Noise punks Miracle Blood are road dogs – but it’s cats (and two guinea pigs who sadly passed away) that are the Boston-area band’s animal spirits. Guitarist/vocalist Andrew Wong, bassist Garrett Young and drummer Anthony Bollitier, in a rare break between playing gigs, were game to talk about their love for their furry friends as part of The Bad Penny‘s ongoing Pet Sounds series.
Miracle Blood’s latest album, Hello Hell, came out in November via esteemed label Nefarious Industries. But it’s their past releases that are littered – pun very much intended – with references to creatures of various sorts. There’s their August 2022 song “Pomeranian,” and then three double-single releases from 2019 on which animals are featured on their pastel covers: “Roses”/”Nurses,” “Swollen/Sentinel” and “Bloom/Polite and Calm.”
We chatted up Miracle Blood about their animal fixation, and here’s what they had to say. Or purr.
Back in mid-July, we introduced you to Sangre de Muérdago, the only Galician Folk band you have heard of. The group uses Galician lyrics and a litany of instruments used in the Galician tradition to reflect on nature, mysticism and other themes.
We also exclusively debuted “O Abismo,” the first single from Sangre de Muérdago’s full-length album O Xardín, which came out 13 days ago. The band is led by Pablo Caamiña Ursusson, who handled almost too many roles to count on O Xardín. In addition to providing vocals, he also played classical guitar, hurdy-gurdy, music box, pandero cuadrado de Peñaparda, bells, pandeireta, shaker, and steel string guitar.
Another fact about Ursusson, and probably the reason you clicked on this article: He has some of the most gorgeous dogs you’ll see (at least today). We chatted up our favorite Galician musician about his pets and how much they mean to him.
If Nashville band Friendship Commanders sounds familiar, it could be because you’ve visited this website before (and if that’s the case, we’re very grateful). We met the melodic post-metal doomsters in May and interviewed one-half of the band, Buick Audra, about her new solo endeavor. During the conversation, we learned about the guitarist/vocalist’s affinity for cats, and tucked away that knowledge for future use as part of The Bad Penny‘s Pet Sounds series.
Well, now is the time we’ve decided to use that card and crown Friendship Commanders as the 65th participant in our ongoing series (which launched less than a year ago, if you can believe it). The timing of this installment is even more appropriate, as the band – which also features Audra’s partner, drummer/percussionist/bassist/synth player Jerry Roe – is releasing a new album, titled BEAR, on Oct. 10 through Magnetic Eye Records.
While a couple of weeks stand between Friendship Commanders and the celebration of their bottom-heavy beast of a record, today we introduce you to two of the band’s biggest, and by far furriest, supporters.
On a cool, mid-May evening in Malden, Massachusetts, all seems calm in the quaint city located about 15 outside Boston (when rush-hour traffic isn’t choking Route 99, that is). But vocalist/bassist Andrea Neuenfeldt is stressed out, finding it impossible to be patient as new releases from her two principal projects are about to be released. In one month, soft pop-punks Unseemlier will unveil their debut LP, I Have a Screw Loose, Somewhere, two years after the Boston quartet joined forces. Exactly one week later, Neuenfeldt’s other band, emo-pop trio MK Naomi, will release their first EP, Dream Hiss. (That band describes itself as an “emo-pop hallucination … named for the covert CIA bioweapons program that ran from the 1950s-‘70s.)
While many musicians often know each other well enough to lower the temperature when one of them spazzes out, Neuenfeldt is at a disadvantage. For one thing, she’s just starting to get to know her new collaborators in the two projects. She’s even more of an odd-woman-out in Unseemlier, as her three bandmates are childhood friends who know how to talk one other off the proverbial ledge when their anxiety level skyrockets.
“It’s like sitting on pins and needles,” Neuenfeldt tells The Bad Penny, noting that Unseemlier is also booked to play FEST 23 in Gainesville, Florida, in October. “I’m very impatient — but I also like wanting to be super-respectful, because other people have [to deal with real] life shit.”
Fortunately, Neuenfeldt has special companions to scratch her itch while she longs to get onstage at this very moment. Those sources of emotional support for the musician are her three cats: Rufus, Wolfgang and Arnold.
When The Bad Penny caught up with Tim Kinsella and Jenny Pulse earlier this year, they were living the high life. Fresh off the release of their third collaborative album, the deliberately misspelled Open ing Night, the musicians previously of Joan of Arc and Spa Moans, respectively, were taking a break between tours with Karate by staying at Kinsella’s cousin’s 400-year-old apartment in Italy. The indie-rockers, whose new project is called Kinsella and Pulse, LLC, had just eaten a five-course lunch by the ocean and seemed to be wanting for nothing.
