Eponymous Debut Masterpiece was released just over a month ago on Bandcamp and streaming services, and to say Madrone is pleased with themselves would be an understatement. At just over 40 minutes, this work offers a delicious adventure through candid songwriting, classic instrumentation, and aggressively overdriven textures.
Always daring in their presentation, the album opens with a seven-second harsh noise piece, appropriately titled “Intro”. Challenging any listener who might be second-guessing themselves to abandon all hope, this spikey exterior obscures a soft underbelly where Madrone invites us to feel their imaginative loss in a world made up of distorted guitars and soft-spoken indie vocals. To quote their most recent Instagram post promoting the record, “We don’t really care whether you go out and seek our music or if it’s physical you buy our tape or if you stream it on whatever. All it is is I know for a fact that we are undeniably one of the greatest f****** rock bands out right now and undeniably one of the greatest f****** rock bands of all time.”
Brash and cocky, this attitude lies at odds with the sentiment of their deeply personal record: explosively overdriven textures and buried vocal overdubs mirror the raw struggle of this writing in its loneliness, drug use, and agonizing ambition. The irony of that promotional approach won’t be lost on a well-seasoned listener, and it made me chuckle much like the off-putting hostility of “Intro” did.
Madrone demonstrates their range as a group extremely well in Eponymous Debut Masterpiece. Self-produced, the members clearly know their strengths: for listeners who were drawn in by the seven seconds of chaos at the top of this record, a track like “Elite Prospects” offers thick, driving guitars that shriek in ecstatic misery, wrapping themselves around screaming cymbals until a thick haze of fuzz obscures the instrumentation completely. On the other hand, a more typical lo-fi rock enjoyer might prefer the track “Ode #2”, more laid back and disarming in its production. Personally, the track I kept coming back to was “Something Honest”. More like an epic poem than a rock song, Madrone shows their hand with vulnerable lyrics that any struggling musician would find relatable: “Too tired to play music, it just lives in my head / There’s no melody to absolve me / But I keep trying to make / Something / honest and pure / honest and perfect”.
Madrone’s got something special with Eponymous Debut Masterpiece, and they know it. For fans of “… nougat, physical comedy, the loading wheel on a computer…” as they claim on their Bandcamp page, this record will be thoroughly enjoyed by anyone who’s willing to take the time to give it a close listen… and if you’ve got a bizarre sense of humor, it might just bring a smile to your face.
Written by Hann Sandoz
