It was a good year for indie rock outsiders, and 2015 is already shaping up to be pretty bright, too. One of the key, probably overlooked, releases from that straight-to-cassette universe of home-recorded guitar music came from from Dean Engle, aka Quarterbacks. Unshakable love song "Center," with its subtly soul-crushing lyrics like As I get older I realize that love is mostly situational, might be the best song on his Double Double Whammy-released tape, Quarterboy. Next year, he's putting out a proper self-titled with the Quarterbacks band (Max Restaino and Tom Christie) that includes a new version of "Center"—premiering on The FADER below—that swaps the bare-boned strumming for a speedy, snarky, electric guitar racket. Still, though, the trio maintains the unpretentious, offhand quality that makes rock music like this feel so immediate. "We recorded all 19 songs in a row, live, except for the vocals, which I recorded after we had dinner," Engle writes over email. "It took me five years to write twenty minutes worth of music for a record. The LP sounds like three boys playing fast music in a shed, which is what I wanted." Quarterbacks is out February 10th on Team Love.
Photo credit: David Grimaldi
