The moe. frontline from left: Chuck Garvey (guitar), Rob Derhak (bass), Al Schnier (guitar), and Nate Wilson (keyboards). In the mist behind them is Jim Loughlin (percussion) and Vinnie Amico (drums).
Thirty-five years ago, a group of University of Buffalo students gathered in a basement, drank a lot of beer, and played some tunes. They had no goal other than to have fun and party. But it wasn’t long before they headed into a studio housed in an apartment above local guitar shop Top Shelf Music to record the debut moe. album, Fatboy. Slowly, the band built a devoted fan base, crisscrossing the country in a van. As they persevered, the band and their audience grew up together, and now it’s the fans’ children who are discovering the group.
The story of moe. is one of friendship, survival, resilience, and joy. Now poised to release their latest, Circle of Giants—chock full of rock ’n’ roll grooves both lilting and bone-shaking, and anthemic chord progressions—the group is as strong as ever. Chuck Garvey and Al Schnier’s vibrant, bright guitars chime, crush, strum, and wail, and there’s a buoyant spirit and evocative lyrics. The lead single, “Ups and Downs,” is a song bassist Rob Derhak wrote after a casual conversation with a mailman about the peaks and valleys of a long marriage. One of the album’s most moving tunes, the lyrics go:
She looks at him
He coughs into his overcoat
It smells like gin
From a different moment
Sail along, just another wounded soldier
Now carry on, carry on but older
The last bittersweet couplet might well apply to the band. They faced extraordinary challenges over the past six years that all but stopped them in their tracks.
Thirty-five years after forming at University of Buffalo, on Circle of Giants, moe. maintain their close-knit family vibe.
The first blow was Derhak’s battle with oropharyngeal cancer in 2017. With the group rallying around him and fundraising initiated by fans, he went through harrowing treatment, beat the odds, and the cancer went into remission.
Not long thereafter, Garvey had a stroke. He lost partial movement in his left side as well as the ability to speak. “My syllables didn’t know how to find each other,” he recalls. The guitarist had to relearn movement and speech. The band gathered, made music, and helped him heal. All marveled that, even with diminished facility, he still sounded like Chuckwhen he picked up his instrument.“I grew up listening to the Grateful Dead. They were kind of a model, but there were so many other things that I loved as well. Punk, prog, bluegrass…. There was never any question that we could put all of this into the band.” —Al Schnier
There were also personal losses, and then the pandemic came. Suddenly everyone was writing music in isolation, deprived of the companionship they had come to know so well. After regrouping post-pandemic, there was a tragedy at a New Year’s Eve concert in 2023, where several audience members were struck and killed by a vehicle outside the concert hall. Devastated, moe. responded by saying, “We believe in the power of music to heal and unite.”
Al Schnier's Gear
Al Schnier jams out on a Paul Languedoc G4.
Photo by Paul Citone
Guitars
Amps
- Two 1973 Mesa/Boogie Mark I amps loaded with Celestion Cream speakers
Effects
- Zvex Wah Probe
- Analog Man Envelope Filter
- Zvex Fuzz Factory
- Analog Man CompROSSor
- ARC Effects Klone
- Providence Chrono Delay
- Analog Man Bi-Chorus
- Kaden Effects FlutterTone tremolo
- Voodoo Labs Pedal Power 2 Plus
Strings and Picks
- D’Addario XL140 (.010–.052)
- Dunlop Primetone Semi Round 1.5mm
I asked Schnier how it felt to be making music with his partners after all they’ve been through. “The band brings me a sense of place,” he says, “a sense of identity and affirmation. The bonds between us are so deep. When we’re on the road, and we have a day off, we often all end up back in the bus around 8 o’clock just hanging out together. I don’t know if it’s that we’re creatures of comfort or that we just like each other’s company. It truly is a family.”
“The bonds between us are so deep.” —Al Schnier
The classic two-guitar frontline has defined the band’s sound from the beginning. Currently, Garvey plays a 1973 Telecaster Thinline that he outfitted with Lollar Wide Range humbuckers. His amp of choice is a Tony Bruno Underground 30. Schnier’s number one is a Custom Shop korina Gibson SG, which he plugs into two of the first Mesa/Boogies ever made (numbers 73 and 75).
