big-tent environs of 21st-century indie, like a Go-Betweens with Coachella-conquering ambitions….and it’s absolutely glorious”, but Quivers only believe in a ragged glory, that live music should sometimes fall apart and be a genuine interaction with each audience. So they will continue to confront love and grief and the glow of friendship from all angles, and hope to meet you on the next winding road ahead.
A big wave is coming. A wave of sound, of feeling; of arm after arm shooting up to meet the giddy noise of a live show. And the force behind it? Brooklyn’s own Razor Braids. Through soaring harmonies and driving guitars, the queer femme trio has honed a magnetic sound that combines the vulnerable self-awareness of indie rock with dynamic instrumentation anchored in a 90s alternative ethos. After the release of singles “Nashville, Again” and a cover of Weezer’s “Buddy Holly,” Razor Braids opened up the main stage at Boston Calling 2023 — sharing a stage with The Beaches and The Foo Fighters — and toured through the Midwest, South, and East Coast as headliners and opening for The Worriers. The band has brought their energetic stage presence to SXSW as official artists as well as Music Hall of Williamsburg, Sultan Room, and Elsewhere as direct support for Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, Jigsaw Youth and Anna Shoemaker, respectively. In addition to multiple features on Spotify’s Fresh Finds playlists, Razor Braids’ music has been warmly received by Blogothque, BrooklynVegan, NME, SiriusXMU, WFMU, Philthy Mag, Creem, Analogue Trash, The Boston Globe, and more. In 2024, the band plans to tour their upcoming sophomore album, Big Wave, expanding on their singular balance of tightly layered vocals, heavy riffs and reflective lyrics with more boldness and sense of purpose than ever before.
Field Guides is the ever-evolving project of Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter Benedict Kupstas, accompanied by an expansive list of collaborators both on record and live. With Ginkgo, the band's third album—after 2014’s Boo, Forever (which The Big Takeover called “sprawling, dense, and mysterious”) and 2019’s This Is Just A Place (which Gold Flake Paint called “one of the year’s most rewarding discoveries”)—Kupstas has created a "profoundly organic indie folk space" (PopMatters), a record "full of beautifully intricate details and crashing waves of melody" (For The Rabbits).