Earlier this month, post-rock and post-metal heathens Wolves dropped their latest record, which is self-titled but features snarky artwork referring to the effort as This Is a Record Called Self-Titled by a Band Called Wolves. Issued through Ripcord Records (whose mascot features a cat’s face), it finds the five-piece gnawing at the confines of genre with a ferocity that commands a feral-like instinct to pay attention on both carnal and cerebral levels.
Wolves, founded in 2016, consist of Mark Howes (vocals, guitar); Andrew “Beard” Rodger (guitar, vocals); Ryan Tyrrell (guitar, vocals); Andy Price (bass, vocals); and Robbie Tewelde (drums). They’re based throughout the Coventry in the Midlands County of England. If you just overlooked the fact that four of the five dudes contribute vocals, you won’t when you hear their seismic onslaught of a sound, which will reel in fans of Dillinger Escape Plan hook, link and sinker:
Incidentally, it’s not just Ripcord that’s obsessed with cats; so are the musicians who comprise Wolves. And many of their names are equally colorful and hilarious. Among Tewelde’s cats is Pharrell Williams, Howes’ cat is named Chairman Meow, (nicknamed “The Chairman” or “Mr. Bitey”). Price has one too, and in celebration of Wolves’ new, certifiably and quantifiably insane beast of a record, we invited him to participate in the latest edition of our long-running series, Pet Sounds.
“Everyone involved in this effort isn’t making a penny. It’s so humbling, it’s hard for me to get over it, to be honest. It makes up for the times when the record industry and the music industry are an absolute shit show. It restores my faith in it a bit.” –The Dogs of Hope compilation creator Tom Bejgrowicz
Punk-rock can save human lives, providing catharsis and community to young people in particular who struggle with being ostracized, anger issues and mental health problems. But just last month, Boston’s Iodine Recordings – which Casey Horrigan founded 30 years ago and is one of the most legendary indie labels in the Northeast – demonstrated that punk can save the lives of dogs too.
The label proved as such by teaming with Tom Bejgrowicz, an industry vet who worked on projects for artists ranging from Quicksand to Johnny Cash, for a uniquely laudable compilation called The Dogs of Hope. Consisting almost entirely of previously unreleased songs exclusive to the collection, participants include Jeromes Dream, Deadguy, Killswitch Engage, Snapcase, Enforced, Walter Schreifels of Quicksand, and other bands Iodine devotees would eat up. All proceeds from sales of the collection support the Randolph County Animal Shelter in rural Alabama.
Bejgrowicz started volunteering for the no-kill, privately run facility five years ago and decided to pursue his Dogs of Hope project as a way to offset the total lack of funding the shelter receives from the public or Randolph County region. To make matters worse, the county has zero public animal control or spay/neuter programs, and the shelter is four years into being at full capacity.
When The Bad Penny caught wind about The Dogs of Hope project, we immediately got in touch with Iodine and Bejgrowicz, as it appeared to be – and, it turns out, certainly is – supremely fitting for our ongoing Pet Sounds series. Here’s what Bejgrowicz had to say about the impact volunteering at the shelter has had on his life, his motivations for making the compilation and the tsunami of support Bejgrowicz didn’t expect to receive for giving a hand to man’s best friend.
“Frisky” is a mild way to describe, Nick Oliveri, one of the most prominent rock bassists of the past 30 years. “Feral” or “untamed” would be much more accurate. The eminently talented Oliveri, who was the bottom-heavy-playing backbone of Kyuss and Queens of the Stone Age, and now Dwarves and his own Mondo Generator project, would likely react to even the wildest stories of John Bonham, Ozzy Osbourne and Mötley Crüe with a shrug – and his trademark laugh and smile.
Indeed, there is a tender side to the 53-year-old, Palm Desert-based musician who sometimes goes by the aliases Rex Everything, Pierre Pressure, the Great French Manipulator, Rock & Roll Komodo Dragon and Nikolai Svetlana. Don’t take our word for it: Hear about his deep affinity for felines and check out these photos he sent us for proof.
The Bad Penny recently caught up with Oliveri via video to talk not about the times he played gigs in his birthday suit, his still-intact friendships with QOTSA’s Josh Homme and Kyuss vocalist John Garcia, or how he won over Dwarves’ Blag Dahlia by smashing a vase, but rather about his love for cats.
Lisa Simpson of Boise breakout band Blood Lemon discusses, for New Noise‘s Pet Sounds series, her two tabbies: Gabriel, who is about 8 years old; and Chicken, who is one-and-a-half years young.
This curveball in our ongoing Pet Sounds series is brought to us and you by Glass Noose, an avant-garde/emo project whose leader is Pittsburgh musician Tristan Zemtseff. His coterie of pets is so wild … well, you gotta read this New Noisepost to believe it.
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