New locals to love right away
QUILT | P.A.'s Lounge: February 20 | When I ask Jamaica Plain trio Quilt to describe their dream bill, we're forced to upgrade it into a festival. Suddenly, we've got the Urinals alongside Can, Crystal Stilts backing Nick Drake, the Gun Club abutting Soft Machine, the Vibracathedral Orchestra jamming with the Velvet Underground.
Point being, Quilt are an extraordinarily absorbent band, sucking in influences with the indiscriminate thirst of an old rug whose design is indistinguishable from its stains. Drummer and singer Taylor McVay met Quilt's two other multi-instrumental vocalists, Anna Rochinski and Shane Butler, during their time at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts — another forum where they found themselves deluged by disparate influences and expressions, from installation to performance and video.
Four clams will get you a copy of their debut cassette, Yeoman Man Man, a smoky, spooky entree into their work. "Thee Elephants Tusk" takes a stretch of twangy vintage psych and frees its ghosts — it's a fuzzed-out folk incantation with more nervous energy than it (or the cassette) can properly hold. Next month, they're preparing to release a new seven-inch on Breakfast of Champs Records.
As varied and as numerous as the members' individual reference points are, a sticking point in the process is that all three share in the songs — which typically emerge after hours of unhinged jamming and just as much judicious pruning. The result is luminous, unfiltered, haunting psych-folk that teeters among three dangerously creative minds. Call it threedom rock.
