Stickers in the Bathroom: Artist Profiles

Photos courtesy of Couch Sex

For blossoming bands trying to gain a local foothold, advertising will make or break your chances at success. But, fortunately, there’s a low-effort way for anyone to get the word out. The subjects of these profiles were all discovered through stickers they left in concert venue bathrooms, a tactic they all claim was practically second nature. So the next time you spot a cool sticker at your favorite hangout spot, give them a listen—you might just find a new local favorite.

COUCH SEX

Most bands are on Spotify and Apple Music. The bands who’ve “made it” are probably on Tidal as well. But North Shore-based party punks Couch Sex are on the bleeding edge of a new musical forefront: Pornhub. 

“I feel like we’re probably going to keep releasing music there first,” says bassist Mat Petrone. “It’s probably the only website people are going to search “couch sex” on. The last time we looked at [the uploads], they had, like, 3,000 views. A lot of thumbs down...but they did see us.”

Their, let’s say, innovative approach to advertisement is just one aspect of Couch Sex’s humor-first mentality. “We’re supposed to be fun, not good,” guitarist Keith Young adds. “Satire’s definitely a big part of it. [Couch Sex] is almost, like, a character piece.” 

Key to the construction of the Couch Sex character is a solid sense of humor, and one glance at their social media presence will check that box. Whether it’s tattooing each other’s names on a dare, or repurposing meme templates to advertise their shows, the members of Couch Sex are serious about not taking themselves too seriously. There’s no better marker of their sense of humor than Young’s old stage guitar, a self-described “beater” covered in various paint-marker obscenities, with “Couch Sex sucks” written on the fretboard. 

“It’s really hard to play,” Young claims. “We just glued a bunch of shit to it, and now I can’t see any of the fret numbers. I haven’t touched it in like two years.”

But, character piece or not, their blend of hardcore and party-punk influences helps create a sound that’s as genuine as they come. Across their social media platforms, Couch Sex will consistently describe themselves as “Tony Hawk punk”, in reference to the timeless soundtracks for the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater videogames. It’s an instantly recognizable relationship, with rough, raw vocals in the style of Swingin’ Utters, or the instant connection between Reverend Horton Heat’s “I Can’t Surf” and Couch Sex’s “Can’t Swim”.

 Their signature deviation from these classic influences, according to Petrone, is the ability to get weird: with four-word anthemic jams like “Do Drugs Eat Bugs” or the Cool Runnings sample on “Cheap Ass Whiskey”, Couch Sex approaches music with fun as priority one. Their shows are no different, either—as Young puts it, “[their] shows are fun as hell.” In fact, live performances are Couch Sex’s biggest selling point.

“I definitely recommend going to our shows before listening to one of our albums. We’re an experience band. One of our songs, Matt and I pretty much never sing it. We’ll teach people how to sing our songs and pass the mic around the room, or go into the pit with our guitars. As a band, we really like to get people involved. 

But a terrible tragedy lies buried within the history of Couch Sex, immortalized forever in their song, “Can’t Swim”.

“For a while, we were trying to be surf-y. But, when we finally got together for real, it just never really surfed. Apparently, it’s hard to make surf music, and you can’t really be surf-y when you’re in Massachusetts. So, now, it’s almost like an ironic thing. We can’t swim, and we can’t surf. We’re trash people.”

As a concept, trash is as core to the identity of Couch Sex as their inimitable humor or all-out live performances. They drink cheap whiskey, they can’t swim, and they only shower when the subject of “Bad Luck Charm” is in Boston. On their track “Rat Shit”, Young growls out the essence of the band—“a couple of rats, doing our best.” That’s who Couch Sex are: basement trash, Tony Hawk punks, who can’t swim or surf, just doing their best. 

TRACK MEAT

Two hours’ drive away from the bustling Boston underground is the small town of Amherst, Massachusetts. Home to three major universities, and the northernmost tip of New England’s “Knowledge Corridor”, Amherst was practically designed for Bohemian creatives. Amherst band Track Meat spoke highly of their home scene during our interview, with nothing but glowing praise for its community’s generosity and acceptance.

“[Amherst] is this huge group of people, and a lot of them really enjoy music, and the arts, and everything like that,” guitarist and bassist Mike Bergeron tells me. “That’s definitely one thing we really enjoy about the town. It’s really helpful for us to get our specific feelings into music.” 

As a band anchored at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Track Meat’s creative endeavors are welcomed with open arms, both by student organizations and the city at large. After all, Amherst is no stranger to fostering alternative rock acts.

