REVIEW - Peach Ring: Rubber Baby

Never skip the opening acts!

This was the crucial lesson that my jaded, “seen-it-all” self learned the hard way when I ventured into the Elks Lodge sweatbox better known as “Hardcore Stadium” in Cambridge, MA for the Lydia Lunch Retrovirus show on July 15 and caught the incendiary closing number from my instant new favorite Boston-area band, Peach Ring.

Imagine if The Shaggs had been able to get out of their basement more often, take a music lesson or two and grow up listening to Crass’ Penis Envy. Or if Hanin Elias of Atari Teenage Riot traveled back in time and fronted the ’77-era Slits. Or if The Blake Babies’ Earwig had been a Hardcore record. That’s what immediately came to mind as Peach Rings’s final blasts of noise rang out and hit me square in the jaw.

Thankfully, my instant regret over missing 99 percent of Peach Ring’s show has been soothed by Rubber Baby, a seven-song cassette (or download available at Bandcamp) that enables anyone who’s witnessed the trio in action to bring the primitive magic home.  

Highlights of this thing? Too many to list, but I'll have a go. The blistering “Lucky Girl” is the best song Poly Styrene never sang, while the screamy “Nana” reminds the former Bowery-goer writing this review of the grimy glory of The Lunachicks’ early days. The tape’s most conventional moment (if those two words can even be used here), “Fucking Kill Me,” is a mid-tempo distorted dirge that takes a groove from the Delta 5/Bush Tetras school of broken Funk and burns it beyond recognition.

Formed in September 2016, Peach Ring is comprised of singer Ari, guitarist/drummer Rose and drummer/bassist Adrienne. In addition to releasing Rubber Baby last month, they recently recorded almost an album’s worth of new material in Portland, ME and are planning to put something out later this year or in early 2018. See them, support them and help them continue to create noise. The world needs them!

Peach Ring performs Tuesday, August 1 at Lilypad Inman in Cambridge, MA. Info HERE.

Peach Ring on Facebook

Peach Ring on Bandcamp

JOEL GAUSTEN ON FACEBOOK

READ JOEL'S BIO
PURCHASE JOEL'S BOOKS
EMAIL JOEL at gaustenbooks@gmail.com