One Big Quilt "Vertical Farming" Album Review
Review by: Isabella Cornelius, Writer @itsuhbella
Edited by: Andrew Perrizo, Owner/Editor @melodicnoisemedia
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Album art for One Big Quilt’s “Vertical Farming”
Named after both the band’s “patchwork of ideas and influences” as well as “a description of the rolling hills of the Palouse,” One Big Quilt’s music is just as warm as their name sounds. Vertical Farming, their debut album, released on September 18th and “was recorded entirely live in one frantic weekend.”
The band consists of only two members: guitarist and vocalist Winnie McGreevy and drummer Joe Campbell. “I play with a large amount of pedals through a hollow body, which makes the tone really full,” said McGreevy. “It honestly just didn't really occur to us to add another instrument in the early days of the band, said Campbell. “It’s been super cool to really push what all we can accomplish sound-wise with just two people.”
The album wastes no time in showcasing the rhythmic synergy that results from such a tight-knit, jazz-trained, two-piece band with the opening instrumental, “Crop Rotation”. The bouncy shuffle of the drums at the onset of the track underscore an arpeggiated guitar riff, before the song mellows out towards the end as the drum groove slips in and out of half-time. Jangly, warm guitar lines, punchy drums, crisp hi-hats, plenty of syncopation and metric modulation are all equally present in this first track, as well as the entire album, showcasing their “unpredictable but satisfying,” genre-bending style.
“Crop Rotation” is paralleled compositionally by the album’s closing track, “Harvest”, creating a seasonal metaphor every time the listener puts the record through another orbit.
Vertical Farming contains so much more than just mathy riffs and complicated drums. The second track, “Painful Midnight Crash”, introduces McGreevy’s range of evocative vocal moods and lyrical narratives that leave the listener reading in-between every line. Unexpected rests at the ends of phrases give trepidation and fill rhythmic space. When the chorus kicks in, the drums follow short behind with a break-beat that stands out as the album’s first real pop of energy, cutting through the mix in the same way an unexpected crash bursts through your peripheral vision. “Painful Midnight Crash” is the first of many songs that utilize automotive imagery in some way, especially relating to the body, whether mechanical or organic. The listener has no clue what “the body left behind” was, but they certainly know it must mean something, as the song directly leads itself into the next track, a loud and raucous instrumental simply and eerily titled “The Body”. The siren-like guitar and a rhythmic sensation of barreling down a back-road at night evoke the experience of an ambulance ride, or perhaps the moment that led to such a crash in the first place.
“While I don’t write any of the lyrics, I do aim to use the drums to accentuate…. It’s pretty easy to convey what it feels like to inhabit a body,” said Campbell. “Designing a groove that makes you think of a car is a little more abstract.”
This auto/body imagery comes up in other songs, most explicitly in “Car Mechanic”, but also more subtly in tracks like “Medical News” and “96”. It is not made explicit to the viewer, but McGreevy’s fragmented narrative calls to mind the ways memories manifest as fragments under duress.
What is most apparent in this album, is just how locked-in these two performers are, constantly pushing and pulling each other’s tempo. “It feels like we are still just scratching the surface of the sound we can produce.” said McGreevy. Syncopation and complex rhythms flow between the two, allowing for one to push forward rhythmically, while the other can attune the soundscape. You can hear this in tracks like “96”, where the twee-tinged melancholy of the verse turns into a driving instrumental break. In fact, many songs have no choruses or verses, not in a lyrical sense. Instead, instrumental breaks create compositional dynamicism without relying on traditional songwriting structures. For example, “Car Mechanic” features a shuffling groove that crescendos in volume and meter, leading up to a really smooth transition from bouncy 6/8 time into a half-time, 4/4 feeling to end out the song. While they may describe themselves as “math-y”, One Big Quilt isn’t rapidly jumping around between odd time-signatures. Instead, metric modulation is used as a songwriting tool, spotlighting their multi-genre experience and inspirations.
The band’s instrumental chops are paired with an equal level of variety in McGreevy’s vocal performance. For example, “Summit” starts with poppy, bittersweet vocals like those found on lighter tracks like “96” and “Dance with Someone”. However, as “Summit” continues, the guitar slowly saturates with distortion and her vocals soon become twinged with frustration. The apathetic discomfort grows in her voice as she sings about doctor’s tables and gender dysphoria. Finally, a spoken word verse follows a lengthy instrumental break, describing a time in which she was gendered correctly by someone. As the last crescendo builds, her voice responds with a loud and euphoric outburst, singing “Never felt anything/like that!” Themes of gender identity and dysphoria are also explored in tracks like “Witness” and “Seven Hour Delay”, where her voice carries equal amounts of repression and self-love, with the latter track being a perfect juxtaposition between her softer and heavier vocals.
Altogether, Vertical Farming paints a picture of a band that has steadily developed their voice. They wear their inspiration on their sleeves, describing themselves as “the midpoint between Adrienne Lenker and black midi”, but they have created something that can’t really be described with comparisons alone. Emo-twinged lyrics and crunchy percussion add a punk sensibility that balances the “math-y” guitar licks, oozing with just-overdriven-enough vibes and enveloping the listener in a soundscape that lives up to the beauty of the band’s namesake.
One Big Quilt will be playing at Mortimers on November 17th, along with Isssy, Flora//Moon, Eli Orion, and By Will Alone. Vertical Farming can be found on all streaming platforms except Spotify, and including the worker cooperative music platform SubvertFM. Physical copies are available on Bandcamp.
