A Rose By Any Other Name

Those of you with predeliction towards hard/soft guitar dynamics and cloud-surfing female harmonies should reserve a parking space in your heart for New York s Madder Rose. Although post-Velvets power pop combos are ten a penny on East Coast college radio, Madder Rose are worth their weight in gold, thanks to Mary Lorson s innocent, melancholic vocals and her partner, Billy Coti s super-kinetic guitars.
Madder Rose are about to release their fourth album, Hello June Fool, on Cooking Vinyl and it has a gleam in its eye every bit as bright as their debut, Bring It Down (1993) and its successor, Panic On (1994) for my money their best record. The band formed in New York in the early 90s, although when Lorson first moved to The Big A as an 18-year-old, it was not rock n roll which had acted as the spur.
I wanted to be a dancer originally, says Lorson, from her base in central New York state. I thought I d move to New York to go to dance school. That was a great experience but it was a very competitive world and it was pretty evident that I was never gonna be a super-success at it.
It was not, however, the type of Kids From Fame-style hippie commune one might visualize.
It was actually hardcore inner city women, most of them black, and they didn t like this white girl from out of town. There were a bunch of girls who knew each other and they were tough: they would throw cigarettes in my bag. It was kind of nasty at times. But it was interesting. It was probably the first time I learned that an endeavour that seemed really appealing to me had really hard sides to it.
So most of her friends at that time were non-New Yorkers whom she had met waitressing in Manhattan. Eventually she allowed her latent love of music to flourish.
I bought a guitar at the age of 21, she says. And I started singing soon after that. I would have started earlier but my teacher in high school said he really didn t think that was where my talent lied!
Obviously, career guidance counselling was not his strong point. It was originally John Peel who picked up on Lorson s talent in the UK, where the excellent debut single, Swim , almost won his yearly Festive 50 listeners poll. Your reporter first came across them when they supported Big Star in London on their 1993 reunion tour.
I was such a huge Big Star fan, gushes Lorson. They were so great. They made these expressive, somewhat meandering songs but they were also somehow really concise. They had a number of different parts in the songs but they all worked. Supporting them was a real thrill. And those guys from The Posies Chilton had with him were really good.
Hello June Fool is the second Madder Rose album to be released this year, following on from the trippy Tragic Magic, which eventually saw the light of day in January having been wandering around in record company limbo for nearly three years. But also keep an eye open for Lorson s solo project, Saint Low, whose debut single was released last year as part of Easy! Tiger s series of limited edition 7-inch vinyl singles. If anything, this single Keep An Open Mind / Anywhere is possibly Lorson s finest moment, with her dreamy vocals given centre stage in the mix amidst impressively restrained arrangements.
The whole idea is to leave atmospheric space, she explains, and to use different tones. My dream is to make a whole record of that stuff. n
Tragic Magic and Hello June Fool are both released by Cooking Vinyl. Madder Rose jet in to play HQ at the Irish Music Hall of Fame, Middle Abbey Street, on Thursday 26th August. Doors: 7.30pm.