Posts Tagged ‘Downtown Boys’

GAUCHE – ” A People’s History Of Gauche “

Posted: October 18, 2019 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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There’s a lot of pedigree behind the band Gauche — its members are also in Downtown Boys and Priests — so maybe it’s not too surprising that their debut album, A People’s History Of Gauche, absolutely goes off, but so it does. They’re a young band that has a sense of legacy, willing to engage with punk music on a continuum, and each song feels like a treatise on what it means to be screaming and singing about the same injustices for decades while the status quo remains the same.

Washington, DC’s Gauche release A People’s History of Gauche, a collective catharsis of anger, frustration, and trauma through creativity. Gauche find their agency and joy through creating and performing music together in 36 minutes of groove-filled power punk. When asked about the genesis of the title of their Merge Records debut, Recorded with Austin Brown (Parquet Courts) and Robert Szmurlo in Brooklyn, NY, and with Jonah Takagi (Ex Hex) in DC, A People’s History of Gauche marks the first time the band worked with people outside of their ranks, resulting in a fuller sound that boasts more intricate instrumentation. From the very first line of album opener Flash – Gauche are here to compel us to dance while singing along about society’s universal struggles.

Gauche, Washington D.C.’s frantic, elastic, bombastic, ecstatic, anti-capitalist, anti-racist feminist jam band.

“A People’s History of Gauche,” out now on Merge Records. released July 12th 2019

DOWNTOWN BOYS – ” A Wall “

Posted: July 27, 2017 in MUSIC
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Downtown Boys came storming out of Rhode Island in 2011, but it was with the release of 2015’s Full Communism that they started to turn heads en masse. It was an atypical, gripping, riotous sprint, hurdling at breakneck speed through a ten-track, 25-minute run time. Perhaps the most direct route to understanding them is how they’re often described in the press: bilingual, queer, collective.

On that debut LP, they furiously indicted an intersectional laundry list of systems of oppression (including tall males: “Fuck you, tall boy!” Victoria Ruiz bellows), and provided slogan-ready mantras of empowerment (on “Monstro”, Ruiz testifies bluntly, “She’s brown! She’s smart!”). Downtown Boys have dedicated their platform to speaking against systems that erase and subjugate marginalised communities, and their upcoming release, Cost of Living, promises to be just as battle-ready: “A wall is just a wall, and nothing more at all,” Ruiz affirms confidently on the bands single . It’s that rejection of division that fuels Downtown Boys’ calls to disruption and solidarity.

Currently making major waves in their native USA, Downtown Boys will bring their raucous, politically charged live show to the U.K for the first time this October. Hailing from Providence, Rhode Island the sax-powered bilingual quintet have developed a profile through incendiary gigs and the huge praise generated by second album Full Communism (2015). 
Third album Cost Of Living, is due for release on August 11th is their first through iconic US indie label SubPop. Production comes courtesy of legendary Fugazi guitarist/vocalist Guy Picciotto, who has also produced The Gossip and Blonde Redhead. The band’s second visit to Europe, Downtown Boys are a truly visceral live experience and one that has to be witnessed close up.

DOWNTOWN BOYS – ” Wave Of History ” and ” Monstro “

Posted: July 9, 2015 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Downtown Boys' debut album, 'Full Communism,' is out May 4.

Punk has always had the capacity to speak the uncomfortable truths. loud, aggressive music that can provide a platform for expressing frustrations and anger: Some bands focus on the micro level, channelling and working through personal pain; others work by addressing larger social issues, corrupt institutions, or political disenfranchisement. Downtown Boys specializes in the latter, writing combustible and challenging songs that forcefully face difficult subjects head-on.

The provocative title of Downtown Boys’ record, Full Communism says it all: this is a band enraged and calling out injustices and a broken status quo — from the ever-widening gaps in economic class and the prison industrial complex to racism, homophobia and gender inequality. And as the album’s incisive opener, “Wave Of History,” states, the Providence, Rhode Island group both asserts itself as part of a younger group of similarly socially-active bands — like Priests, Pinkwash, or Perfect Pussy — and empowers a new movement to unite and create change. “Wave Of History” begins with sharp, militaristic snare hits and simple twin saxophone fanfare — which adds a rhythmic jazz-infused skronk counterpoint to the blistering fast guitar downstrokes. Then, vocalists Joey DeFrancesco and Victoria Ruiz kick the door wide open as they trade their explosively-charged call-and-response chants: “Riding in on a wave, a wave of history!… Not one step back, on the wave of history!…” And later, in unison, they declare “We are the surge!” — a line that will surely get a crowd riled up.

As a frontwoman, Ruiz, is especially charismatic; she’s a force of nature capable of toggling seamlessly between English and Spanish in many of her songs — sometimes from line-to-line, as if giving voice to those who may not be in a position to be heard. When she willfully shouts and spits “Necessity!” amid that unrelenting fury, you can feel the desperation in her voice with increasing urgency. Even in just under two unrelenting minutes, and without many words, Downtown Boys manages to say a lot.