With all the weight of HEALTH’s feedback drenched echo and the black-hearted sounds of The Jesus & Mary Chain its showtime for Boston quartet RIBS (that’s all capital letters to you and I) and their double A side single ‘Locrian Singles’…
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We promise not to say that this double A-sided single sticks to your ribs — oops, too late — because the place it really hits is that floating, synapse-trigger space where the head meets the hips. That’s what Boston’s RIBS were after, and got, with last year’s audaciously kinetic “British Brains’’ EP, which announced the arrival of a bold new musical voice whose promise extended well beyond local borders. For “Locrian Singles,’’ available now as a free download from their site, the foursome’s kept the element of surprise intact but taken a darker detour. This time out, we get gloomy yet doomily delicious dance-rock backlit by singer-guitarist Keith Freund’s expressively mercurial falsetto, plus what sounds like a new predilection for foggy synthesizers. Except that there aren’t any. Believe it or not, it’s actually layers of bass, guitars, and vocals ingeniously run through an array of distortion and delay effects that give the Cure-ish “Cosmos’’ its sense of otherworldly atmosphere and epic drift. It’s a welcome chill-out after the glammy, electro-industrial clang of “Please Don’t Go,’’ a Nine Inch Nails-meets-Muse salvo whose steely sheets of sound hammer the message home loud and clear: RIBS aren’t leaving anytime soon.
“Locrian Singles’’ can be downloaded at hear.ribstheband.com.
ONLINE VERSION: http://www.boston.com/ae/music/cd_reviews/articles/2011/02/04/noisy_neighbors/
Stuff like this isn’t really my cup of tea anymore, but it’s hard to resist the near Manson-esque falsetto, chugging guitars, and foot-stomping beat. I actually remember when RIBS posted about their first EP on Reddit as well. That reddit thread is super interesting, just to hear singer slash head-honcho Keith Freund talk about how much time he spent agonizing over small details. A lot of work goes into recording music of any kind, but when you get into something as densely layered as this song, you have to be very careful with how you’re distributing your frequencies because it can all turn into mush very, very quickly. The fact that you can distinctly hear anything in this song is a testament to hard won production chops.
Perhaps the most famous ribs in Boston last year were the ones Jacoby Ellsbury fractured, ribs that forced the Red Sox outfielder to sit out most of the 2010 season. Now that the Fenway heartthrob is all healed up, 2011’s ribs to watch are of the rock-n-roll variety. One of the louder members of our Class of 2011, RIBS the band are poised for a breakthrough. The anthemic “Please Don’t Go” — one-half of the Locrian Singles, which gets the release treatment tomorrow (January 28) at the Ryan’s Smashing Life 4-year anniversary party at TT The Bear’s — is an almost-industrial gear-grinding stomp-along rock hammer, its brute force skillfully offset by the falsetto of vocalist Keith Freund. A follow-up EP to last year’s sterling British Brains is almost finished, and a tour along the east coast is planned for April. But for now, RIBS are Boston’s treasure, so check them out in Cambridge tomorrow night and grab the mp3 below.
LINK: http://thephoenix.com/BLOGS/onthedownload/archive/2011/01/27/mp3-of-the-week-ribs-quot-please-don-t-go-quot.aspx
Download free: http://hear.ribstheband.com
Buy on Amazon MP3
Boston Phoenix music editor Michael Marotta appears as a guest on this morning’s Breakfast Show on Boston’s rock station, WFNX 101.7, to talk about his “Class of 2011: Boston’s 11 Best New Bands” story.
Skip to 3:45 to hear “Please Don’t Go” from the upcoming Locrian Singles (coming January 25th).
DOWNLOAD: Phoenix Music Editor Michael Marotta discussing Class of 2011 on FNX [mp3]
Were you awake this morning at the ungodly hour of 9am?
I was, and honestly, I don’t know how you people do it. But with a little help from the amphetamine juice called 5 Hour Energy Boost, a few fruitty bottles of Powerade Zero and my Little Jetta That Could ambitiously motoring up Route 1A all the way to Lynn, I dropped by the WFNX radio studio this morning to be a guest on the Breakfast Show with Fletcher and Henry Santoro.
The subject was this week’s “Class of 2011: Boston’s 11 Best New Bands” feature in the Boston Phoenix, with Stereo Telescope’s “Geography” and RIBS‘ “Please Don’t Go” getting some early drive-time airplay. The former was our MP3 of the Week back in August, and the latter will take that high honor later this month before their Locrian Singles release party at TT The Bear’s Place on January 28 (don’t tip off competing news outlets, k?).
So yeah, in case you slept in (mad jellz) or had a board meeting or whatever it is that normal people do at 9am, check out an mp3 of the appearance below.
From The Boston Phoenix‘s cover story this week, “Eleven Bands To Watch In 2011:”
Last week, the Village Voice correctly named Train’s “Hey, Soul Sister” the Worst Song of 2010 and pretty much declared rock music dead. It’s a sentiment we can get behind, except for this noisy racket we hear coming out of RIBS, a Boston-based quartet who, despite being a bitch to Google, are catching attention with a face-forward rock onslaught that’s already rendered the easy comparisons to Muse and Deftones passé. This month sees the release of Locrian Singles, a one-two punch of futuristic, star-screaming almost-metal that might enable bassist Blake Fusilier to quit his day job at Redbones (hence the band name). Last year, RIBS quietly dropped the cantankerous British Brains EP and shared the stage with Helmet, but this force is getting louder. Rock’s great new hope. NEXT SHOW – January 28 @ T.T. The Bear’s Place, Cambridge
SHOW TICKETS: http://www.ticketweb.com/t3/sale/SaleEventDetail?dispatch=loadSelectionData&eventId=3382355
FACEBOOK EVENT: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=181043351923954
RIBS + THE CINNAMON FUZZ | T.T. The Bear’s | January 28 | Those who appreciated the harder edge RIBS brought to Boston’s indie tableau with British Brains are in for more treats: the double A-side Locrian Singles continues the young quartet’s thunderous experimentation with guitar sonics, crafting a pulsating sound that borrows as much from Muse as it does Deftones. The Cinnamon Fuzz bring balance to the bill, countering RIBS’ stomp with their glossy, rock-pop disco dust. Boston’s promising duo is joined by a New York pair: Bridges & Powerlines and Fan-Tan.
10 Brookline St, Cambridge | $10 | 617.492.0082 or ttthebears.com
FULL ARTICLE: http://thephoenix.com/boston/music/113432-winter-boston-music-preview-stacked-bills/
TICKETS: http://www.ticketweb.com/t3/sale/SaleEventDetail?dispatch=loadSelectionData&eventId=3382355
FACEBOOK: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=181043351923954