The band’s guitar parts stem from the interplay between both players. Garvey and Schnier craft their lines by jamming, one riffing off the other—the sense of brotherhood extending to their composing habits. Someone will bring in a sketch and present it at rehearsal. The other members will help to shape the final product. No matter how finished a song might feel coming in, someone will always have an idea to make it better.
Chuck Garvey's Gear
Chuck Garvey’s 1973 Tele Thinline is loaded with Lollar Wide Range pickups.
Photo by Paul Citone
Guitars
- Jerry Jones 6-string Doublecut Dual Lipstick
- 1973 Fender Telecaster Thinline with Lollar Regal Wide Range pickups
- 1994 Fender Custom Shop Stratocaster with Seymour Duncan single-coils
- 1978 Ibanez PF200
Amps
- Tony Bruno Underground 30 head with 3x10" cab
- Magnatone M10
- Tony Bruno Tweedy Pie 18
Effects
- Analog Man Sun Face “BART”
- Analog Man Buffer
- Analog Man Bi-CompROSSor
- Analog Man King Of Tone
- Foxrox Octron
- Benson Germanium Boost
- Benson Germanium Preamp
- Klon Centaur
- Italian-made Thomas Organ Company Cry Baby
- Paul Cochrane Timmy V1
- Chase Bliss Warped Vinyl MkII
- Source Audio Nemesis Delay
- TC Electronic Tuner
- Fulltone Deja’Vibe 2
- Lee Jackson Mr. Springgy
- Chelli Amplification Spring Reverb and Harmonic Tremolo
- Vemuram Shanks ODS-1
- Lehle 1at3 Switcher
- Voodoo Labs Pedal Power
- True Tone 1 Spot Pro CS11
Strings and Picks
- Dunlop Primetone Semi Round Smooth Pick 1.4 mm
- Wegen Triangular TF140 White 1.4 mm
- D’Addario NYXL (.010–.046)
The sound of moe. is often described as “genre defying.” I ask what this rather generic phrase means to them. “I grew up listening to the Grateful Dead,” Schnier says. “They were kind of a model, but there were so many other things that I loved as well. Punk, prog, bluegrass…. There was never any question that we could put all of this into the band."
“You never know when you’re going through a crisis whether it’s going to turn out okay.” —Chuck Garvey
Garvey chimes in and talks about his admiration for Frank Zappa. “When we started out at Wetlands in New York City around 1990, it was a very open environment. One day they would program ska, the next some African band, the next a punk band. We were into it all.”
Over the many years, moe. has had many “ups”: innumerable headline tours, international festivals from Bonnaroo to Japan’s famed Fuji Rock, and sold-out shows alongside such like-minded acts as the Allman Brothers Band, Robert Plant, members of the Grateful Dead, the Who, and Gov’t Mule. Next, 2025 brings a long tour. In some ways they’re making up for lost time.
As for the “downs”? Says Garvey: “You never know when you’re going through a crisis whether it’s going to turn out okay. I think I can speak for everyone when I say that our whole family coming together has been helpful for everyone. It’s part of that smaller community—but also that huge community of fans who are right there with us when we go through these things.”
Schnier, with a noticeable degree of emotion in his voice, adds, “It’s all made us closer, stronger. It’s all because we have each other. I couldn’t do it without these guys. I’m so grateful for that.”
YouTube It
Hear how guitarists Schnier and Garvey intertwine their parts and their sounds, creating a distinct guitar vocabulary as moe. tackles the lead single from Circle of Giantslast August in Denver.
Killswitch Engage are, from left to right, Justin Foley on drums, guitarist Adam Dutkiewicz, vocalist Jesse Leach, bassist Mike D’Antonio, and guitarist Joel Stroetzel.
