"Had MarissaPaternoster emerged in my era she would be a household name by now. Trouble is, the world is currently not very kind to guitar heroes. In favour instead are the ten a penny stage schooled pop stars. Nevertheless, Marissa’s talents are such that she endures and indeed continues to flourish despite our stubborn idiocracy. She is a true alt treasure. Ignore her at your peril." – Shirley Manson (Garbage)
After a handful of releases under the moniker Noun, Peace Meter is the first ever recording to be released under Paternoster's name, a deliberate choice making it stand on its own as a unique statement from the prolific guitarist.
MarissaPaternoster began writing Peace Meter immediately after arriving home from a west coast tour cut short due to COVID. Alone in her deceased grandmother's empty home, Paternoster sent the skeleton of a song to Andy Gibbs from the metal band THOU with the hopes that he might be able to extrapolate on the original idea. Andy sent his accompaniment back, and that process continued for the bulk of the first wave of quarantine.
As the songs developed, Paternoster decided to include two other musicians whom she admired: long time friend Shanna Polley of the NYC-based band Snakeskin on backup vocals, and the cellist Kate Wakefield from the Cincinnati-based band Lung. All parties recorded their parts within their respective homes. Once the songs seemed fully realized, they were mixed by Eric Bennett, one of Marissa's oldest friends and closest collaborators, who was also quarantined at home alongside his mixing studio.
This LP is the final project of that collaboration, between four US states, a year of isolation, panic, and uncertainty - all the while never writing together in the flesh.
Album opener "White Dove" - streaming now across all digital platforms - is a very simple song, both in structure and content, about observing something or someone you love endure pain and trauma. The entire song is basically two major chords, played over and over, a tonal mantra. Sonically, dynamics guide this song through its high peaks and low valleys, hauling the listener up to the summit within the refrain of the last chorus.
The two musicians mutually agree to disappear the false boundary between producer and speaker.
– Pitchfork
A messy and unblinking improvisational blurt that quickly becomes dense and confusing, even though reality itself is often incredibly confusing and overwhelmingly dense, and perhaps that’s the fundamental idea radiating from every spontaneous noise-blot ever made by this District duo.
– The Washington Post
Together, they’ve created an unselfish world where each member has room to breathe within their far-out experiments in liberated sound, vision, and performance.
– Bandcamp
Excited to announce a new album from model home, both feet en th infinite. The Washington, D.C. duo’s work employs a freewheelin’ and improvisational approach to communicate their ideas. Their single-take gonzo mind-melds currently span 19 Bandcamp-only transmissions, a compilation album, one full-length LP, and numerous mixtapes. both feet en th infinite will be released on November 5, 2021.
both feet en th infinite sees the duo under the microscope of a professional studio (Tonal Park), a process that allows them an opportunity to enhance fine details that might slide out of view amid blown-out basement recordings. Clarity has not made them any less weird. The takes are alive with a new meditative focus, while not losing the mutant decadence of previous efforts. The sound is akin to David Tudor meeting African Head Charge with an 808 and a rapper, spilling groove over industrial experimentalism.
On these sessions model home’s core duo – Nappy Nappa (voice) and p cain (electronics) – are augmented by producer and Future Times label-founder, Andrew Field-Pickering (Dolo Percussion, Max D), whose obliquely funky rhythm tracks set a solid foundation for the group to spill alien logic. The 7 songs presented here were captured with the goal of creating a record that could be replicated on stage, they reflect this with live and direct frankness. A communal energy permeates the release with gatefold art work by Maya Miller (Double Leopards), cover art and design by Meghan Raham (woozy) and sonic contributions from a who’s who of contemporary DMV heads – dreamcastmoe, Awad Bilal (Too Free), Luke Stewart (Irreversible Entanglements), Bubbie, and Rob Stokes. The album was recorded and engineered with Mike Petillo (U-Udios, Geo Rip) at the controls routing the fray onto the mixing board.
Album opener “Night Break” - streaming now across all digital platforms - slots into a hypnotic mindset. Funkadelic-esque in its unhinged wildness, but newly and uniquely hectic. A party banger conjured from the true outer limits.
modelhome create and document their music at an intimidating pace. Amid that flood of noise and energy there are moments that have marked a refinement of technique or a shift in currents. Last year’s album SE was one, as was the compilation One Year. both feet en th infinite is another. Its newfound stillness and gridded percussion are an extension of Cain, Nappa, and Field-Pickering's previous work and also an evolution in vision, expanding the possibilities of communication in the moment. It’s a set that pulls double duty as a brain-breaking koan and an outer-limits party record.
We are excited to announce the release of Quitter, the new full-length album from Portland, Maine indie-rock band WEAKENED FRIENDS.Following their acclaimed 2018 debut album Common Blah, Quitter will be released on November 19, 2021.
Weakened Friends dive into the honest truth of being a working musician on Quitter, reflecting on lost friendships and self-worth swallowed up by burnout. Songwriter, guitarist, and vocalist Sonia Sturino is supported by Annie Hoffman (bass/vocals) and Adam Hand (drums), filling out a mature and emotive sound.
Central to the record thematically is the empty threat of quitting music and “getting a real job.” Sturino wrestles with her relationship with music on the title track, shouting “I love it, but it never really feels okay” over scorching guitars. Despite the implications of the title, quitting is not an option for the band. Even as friends settle into adulthood, Weakened Friends find themselves trapped in a fortress of their own creation, inseparably attached to the eternal youthfulness of life in music. In this liminal zone, life passes by and friendships are weakened, and Quitter takes plenty of time to mourn these losses.
The album's title track “Quitter” is out now, as is a music video accompanying the song. The song embodies the album's central theme of burnout in the music scene through chunky guitars and snarky vocals. As competition turns friends into rivals and pressure bears down on songwriter Sonia Sturino, she feels trapped by the time and effort she’s put into her life in music, despite the fact that “it never really feels okay”. This grungy number is equal parts personally introspective and broadly cathartic, resonating with a wide reach of emotions non-specific to Sturino’s individual experience.
Though the record acknowledges a perpetual state of arrested development that comes with being a musician, the band is anything but stagnant musically. Opening themselves up to ideas outside the constraints of their slacker rock sound, Weakened Friends puts the full force of their creative ambition into Quitter. Inspired by watching peers go above and beyond what is expected of them, the band sought to explore each song’s fullest potential, with their most extensive pre-production and arrangement work to date. Incorporating banjo, pedal steel, horns, extensive synth arrangement and a number of non-instrumental sounds such as ovens and camera flashes, Weakened Friends expand on their universe of sounds on their new LP.
Catch Weakened Friends LIVE On Tour This Fall: 9/25/2021 - Atlanta, GA - The Masquerade (Hell) 9/27/2021 - Columbus, OH - Woodlands 9/29/2021 - Grand Rapids, MI - Pyramid Scheme 10/1/2021 - Chicago, IL - Cobra Lounge 10/2/2021 - Ferndale, MI - The Loving Touch 10/3/2021 - Lakewood, OH - Mahalls 10/4/2021 - Pittsburgh, PA - Craft House 10/5/2021 - Buffalo, NY - Rec Room 10/7/2021 - Asbury Park, NJ - House of Independents 10/8/2021 - Brooklyn, NY - Knitting Factory 10/9/2021 - Boston, MA - Brighton Music Hall 10/11/2021 - Baltimore, MD - Ottobar 10/12/2021 - Greensboro, NC - Blind Tiger 10/13/2021 -Columbia, SC - New Brookland Tavern 10/15/2021 - Nashville, TN - Mercy Lounge 10/29/2021 - Gainesville, FL - The Fest 12/2/2021 - Burlington, VT - Higher Ground Showroom 12/3/2021 - Portland, ME - Portland House Of Music
Queen Of My World picks up where BatFangs left off: big riffs and pinched leads, a reeling, rocking mass of guitars and vocals, with hall reverb "whoa-oh" choruses similar to those that filled arenas in the 80s heyday of hair metal. The album is both a reclamation and a reevaluation of a sound that was once a breeding ground for a particularly egregious brand of cock rock dude-bro. Paying tribute to the glam rock and metal sounds of their youth while offering a modernized alternative to an era of music that deified toxic masculinity as a core value, Wright and King represent a new model of Rock Stardom that’s less about the Stars and more about the Rock.
The album's title track “Queen of My World” is out now, as is a music video accompanying the song. Songwriter Betsy Wright reflects on teenage mischief through the hair metal sounds of her youth. Stories of hanging out in the woods, getting high, and generally just doing bad shit are soundtracked with soaring guitar solos and crunchy riffs, opening a gateway into an era of high octane rock and adolescent antics.
Using musical nostalgia as it’s crystal ball, Queen of My Worldlooks back through life’s little moments and sees the mystical within the ordinary. Though many of the songs are autobiographical, at its core the record is a lens into other worlds, gazing into timelines that could have been and childhood memories so distant they may as well be past lives. Underneath the high-octane teenage antics is a genuine tribute to the unique friendships that can only form in the pseudo-invincibility of youth.
Led by Cree Indian Nik Alexander on guitar and vocals, the band is riff heavy, as they were contemporaries of classic hard rock guitar gods such as KISS and Thin Lizzy, while heavily informed by the spirit, harmonics and thematic elements of the indigenous American-Indian communities. Native rhythms and chants are peppered in with the heavy fuzzed out power chords of mainstream rock of the era.
Drummer Alfonso Kolb writes in the liner notes of Electric Warriors:
Winterhawk was more than a band. It had a message. It was Nik’s plan to use the tool of music to bring this message to the youth through his lyrics combined with the type of music to grab their attention. Especially at that time a heavy rock n roll sound was the style he felt would best get the attention of Native kids. The music was loud, strong, powerful and fast. With Native chants and drum beats resembling traditional Native drums. Some critics say it had a 70’s sound, and to some degree it might have. But, there was no 70’s music like this. No music that I have ever heard before. I felt at the time I was involved with a new kind of style. I know there have been other bands before Winterhawk that have had this idea, but I had not heard of a band that was doing this style of music directed toward Native American kids. Winterhawk has its place in the Native American music world. It has its meaning for our Indian people. I recommend that all Indians give it a listen along with non-natives. It was meant for all of us to hear, and to remind us that … We’re Still Here!
We are also reprinting an impossibly rare original t-shirt design Winterhawk produced and sold in the early 80s:
Electric Warriors tracklist: 1. Prayer 2. Got To Save It 3. Black Whiskey 4. Dark Skin Lady 5. Restaurant 6. Selfish Man 7. Custer's Dyin' 8. Fight
Dog Soldiertracklist: 1. Our Love Will Last 2. Honey Lady 3. Crazy 4. Loser 5. Lady Blue 6. We're Still Here 7. Warriors Road 8. We Are The People 9. I Will Remember
Marissa Paternoster began writing Peace Meter immediately after arriving home from a west coast tour cut short due to COVID. Alone in her deceased grandmother's empty home, Paternoster sent the skeleton of a song to Andy Gibbs from the metal band THOU with the hopes that he might be able to extrapolate on the original idea. Andy sent his accompaniment back, and that process continued for the bulk of the first wave of quarantine. 
