E-mail
Print
From grim beginnings
Roots-pop group Roses in full bloom
By Alex Rewey
Roses w/Juniper Tar, ATLATL, Time Since Western @ Mad Planet Sept. 27 8 p.m..
As many of us emerged hopeful once again from our homes this spring, no longer cloistered by the harshly oppressive winter, one group of UW-Milwaukee students emerged together to face a particularly promising musical future.
The relatively young roots-pop group Roses is comprised of song-writing guitarist/vocalist Jarrett Hendrickson, classically trained violinist Caitlin Guszkowski, bassist Andrew McGuire, and The Celebrated Workingman’s Charlie Hosale on drums.
Setting up shop in Hosale’s parents’ “big, mazy house” on Lake Drive, the group collectively found an unlikely sanctuary from the physical cold and snow, and from their own personal daily doldrums.
“We were all in a really bad place,” recalls Hosale. “We decided we would write songs and get through the winter.”
These somber beginnings are more than apparent in their songwriting. Drawing upon poppier elements of acts like The Magnetic Fields, as well as the country roots of singers like John Prine, Roses has invented themselves as a somewhat unique median. While listening to the immensely down-tempo demo “Heavy Silence,” one doesn’t have to try too hard to imagine the bleak, snow-capped surroundings of its inception.
“It’s like a country skeleton,” says McGuire, describing Roses’ sound.
Yet, even in the darker moments of songs like “Waiting,” the group exudes an ambient warmth, thanks in part to Guszkowski’s traditionally composed violin amidst the highly emotional subject matter that thankfully never quite descends into the overly melodramatic or sentimental.
Having both been interested in the musical avant-garde for years, couple Hosale and Guszkowski’s first instinct was to craft a sound heralding back to the grainier aspects of groups like Low and The Dirty 3 at their most experimental, an ambition they still more or less maintain.
“We’ve discussed lately about making our sound a bit dirtier,” says UWM linguistics major Guszkowski. Like many young bands, their influences and visions occasionally vary far and wide, for better or worse.
“I was in a classic rock band for like seven years…” jokes Hendrickson, a native of Green Bay and junior English major at UWM. While structurally traditional, Hendrickson’s songs are often deeply personal and invocative of unhappy times. With the onset of summer, the group’s mood changed drastically for the better, yet they also can’t help but find themselves looking forward to colder weather, a return of sorts to the inspiring restraints of last winter.
“We really hit the ground running. We were in this little microcosm,” says Hosale. Roses recently took a break from playing a steady string of local shows to record their first, as yet untitled demo with a mutual friend at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. Hosale, also an employee of the East Side’s Atomic Records, sees the group continuing its lo-fi tradition in the future, experimenting with more diverse instrumentation, producing limited runs of 7” singles rather than full-length releases.
“That’s just more fun,” says Hosale.
As far as Hosale’s two years as keyboardist and occasional percussionist in the lately ubiquitous Celebrated Workingman, he often looks to the older group for a great deal of advice and insight, despite a vastly different group dynamic.
Despite Roses’ general cohesion, like any group they also have more than a few hang-ups.
“It’s hard to be the girl amidst the guys,” admits Guszkowski. Nevertheless, the group’s mutual friendship is overwhelmingly apparent. Nearly all of them have enrolled together in “Intro to Caving” this fall.
“We’re all going spelunking,” laughs Hosale.
It has nearly become an industry cliché for musicians to claim their work as being wholly for themselves, yet one listen to Roses’ burgeoning body of cathartically inspired tunes and one can’t quite help but believe them. Thankfully, they’ve decided to share their unique and ever-changing take on organic downcast country-pop.
“It’s less about the music than about the experience,” says Hosale.
Roses will play Saturday, Sept. 27 at Mad Planet alongside fellow local acts Juniper Tar, ATLATL, and Time Since Western.
> Comments