Paul Jacobs, drummer from the Montreal indie rockers Pottery, is continuing his own musical efforts with new single “Half Rich Loner” off of his first album “Pink Dogs on the Green Grass” which will be out April 30th. With the touring world shutting down, Paul had the chance to put the finishing touches on this new record. The song saunters in with a very cool guitar lick before the drums kick in and we get some rambling psychedelic sounds swirling and tangling with the music. Paul begins to sing and it seems the title character is pretty lost in what they should be doing with their life.
I feel there is going to be many of these types of songs coming in the coming months, but I don’t know if they are going to swing like this does. The song has British Invasion vibes circa 1966 just as old school rock and roll was changing into a bigger sound
Who is “Bobby,” you ask? Enter Pottery. Enter Paul Jacobs, Jacob Shepansky, Austin Boylan, Tom Gould, and Peter Baylis. Enter the smells, the cigarettes, the noise, their van Mary, their friend Luke, toilet drawings, Northern California, Beatles accents, Taco Bell, the Great Plains, and hot dogs. Enter love and hate, angst and happiness, and everything in between. Beginning as an inside joke between the band members, Bobby and his “motel” have grown into so much more. They’ve become the all-encompassing alt-reality that the band built themselves, for everyone else. So, in essence, Bobby is Pottery and his motel is wherever they are.
But really, Bobby is a pilot, a lumberjack, a stay at home dad, and a disco dancer that never rips his pants. He’s a punching bag filled with comic relief. He laughs in the face of day-to-day ambiguity, as worrying isn’t worth it to Bobby. There’s a piece of him in everyone, there to remind us that things are probably going to work out, maybe. He’s you. He’s him. He’s her. He’s them. Bobby is always there, painted in the corner, urging you to relax and forget about your useless worries. And his motel? Well, the motel is life. It might not be clean, and the curtains might not shut all the way. The air conditioner might be broken, and the floors might be stained. But that’s okay, because you don’t go to Bobby’s Motel for the glamour and a good night’s sleep, the minibar, or the full-service sauna. You go to Bobby’s Motel to feel, to escape, to remember, to distract. You go for the late nights and early mornings, good times and the bad. You might spend your entire life looking for Bobby’s Motel and just when you think you will never find it, you realize you’ve been there all along. It’s filthy and amazing and you dance, and you love it.
The 11 songs on ‘Welcome to Bobby’s Motel’ don’t just invite you to move your body; they command you to. Fusing reckless, manic energy with painstaking precision, the record is part post-punk, part art-pop, and part dance floor acid trip, hinting at everything from Devo to Gang of Four as it boldly careens through genres and decades. The music is driven by explosive drums and off-kilter guitar riffs that drill themselves into your brain, accented with deep, funky grooves and rousing gang vocals. The production is similarly raw and wild, suggesting an air of anarchy that belies the music’s careful architecture and meticulous construction. The result is an album full of ambitious, complex performances that exude joy and mayhem in equal measure, a collection that’s alternately virtuosic, chaotic, and pure fun.
The debut album from Pottery, Welcome to Bobby’s Motel, arrives June 26th. limited edition hot dog yellow vinyl. Produced by Jonathan Schenke.
Enter Pottery. Enter Paul Jacobs, Jacob Shepansky, Austin Boylan, Tom Gould, and Peter Baylis. Enter the smells, the cigarettes, the noise, their van Mary, their friend Luke, toilet drawings, Northern California, Beatles accents, Taco Bell, the Great Plains, and hot dogs. Enter love and hate, angst and happiness, and everything in between. Beginning as an inside joke between the band members, “Welcome toBobby’s Motel” have grown into so much more. They’ve become the all-encompassing alt-reality that the band built themselves, for everyone else. So, in essence, Bobby is Pottery and his motel is wherever they are.
The 11 songs on Welcome to Bobby’s Motel don’t just invite you to move your body; they command you to. Fusing reckless, manic energy with painstaking precision, the record is part post-punk, part art-pop, and part dance floor acid trip, hinting at everything from Devo to Gang of Four as it boldly careens through genres and decades. The music is driven by explosive drums and off-kilter guitar riffs that drill themselves into your brain, accented with deep, funky grooves and rousing gang vocals. The production is similarly raw and wild, suggesting an air of anarchy that belies the music’s careful architecture and meticulous construction. The result is an album full of ambitious, complex performances that exude joy and mayhem in equal measure, a collection that’s alternately virtuosic, chaotic, and pure fun.
On Hot Dog Yellow Vinyl Who is “Bobby,” you ask? Enter Pottery. Enter Paul Jacobs, Jacob Shepansky, Austin Boylan, Tom Gould, and Peter Baylis.
If you caught Pottery live at any point in the last year, you know they had already become quite a different band than the one glimpsed on their 2019 debut EP No. 1. Approximating some middle ground between Devo and Talking Heads, Pottery were growing into a weirdo art-rock band reliant on frantically clipped guitar grooves and propulsive arrangements. Their shows were quirky dance parties, with lots of catchy melodies blared out in all-hands-on-deck vocal chants.
“Texas Drums” is the first preview of what happened when that iteration of Pottery made it into the studio, and it manages to capture the sweaty, unrelenting energy the band wields onstage. There is a lot going on here, all kinds of guitar blurts and vocal ad-libs and bonus percussion instruments. But it all works towards this bug-eyed intensity, a song that rushes out the gate and never lets up even as it crash lands into its extended Part 2 coda, a melted psychedelic comedown. A lot of young guitar bands are coming up in some kind of mold you could put under the broad umbrella of “post-punk.” But nobody’s playing with those tropes with the sort of joyful abandon that Pottery are.
“Texas Drums Pt I & II” from ‘Welcome to Bobby’s Motel’ out April 10th on Partisan Records and Royal Mountain Records.
The Fat Angel Sings 