“Matt [Comoletti, Track Meat’s guitarist]’s favorite band, Dinosaur Jr. are from here. It’s such a rich musical town, and there are all these organizations on campus helping organize shows. It’s always amazing to see how many people want to come out and support smaller artists. And, being a small artist in the area, that’s amazing.”

Writing what they call “vaguely depressing post-punk”, Track Meat’s sound toes the line between harmony and total sonic meltdown, soaked in reverb and snarling distortion. It’s a unique kind of musical catharsis, building tension and releasing it explosively, like taking a deep breath in before screaming your heart out. With that kind of emotional vulnerability, it’s no wonder that Track Meat’s musical philosophy revolves around self-expression.

“Music has always been a way of clarifying our emotions,” says Bergeron. “We really enjoy being able to clear our heads, and put the stuff going on in the broader world into specific words.”

While their music might sound serious, the members themselves are anything but. Drummer John Davis describes their live atmosphere as “easygoing, but committed to making sure our music actually sounds good.” 

“We have our stuff down,” Comoletti adds. “We’re not super sloppy or anything, but we’re not standing up there like statues, either. We’re hanging out, we’re up there playing, and making sure everybody’s having a good time.” 

The journey to form Track Meat in its current iteration mirrors the casual composure of its members, too. Where the Beatles started with a church band, and the Rolling Stones started with a trashy flat in London, Track Meat begins with a bed sale on Facebook Marketplace.

“So, how we found [Davis], is—we were moving into our apartment, and I needed a bed,” Comoletti begins. “I see this guy selling a bed on Facebook Marketplace… he comes over, and my bass is sitting in the corner. Turns out, he plays drums, and my band needs a drummer. So, I give him a sticker, and tell him to let me know if he’s interested.”

“That’s basically it,” Davis continues. “I thought it was kind of weird, y’know, this dude was asking me to join his band when I just sold him a bed. But, I listened to them on Spotify, and thought, ‘Yeah, this sounds pretty fun, I can get down with this.’ And it’s working out pretty well.”

With Davis as a part of the lineup, a renewed and reinvigorated Track Meat has already hit the touring circuit, playing shows across New England with great support from small music towns not too dissimilar to their own.

“We played a gig at Rhode Island College, at their radio station, we played a smaller gig at our hometown friend’s basement… we’re really just trying to get more shows in the scene out here. There’s a lot of promise in the Amherst scene,” Bergeron tells me. “We’ve had really great shows out here, and that’s awesome.” 

THE GRANITEERS

When you’re trying to make “good, hard-hitting, melodic music”, as guitarist Nick Ferrero puts it, it helps to have a rock-solid foundation. And with a sound steeped in power-pop and punk rock, Manchester, New Hampshire band The Graniteers have carved out a revivalist niche that Ferrero asserts anyone will like.

“We can kind of chameleon into any sort of situation, within the New England music scene. If we’re on a bill with some lighter bands, we can be a little more high-energy, and if we’re on a bill with a bunch of hardcore bands, then we’re a good break in between them.”

By his own admission, Ferrero, the creative force behind The Graniteers, isn’t seeking to reinvent the wheel. But to Ferrero, keeping it simple is a guiding principle towards solving what the band sees 

 “We kind of take pride in it, honestly. Music’s become so factioned, and we’re just trying to bring back all the things that matter in rock and roll—getting people dancing, getting people moving, that kind of power-pop mentality.”

So, in order to get back to the roots of rock and roll, The Graniteers lean heavily on their own roots, as lifetime musicians and emphatic believers in the value of a good local scene.

“Everybody’s like, ‘Oh, man, our scene here sucks, it used to be so much better, you have to go here, or here’. But, when you go there, people there think it sucks. So, it’s really what you make of it, you know? Home is where you make it.”

To The Graniteers, music is as much a community as it is a job. From acts in folk and Oi-punk to tribute performances, members of The Graniteers occasionally crop up in other acts across greater New England, and rebuke the binding of bands to their home cities entirely.

“I like to tell people we’re a New England band. If you think about it, even in those smaller states, it isn’t hard for, say, a New Hampshire band to play New York, or Boston. So, I get a little annoyed when people are, like, ‘Oh, you’re a New Hampshire band.’ We’re a Boston band, too, you know, since we’re an hour away. It’s a little silly—and I think it should be more unified.”

Ferrero has certainly earned his wings as a New England musician. Formerly of New Jersey’s Hudson Falcons, with several solo releases under his belt, he’s been playing music in one form or another since the early ‘00s. For him, live music is a way of life.

“I played my first show at my high school cafeteria when I was 16. That was the best show I’ve ever played, because it was the first time I experienced being in front of an audience. Now, I’ve been doing it so long that I do it just to do it, you know? I don’t know any better.”