As a result, Killswitch Engage’s ninth full-length LP, This Consequence, has all the hallmarks of a band meeting its moment. It’s been nearly a quarter-century since they released their eponymous debut, and they’ve subsequently achieved a career-sustaining amount of success as one of the main architects of the metalcore genre, but This Consequence is likely their first album to highlight such a clearly articulated, socially conscious through line.
Lyrically, cause-and-effect is a driving theme on This Consequence, and Killswitch Engage (KSE) captures the zeitgeist of the 2020s with incisive, often cautionary, commentary regarding topics like war, hatred, division, and falling in line. Musically, the band has channeled those same sources of inspiration into performances that feel more urgent, and thus more sincere, creating a viscerally brutal yet brilliantly melodic slab of postmodern metalcore. KSE has long held a reputation for having a good time and riling up crowds with uncontainable energy and unpredictable performances, but it’s been hard to ignore the degradation of discourse in this country over the last decade, even for these renowned ringmasters.
KSE was formed in 1999 in Westfield, Massachusetts, from the remnants of Overcast and Aftershock, two prominent local metal bands. KSE’s early lineup featured founding members Dutkiewicz on drums and Mike D’Antonio on bass, along with vocalist Jesse Leach and guitarist Joel Stroetzel. The fledgling band quickly gained attention for its mix of melodic and death-metal influences: a musical amalgamation that would become the template for metalcore. The band’s second album, 2002’s Alive or Just Breathing, was pivotal, marking a major shift in their sound and identity, with a dual-guitar attack leading the charge. In order to accurately render that album in concert, Dutkiewicz switched to guitar, and they brought in Tom Gomes on drums. The record includes some of the band’s most iconic songs to date, including, “My Last Serenade,” “Fixation on the Darkness,” and “The Element of One.” Adopting a two-guitar approach was a masterstroke and Alive or Just Breathing has since become one of metalcore’s most definitive albums, blending deft, tightly synchronized guitar riffs with battering rhythms, guttural verses, melodic choruses, and a hardcore punk attitude. It was a winning formula that enabled KSE to build a huge fan base.
“Everything I bring to the table, I tell them, ‘We can throw it away.’”–Adam Dutkiewicz
In 2004, they released The End of Heartache, their first to feature Howard Jones on lead vocals and Justin Foley on drums. The album reached No. 21 on the Billboard200 and earned a Best Metal Performance Grammy nomination for the title track. Songs like “When Darkness Falls” and “Rose of Sharyn” continued to elevate KSE’s status within the metalcore hierarchy. In 2009, Jones left and Leach returned. Disarm the Descent was released in 2013 and debuted at No. 7 on the Billboard200, marking the band’s highest charting debut to that point. Incarnate followed in 2016, and then Atonement, their first release on Metal Blade, in 2019. KSE was on a roll with Leach firmly back in the fold, and ready to tour when the pandemic struck. During the downtime, inspiration hit, so they regrouped, wrote, rehearsed, and eventually recorded This Consequence. Songs like “Aftermath,” “Abandon Us,” and “Broken Glass” exemplify the kind of relatable cultural commentary that can be cathartic for today’s disenfranchised—especially when paired with the band’s other equally memorable musical attributes.
In riffs they trust: Killswitch Engage’s Adam Dutkiewicz (left) and Mike Stroetzel prefer strong, arranged guitar parts that create scenes within arrangements, rather than flash shredding.
Photo by Mike White
The writing and rehearsal process for This Consequence was the first time since Alive or Just Breathing that all five members convened in a studio to work out the material before recording. Like many artists nowadays, KSE had been writing and recording remotely for at least the last decade. Stroetzel says it was great to be able to work on the tunes together, in the same room, and that, musically, it allowed the arrangements to come together a little bit faster. “Especially the songs that were only partially finished,” chimes in Dutkiewicz. In addition to his role on guitar, Dutkiewicz has been the band’s producer—his major at Berklee—almost since inception. Perhaps having a skill set with that kind of overview is why he’s also the only member of the group to craft fully fleshed-out songs on his own. And yet, even he recognizes how his material benefitted from their rehearsal process this time. “It was really good for everybody in the band to get their hands on their instruments, learn the riffs, and then tweak them to their level of comfort,” he says. “They’re more invested in the song that way because their voice and their sound is on it. And when we play the song live, it’s more their song, instead of that song that Adam wrote.”
