Hellrazor
“I don’t love touring — I think it stifles creativity. I love being home. I love bed.”
This is maybe a little surprising coming from Hellrazor singer-guitarist Mike Falcone. Not just because he’s emailing the Scene from the road, somewhere on the West Coast, deep into a five-week tour with his New England three-piece. But it’s also a bit of a surprise since his main gig, playing with indie-rock faves Speedy Ortiz, has been hitting it hard since the moment they formed in 2011, putting out multiple releases annually and logging shows at a 200-plus-per-year clip. That’s a pace seldom seen since the heyday of ’90s road dogs like Stephen Malkmus of Pavement, Mary Timony from Helium and The Breeders’ Deal sisters — all of whom Speedy has toured with.
“This past weekend was actually the five-year mark of my first time playing with [Speedy singer-guitarist] Sadie [Dupuis],” Falcone marvels. “So this is the longest break we’ve had. Wow.”
The 30-something musician has built up quite the virtual Rolodex of like-minded bands in his time drumming for Speedy Ortiz, who in their five years together have graduated from basement shows to larger clubs and festival gigs as one of indie music’s premier acts. That band’s success has also drawn attention to the fertile Northeastern underground’s remarkably deep collection of creative guitar-driven groups, a couple of whose members currently play in Hellrazor — namely, bassist Julian Wahlberg from The Screw-Ups and drummer Jon Hartlett from Ovlov. Both bands hail from Newtown, Conn.
That’s helped the trio in the sense that, while this is technically their first full-fledged national tour, they aren’t playing to empty rooms or hemorrhaging money on motels, as is often the case on most DIY outfits’ maiden U.S. voyages.
Still, Falcone explains, “This was my first time booking 30 shows on my own all at once. It felt like starting from zero — you know how it is. It gets pretty frustrating. But we tried to be strategic, asking for shows in areas where we know people. ... It was like piecing together a huge puzzle or slowly working your way through Zelda 64. I’ve been trying for a few years to get on shows with [Tallahassee’s] Surface to Air Missive or [San Francisco’s] Tony Molina. They’re both so amazing. So it felt great to finally share a bill with them.”
Molina’s something of a kindred spirit to Hellrazor. If you haven’t heard Molina, he’s a guy who writes similarly concise, guitarmony-heavy power-pop songs with a metallic edge — look to his 2013 LP Dissed and Dismissed as an entry point. There’s also the Dave Grohl/Hellrazor parallel — drummer from beloved band steps out from behind the kit, tries his hand as bandleader, and kills it — which is somewhat ham-fisted, but undeniable. If you agree that Foo Fighters peaked with their first two records — or nerdier yet, if you’re a big enough a fan to have heard Grohl’s 1992, pre-FF home recording Pocketwatch under the alias LATE! — check out Hellrazor’s “Vegas” and “Covered in Shit,” standouts from the band’s new LP Satin Smile, and thank me later.
Reference points aside, the 40-minute set flies in the face of Falcone’s own theory about touring stifling creativity. Listening to it leaves one wondering when and how he even found the downtime to write such a fully formed set of scrappy anthems. Saturday’s show promises tour-tight versions of this material, with the group’s swing through the South representing the final leg of a trip that began on a date that, to many of us, feels like ages ago: right on election night.
Soon enough, Falcone will get to go back to bed and rest up for the holiday before Speedy springs back into action to release and support the band’s as-yet-untitled third LP in 2017. But in hindsight, even the admitted homebody agrees one could’ve picked a worse time to get on the road and off the internet.
“We left for tour only a few hours after the [election] results were announced,” Falcone recalls, “so our first long drive on that first day felt pretty long and exhausting. Our first two shows, in Pennsylvania and Michigan, weren’t well attended, partially due to local protests. The vibe felt kinda gloomier than usual, but the bands on those shows were all great. I’m happy we got forced into moving so soon after the [election] instead of just hitting refresh on our feed all day.”
Editor’s note: This show was initially slated to take place at event space Drkmttr on Dec. 10. In the wake of a building fire that killed at least 36 people at a warehouse-turned-DIY-artists’ commune and event space in Oakland, Calif., the Nashville fire marshal has temporarily shut down some of Music City’s unconventional venues. This show has been moved to Betty's Grill.
