Bio
There is no illusion that the members of Open City don’t have four easily searchable names. It’s, as bassist Andy Nelson says, “impossible to avoid,” that Google will reveal myriad projects and connections to other artists that span the past 30 years of punk and range in origin from New Jersey to California. The mention of it here is a formality that has to be gotten out of the way, for everyone’s benefit and out of respect to the hard work of all other persons involved.
Simply, Open City are a group of experienced rockers who have worked and lived through many eras of punk and hardcore. Their range of influences reflects both those lived experiences and their combined understanding of themselves as artists. Of these influences, vocalist Rachel Rubino has no pretense with the expression of all they connect with in the world of music, and with what they and the rest of Open City worked to achieve with their upcoming Get Better Records released LP, Hands In The Honey Jar.
“The intent for any album this band has created has always been to put together a collection of songs that hit hard, but also touch on a wide range of creative influence. I love Hatebreed as much as I love Beyoncé as much as I love Pissed Jeans as much as I love Bikini Kill.”
On the same topic, guitarist Dan Yemin states, “From a songwriting perspective, we were looking for this record to be rendered from a more expanded palette of influences, while at the same time being more stripped-down sonically. While the band continues to exist in the context of a reverence for the basement epiphanies of the golden age of DIY hardcore punk, we were also making room for UK post-punk influences and some of the more hypnotic and repetitive tactics utilized by Lungfish and Unwound.”
Hands In The Honey Jar features sounds and styles ranging from the emotion of Rites of Spring, the tonal shouting of Huggy Bear, and the rage found on Deathwish Inc. releases at the turn of the millennium. It doesn’t take much work to hear the efforts Yemin refers to on Hands In The Honey Jar. Songs likeFever Dream andNo One Thinks Of You More Than You carry the type of guitar playing you’d hear from emo and post-hardcore bands like Mineral and Hum, while songs likeBobbyandDestined rely on staple post-punk beats from drummer Chris Wilson that can’t be missed.
To produce the record, Open City relied on Arthur Rizk (Power Trip, Show Me The Body, Glitterer) to bring out their vision. Though drums were recorded in a studio space, bass, guitar and vocals were recorded in a wood shop that Rizk uses as a mixing room.
On recording, Yemin also adds “We finished tracking instruments in March of 2020, a week before COVID shutdown. It was a long stretch of time before it seemed safe to start recording vocals. Rachel started coming into the shop to start tracking their parts a full year after the guitars were finished. So the process shifted from ‘fast and spontaneous,’ to ‘drawn out and calculated,’ by necessity because of the public health crisis.”
When it comes to the lyrical approach for Hands In The Honey Jar, Rubino simply kept it real and addressed their life as they knew it.
“For this record, the writing process was a bit difficult to be honest, as we were all so far removed from each other, and from the physical community of our music scene as we knew it. It was definitely a little harder to connect and plug into that part of myself, but I found so much motivation every time we set a date to track. My writing has often come out as a stream of consciousness, usually just before I fall asleep. I might return to my book a few days later, re-read the words I likely forgot I wrote, then piece them together later on fitting them into song structures/patterns. The topics are usually a variety of my own lived experiences, current ideas and events that weigh heavy, little thematic fictional stories that weave together. I think the lyrics always come from a place that’s deeper than I probably understand myself, and that’s the hidden beauty in all of it.”
Rubino goes further to say, “The current landscape in our country that’s trying to erase marginalized groups is a fucking sick joke, it’s impossible to not absorb and feel drained by it. This struggle and heartache definitely finds its way into some tracks. There’s this pressure in America to assimilate or die – literally. The systematic othering and erasure of queer/trans/black/brown bodies is so prevalent here it’s hard not to feel lost in a pit of despair. Watching others lose their compassion for humanity, dignity, and equality is a literal nightmare. I only hope folks can find music or art or literally anything that helps them navigate a way to battle these pervasive harmful ideologies. I did as a young teenager and I’m forever grateful for this.”
Bio by Pierce Jordan