“A tight staccato section needs a wide, harmonically rich section to complement it. We try our best to have scenes in a song like that.”–Adam Dutkiewicz
The cultural continuity of the lyrics on This Consequence didn’t just come about by happenstance, either. It’s not a concept album per se, but the band encouraged Leach to continually refine his lyrics and elevate his ideas and topics. “When you’re writing lyrics for that many songs at once, it’s easy to fall into the tendency of writing about the same topics, with the same vibe,” says Dutkiewicz. “He just needed to try something completely different.” As a result, Leach tapped into his own angst about the current state of world affairs, bestowing upon This Consequence the kind of social relevance that previous KSE albums never quite captured so succinctly. “Jesse gets the gold star for trying the hardest,” commends Dutkiewicz.
Per usual, Adam Dutkiewicz served as producer for the new album, but engineer Mark Lewis at MRL Studios in Nashville, Tennessee, played a significant role in determining its final sonic character.
Dutkiewicz isn’t particularly attached to his own musical ideas or songs and admits he’s willing to deconstruct just about anything for the good of the group, even after he’s submitted a complete demo to the rest of the guys. “Everything I bring to the table, I tell them, ‘We can throw it away.’ I think a big part of being an artist is just the creation of things and sometimes the destruction of things.” Dutkiewicz’s willingness to analyze material from that perspective is part of what makes him such a good de facto producer for the band. “It’s just not having an ego about anything,” he says. “You always have to remember you have to do what’s best for the song and not for my riff.” Another theme that runs through KSE songs on This Consequence, and in general, is how their arrangements work. They employ a visual, almost cinematic approach to production and songcraft. “It’s almost like you want scenes in a song,” explains Dutkiewicz. “A tight staccato section needs a wide, harmonically rich section to complement it. We try our best to have scenes in a song like that.”
“We play together a little behind the beat now. Before, we were fighting each other a little bit.”—Joel Stroetzel
Dutkiewicz and Stroetzel have been playing guitar together since long before the release of Alive or Just Breathing, mostly because the former has always worn multiple hats within the band, and share many of the same influences, including Megadeth, Slayer, Testament, Sepultura, and especially Metallica. They both credit James Hetfield for setting the bar when it comes to their own obsession with fast, articulate rhythm-guitar playing. As Stroetzel got older he gravitated towards classic rock, especially Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin. “Now I can play things other than metal,” he jokes. Dutkiewicz, on the other hand, got into the classic stuff at a younger age, citing his early infatuation with Eddie Van Halen and Angus Young. “It’s more so Angus Young’s spirit and onstage attitude,” he clarifies. Dutkiewicz’s high-energy stage presence validates that sentiment.
Adam Dutkiewicz’s Gear
Adam Dutkiewicz, telegraphing his love of suds, onstage at Los Angeles’ Wiltern Theatre in February 2022, playing his Caparison TAT Special FX “Metal Machine” with Fishman Fluence Signature Series Killswitch Engage Pickups.
Photo by Debi Del Grande
Guitars
- Caparison TAT Special FX “Metal Machine” with Fishman Fluence Signature Series Killswitch Engage Pickups
Amps
- Kemper Profiler
- Kemper Stage
- Mesa/Boogie 4x12 cabs with Celestion speakers
Effects
- Electro-Harmonix Magnum 44 Power Amp
- Maxon OD808 Overdrive
Strings, Picks, Microphones, &
Accessories
- D’Addario EXL115 XL Nickel Wound (.011– .049)
- In-Tune XJ Jazz 1.14 mm
- Shure ULXD and GLXD wireless systems
- sE V7 Dynamic Microphones
- D’Addario Planet Waves cables
Stroetzel confesses that it took some time to develop into the symbiotic guitar tandem that’s become a signature musical element of the KSE sound. “We play together a little behind the beat now,” he explains. “Before, we were fighting each other a little bit. I always thought Adam had a very forward style with his picking, but he’s mellowed over the years. I had to pick up the pace a little, Adam relaxed a little bit, and I think we found a happy midpoint. It only took 25 years [laughter].” Part of the challenge has been adapting to how the other person writes. “I struggle with some of Joel’s articulate phrasing sections,” explains Dutkiewicz. “I’m just a big mangler and he’s got these well-phrased sections. And I’m just like, ‘God, ah.’ He plays a lot more guitar than me, so his string skipping and pick phrasing is way beyond what I’m capable of doing.” Stroetzel says he struggles with some of Dutkiewicz’s chord voicings because he has such big hands. “Some of these chords he can reach, I’m like, ‘Man, how do you even do that?’”
