There’s a particular thing that happens in DC when musicians from different corners of the same scene collide. Loose Leash is that kind of collision — vocalist Rena from Bacchae and guitarist Ben from Give, joined by Thad on bass and Antonio on drums, both pulled from Oddbodi, another DC outfit where Ben plays bass. Four songs, all recorded with Matt Michel at Viva Studio and mastered by Will Killingsworth at Dead Air Studios. Released February 5th.
The band describes the writing process as open-ended. Most of the music came from Ben, most of the lyrics and vocal phrasing from Rena, but nothing was locked until the full lineup got hands on it. “Nothing was entirely complete before the whole band got a chance to learn the songs and make edits to their parts or the songs as a whole,” Rena explains.
What came out of that process is a short batch of tracks that dodge easy categorization. There’s punk in there, sure. But also funk-tinged grooves, odd note choices that sit between Primus and post-hardcore, and a rhythmic sense that keeps things from ever settling into one lane. The comparisons people have thrown at them are all over the place — Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rollins Band, Rage Against the Machine, At the Drive-In — and somehow none of those are wrong.
Photos by Kenny Savercool, shot at the February 26 Show in Baltimore at Soundstage.
“This Chaos” opens the set and runs on an idea about how to play combinations of notes “in a way that sits between feeling happy and sad.” Lyrically, it follows the same thread.
The band puts it: “It feels pretty universally accepted that our society is becoming increasingly shameless about how it denigrates the vast majority of the population in order to further enrich the most powerful among us.” The song is about trying to hold both realities at once — how bleak and violent everything is, and how good a simple afternoon with people you care about can still feel. Trying to stay in the joy without going numb to the rest.
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“No Plan” is the one where late-era Shudder to Think was apparently on constant rotation during writing, though the band admits that may not have fully come through. What did come through is a collision of parts — instruments and vocals smashing into each other in ways the band says they were really happy with. Lyrically, they say it’s straightforward enough to need no explanation, and they’re probably right.
“Broken System” picks up the pace. Poison Idea’s Feel the Darkness era was a touchstone, and the song was built around the bass line first. Maha Shami from NØ Man and her daughter Kami contribute backing vocals.
Matt from NØ Man (see our interview here) — Maha’s partner and bandmate — recorded all four tracks. The lyrics come from Rena’s repeated experiences navigating different spaces throughout her life: jobs, music scenes, social settings. “The insincere messages of ‘justice’/’fairness’/’unity’ that never quite seem to materialize,” she says.
“Imaginary Lines” is the heaviest of the four, though the band notes with some amusement that it’s also the only track with a single power chord on guitar. Influences ranged from ’90s grunge and alt-rock to turn-of-the-millennium Dischord.
The subject is harder — growing apart from people close to you, either through choices or through violence. Rena describes it as being about “friends and family members who went to jail or were killed, the choices they may have made that lead them there, the feelings of trying to cope with that, and the idea that you might not be much different from the people you know who ended up going down a very different path.”
Loose Leash played their first show on February 26th at Baltimore Soundstage, opening for Angel Du$t.
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The self-titled debut is available on Bandcamp and all streaming platforms now.
The band’s next show is in dc March 28th for a fundraiser for ZAP fest:
