Video Premiere: Quits – “Bucolica”

There is often an order to these things, as you might have noticed – first we introduce you to the band as snappily as we can, then we focus on the thing that we’re sharing today, be it an album stream or a new video, and then we usually end with a quote from a band member. So let’s jumble all that up today, and considering we’re dealing with a jangly, no-fucks-given noise rock band here, the more subversive the whole thing is, even at a meta level like this, the better. So here’s the quote from the band already, which didn’t even bother to name anyone in particular: “’Bucolica’ starts off with a serene bucolic landscape. Life. It ends with chaotic darkness. Death.”

See why we wanted to lead with this? Not only does it fully wrap up the tone of the new video we’re showing you today, for that song they mention on the quote, but it also lets you realize the kind of band we’re dealing it. If you didn’t know Quits before, now you already know pretty much everything you need. Now it’s just a question of watching the appropriately grainy, diffuse video created by Carolyn Funk, feeling the rumble of the bass, the scrape of those guitars and the angst of that Justin Pearson-esque shriek, and then, surely, procure the gnarly record where it was taken from. It’s called Feeling It, it’s full of The Birthday Party, Cop Shoot Cop and Drive Like Jehu bad vibes, and it already came out a couple of months ago via Sleeping Giant Glossolalia. Get it here.

As you can gather from the music and lyrics on display here, said record is not a bundle of laughs. On the press release, guitarist/vocalist Lucius Fairchild (oh, so for that they can be arsed to make individual quotes!) says the songs deal with “police misconduct, mass shootings, addiction, isolation,” and describes the current state of his heavily gentrified hometown of Denver as ”expensive. It’s no longer strange to see eight cranes on one street. Development has not slowed down. The homeless crisis is also booming. Watching people walk through the tent city on their block to enter their $5,000 apartment. The contrast is interesting.” Just some more food for thought while you listen to their ugly music.