“Just hearing the Kemper for the first time, and what it could actually do, was pretty impressive, especially for high-gain tone.”—Joel Stroetzel
Surprisingly, however, they don’t actually even take guitar solos in the traditional sense. “We’re not necessarily looking to throw leads on everything,” admits Dutkiewicz. “To us, it’s just a musical interlude. You can’t have vocals [constantly] for three minutes and 30 seconds, so it’s just a quick little side journey in the song.” One of the closest things to an actual guitar solo is probably on the opening track “Abandon Us,” right after the first chorus, which features the nimble-fingered fretwork of Dutkiewicz, but even that’s more like a short detour than a bona fide lead break. Instead, they tend to incorporate a lot of Thin Lizzy/Iron Maiden-style harmony parts and deploy single-note phrases, counter melodies, and sub-hooks to the vocals in bridges and choruses, weaving a layered tapestry of melodic ear candy. Songwriting is ultimately their primary focus, and the songs are relatively short and to the point for a metal band, so there doesn’t seem to be a need to clutter things up with unnecessary solos. When it comes to crafting such parts, the general rule of thumb for assigning these melodious forays is whoever writes the song, or initiates the song idea, does the honors. And so, songs like “Discordant Nation,” “I Believe,” and “Requiem” highlight Stroetzel’s nuanced lyrical phrases, while “Abandon Us” and “Where It Dies” feature Dutkiewicz’s more shred-like soloing style.
When it comes to tone, Stroetzel in particular remains a big fan of tube amps, and the band has a long history of utilizing heads from boutique manufacturers like Diezel, Framus, and Friedman. In recent years, however, software sounds have gotten much better, and they’ve gravitated towards profiling amps and plugins, especially live. “Just hearing the Kemper for the first time, and what it could actually do, was pretty impressive, especially for high-gain tone,” explains Stroetzel. “If you want an aggressive metal tone, I think the Kemper does a nice job capturing that, and it works great live—we’re consistent from night to night.” And besides, they both openly admit it’s not like KSE requires a lot of nuanced technique. “We don’t have very delicate parts in our songs,” jokes Dutkiewicz. “Even our clean tones aren’t very touch sensitive.”
Joel Stroetzel's Gear
Joel Stroetzel, here, and Adam Dutkiewicz both play signature-model Caparison guitars. Stroetzel’s is a Dellinger-JSM V2.
Photo by Debi Del Grande
Guitars
- Caparison Dellinger-JSM V2 with Fishman Fluence Signature Series Killswitch Engage Pickups
Amps
- Kemper Profiler
- Kemper Stage
- Mesa/Boogie 4x12 cabs with Celestion speakers
Effects
- Electro-Harmonix Magnum 44 Power Amp
- Maxon OD808 Overdrive
Strings, Picks, Microphones, &
Accessories
- D’Addario EXL115 XL Nickel Wound (.011–.049)
- D’Addario Duralin Black Ice 1.10 mm
- Shure ULXD and GLXD wireless systems
- sE V7 Dynamic Microphones
- D’Addario Planet Waves cables
Dutkiewicz says that what listeners end up hearing, tone-wise, is ultimately up to whoever mixes the album, which, in the case of This Consequence, was Mark Lewis at MRL Studios in Nashville, Tennessee. Aside from that, everything else is very cut-and-dried. Stroetzel says there’s always a Maxon OD808 on everything they do that’s dirty. “Throw a little bit of that boost in there, and it just kind of compresses the tone a little bit and brings out the midrange a little more,” he explains. “And then, all we really need is a noise gate. That’s it.” They both play Caparison signature model guitars, incorporating elements of other instruments they’ve played over the years. “I’ve always liked Fender-style guitars—Strats and Teles,” says Stroetzel. “So, my signature model is constructed with those in mind, but to sound a little bit thicker and have some thunder in the low end, like a hot-rod metal guitar.” Dutkiewicz says his guitar was designed with simplicity in mind. “I was ruining guitars on tour,” he admits. “I had a bolt-on once, and my sweat got into the bolt holes and it actually rotted out. I couldn’t believe it. Sweat was getting in the cavity of the guitar, and it was cutting out the pickups and causing corrosion on the electronics inside. So, I got rid of the neck pickup and made it a neck-through. I’m a mangler, so it’s loud, bright, and obnoxious, just like me [laughter].”
As for their revered place in the pantheon of metalcore, Stroetzel takes the humble approach, as many in his position often do, saying they’re not really concerned with putting a label on KSE. “We all just try to put in elements of what we like,” he says. “Everybody in the band has listened to so many different types of music over the years. It’s like, ‘Who cares if this is a hardcore song or a thrash song?’ It doesn’t really matter. I don’t think we’ve ever tried to stick to a specific style. We’re just a rock band.”
YouTube It
In this full-set performance from 2023’s Wacken Open Air festival in Itzehoe, Germany, Killswitch Engage dances the line between beauty and brutality.
The National New Yorker lived at the forefront of the emerging electric guitar industry, and in Memphis Minnie’s hands, it came alive.
(Are you not totally intrigued by the story of this incredible woman? Why did she run away from home? Why did she fall in love with the guitar? We haven’t even touched on how remarkable her songwriting is. This is a singular pioneer of guitar history, and we beseech you to read Woman with Guitar: Memphis Minnie’s Blues by Beth and Paul Garon.)
Following the end of World War I, Hawaiian music enjoyed a rapid rise in popularity. On their travels around the U.S., musicians like Sol Ho’opi’i became fans of Louis Armstrong and the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, leading to a great cross-pollination of Hawaiian music with jazz and blues. This potent combination proved popular and drew ever-larger audiences, which created a significant problem: How on earth would an audience of thousands hear the sound from a wimpy little acoustic guitar?
This art deco pickguard offers just a bit of pizzazz to an otherwise demure instrument.
In the late 1920s, George Beauchamp, John and Rudy Dopyera, Adolph Rickenbacker, and John Dopyera’s nephew Paul Barth endeavored to answer that question with a mechanically amplified guitar. Working together under Beauchamp and John Dopyera’s National String Instrument Corporation, they designed the first resonator guitar, which, like a Victrola, used a cone-shaped resonator built into the guitar to amplify the sound. It was definitely louder, but not quite loud enough—especially for the Hawaiian slide musicians. With the guitars laid on their laps, much of the sound projected straight up at the ceiling instead of toward the audience.
Barth and Beauchamp tackled this problem in the 1930s by designing a magnetic pickup, and Rickenbacker installed it in the first commercially successful electric instrument: a lap-steel guitar known affectionately as the “Frying Pan” due to its distinctive shape. Suddenly, any stringed instrument could be as loud as your amplifier allowed, setting off a flurry of innovation. Electric guitars were born!
“At the time it was positively futuristic, with its lack of f-holes and way-cool art deco design on the pickup.”
By this time, Memphis Minnie was a bona fide star. She recorded for Columbia, Vocalion, and Decca Records. Her song “Bumble Bee,” featuring her driving guitar technique, became hugely popular and earned her a new nickname: the Queen of Country Blues. She was officially royalty, and her subjects needed to hear her game-changing playing. This is where she crossed paths with our old pals over at National.
National and other companies began adding pickups to so-called Spanish guitars, which they naturally called “Electric Spanish.” (This term was famously abbreviated ES by the Gibson Guitar Corporation and used as a prefix on a wide variety of models.) In 1935, National made its first Electric Spanish guitar, renamed the New Yorker three years later. By today’s standards, it’s modestly appointed. At the time it was positively futuristic, with its lack of f-holes and way-cool art deco design on the pickup.
There’s buckle rash and the finish on the back of the neck is rubbed clean off in spots, but that just goes to show how well-loved this guitar has been.
Memphis Minnie had finally found an axe fit for a Queen. She was among the first blues guitarists to go electric, and the New Yorker fueled her already-upward trajectory. She recorded over 200 songs in her 25-year career, cementing her and the National New Yorker’s place in musical history.
Our National New Yorker was made in 1939 and shows perfect play wear as far as we’re concerned. Sure, there’s buckle rash and the finish on the back of the neck is rubbed clean off in spots, but structurally, this guitar is in great shape. It’s easy to imagine this guitar was lovingly wiped down each time it was put back in the case.
There’s magic in this guitar, y’all. Every time we pick it up, we can feel Memphis Minnie’s spirit enter the room. This guitar sounds fearless. It’s a survivor. This is a guitar that could inspire you to run away and join the circus, transcend genre and gender, and leave your own mark on music history. As a guitar store, watching guitars pass from musician to musician gives us a beautiful physical reminder of how history moves through generations. We can’t wait to see who joins this guitar’s remarkable legacy.
SOURCES: blackpast.org, nps.gov, worldmusic.net, historylink.org, Memphis Music Hall of Fame, “Memphis Minnie’s ‘Scientific Sound’: Afro-Sonic Modernity and the Jukebox Era of the Blues” from American Quarterly, “The History of the Development of Electric Stringed Musical Instruments” by Stephen Errede, Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL.
We know Horsegirl as a band of musicians, but their friendships will always come before the music. From left to right: Nora Cheng, drummer Gigi Reece, and Penelope Lowenstein.
“It was kind of life-changing, honestly. It changed how I thought about womanhood,” Lowenstein says over the call, laughing a bit at the gravitas of the statement.
But the moment of levity illuminates the fact that big things are happening in their lives. When they released their debut album, 2022’s Versions of Modern Performance, the three members of Horsegirl were still teenagers in high school. Their new, sophomore record, Phonetics On and On, arrives right in the middle of numerous first experiences—their first time living away from home, first loves, first years of their 20s, in university. Horsegirl is going through changes. Lowenstein notes how, through moving to a new city, their friendship has grown, too, into something more familial. They rely on each other more.
“If the friendship was ever taking a toll because of the band, the friendship would come before the band, without any doubt.”–Penelope Lowenstein
“Everyone's cooking together, you take each other to the doctor,” Lowenstein says. “You rely on each other for weird things. I think transitioning from being teenage friends to suddenly working together, touring together, writing together in this really intimate creative relationship, going through sort of an unusual experience together at a young age, and then also starting school together—I just feel like it brings this insane intimacy that we work really hard to maintain. And if the friendship was ever taking a toll because of the band, the friendship would come before the band without any doubt.”
Horsegirl recorded their sophomore LP, Phonetics On and On, at Wilco’s The Loft studio in their hometown, Chicago.
These changes also include subtle and not-so-subtle shifts in their sophisticated and artful guitar-pop. Versions of Modern Performance created a notion of the band as ’90s college-rock torchbearers, with reverb-and-distortion-drenched numbers that recalled Yo La Tengo and the Breeders. Phonetics On and On doesn’t extinguish the flame, but it’s markedly more contemporary, sacrificing none of the catchiness but opting for more space, hypnotic guitar lines, and meditative, repeated phrases. Cheng and Lowenstein credit Welsh art-pop wiz Cate Le Bon’s presence as producer in the studio as essential to the sonic direction.
“On the record, I think we were really interested in Young Marble Giants—super minimal, the percussiveness of the guitar, and how you can do so much with so little.”–Nora Cheng
“We had never really let a fourth person into our writing process,” Cheng says. “I feel like Cate really changed the way we think about how you can compose a song, and built off ideas we were already thinking about, and just created this very comfortable space for experimentation and pushed us. There are so many weird instruments and things that aren't even instruments at [Wilco’s Chicago studio] The Loft. I feel like, definitely on our first record, we were super hesitant to go into territory that wasn't just distorted guitar, bass, and drums.”
Nora Cheng's Gear
Nora Cheng says that letting a fourth person—Welsh artist Cate Le Bon—into the trio’s songwriting changed how they thought about composition.
Photo by Braden Long
Effects
- EarthQuaker Devices Plumes
- Ibanez Tube Screamer
- TC Electronic Polytune
Picks
- Dunlop Tortex .73 mm
Phonetics On and On introduces warm synths (“Julie”), raw-sounding violin (“In Twos”), and gamelan tiles—common in traditional Indonesian music—to Horsegirl’s repertoire, and expands on their already deep quiver of guitar sounds as Cheng and Lowenstein branch into frenetic squonks, warped jangles, and jagged, bare-bones riffs. The result is a collection of songs simultaneously densely textured and spacious.
“I listen to these songs and I feel like it captures the raw, creative energy of being in the studio and being like, ‘Fuck! We just exploded the song. What is about to happen?’” Lowenstein says. “That feeling is something we didn’t have on the first record because we knew exactly what we wanted to capture and it was the songs we had written in my parents’ basement.”
Cheng was first introduced to classical guitar as a kid by her dad, who tried to teach her, and then she was subsequently drawn back to rock by bands like Cage The Elephant and Arcade Fire. Lowenstein started playing at age 6, which covers most of her life memories and comprises a large part of her identity. “It made me feel really powerful as a young girl to know that I was a very proficient guitarist,” she says. The shreddy playing of Television, Pink Floyd’s spacey guitar solos, and Yo La Tengo’s Ira Kaplan were all integral to her as Horsegirl began.
Penelope Lowenstein's Gear
Penelope Lowenstein likes looking back at the versions of herself that made older records.
Photo by Braden Long
Effects
- EarthQuaker Westwood
- EarthQuaker Bellows
- TC Electronic PolyTune
Picks
- Dunlop Tortex 1.0 mm
Recently, the two of them have found themselves influenced by guitarists both related and unrelated to the type of tunes they’re trading in on their new album. Lowenstein got into Brazilian guitar during the pandemic and has recently been “in a Jim O’Rourke, John Fahey zone.”
“There’s something about listening to that music where you realize, about the guitar, that you can just compose an entire orchestra on one instrument,” Lowenstein says. “And hearing what the bass in those guitar parts is doing—as in, the E string—is kind of mind blowing.”
“On the record, I think we were really interested in Young Marble Giants—super minimal, the percussiveness of the guitar, and how you can do so much with so little,” Cheng adds. “And also Lizzy Mercier [Descloux], mostly on the Rosa Yemen records. That guitar playing I feel was very inspiring for the anti-solo,[a technique] which appears on [Phonetics On and On].”This flurry of focused discovery gives the impression that Cheng and Lowenstein’s sensibilities are shifting day-to-day, buoyed by the incredible expansion of creative possibilities that setting one’s life to revolve around music can afford. And, of course, the energy and exponential growth of youth. Horsegirl has already clocked major stylistic shifts in their brief lifespan, and it’s exciting to have such a clear glimpse of evolution in artists who are, likely and hopefully, just beginning a long journey together.
“There’s something about listening to that music where you realize, about the guitar, that you can just compose an entire orchestra on one instrument.”–Penelope Lowenstein
“In your 20s, life moves so fast,” Lowenstein says. “So much changes from the time of recording something to releasing something that even that process is so strange. You recognize yourself, and you also kind of sympathize with yourself. It's a really rewarding way of life, I think, for musicians, and it's cool that we have our teenage years captured like that, too—on and on until we're old women.”
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Last summer, Horsegirl gathered at a Chicago studio space to record a sun-soaked set of new and old tunes.
