Eat Your Heart Out Album

“GONDOLIERS are back to pave your ears with that mighty steamroller of rambling guitar-synth terror.” - The Boston Hassle


The most unsettling trio of noisemakers on any plane of existence today, the Gondoliers, are set to release their first record on 100% Breakfast on July 14th, 2013. The album, Eat Your Heart Out, dives headlong into twisted worlds. They’re full of poison vapor synths and hailstorm guitars the band has been mapping out for the past few years behind the demented navigation of vocalist John Manson. Here, the band distills their sickened mind-meld of generations of the thorniest rock possible – laserstorm prog, the gnarled electronics of Einsturzende Neubauten, the off-balance drums of Jawbox, guitars that swerve between Duane Denison and Thurston Moore.

The Gondoliers – which was originally Daniel Madri (Joy, the Jack McCoys, Godboy) on guitar and synths and Brendan Gibson on drums – had released a handful of instrumental records as a two-piece before hooking up with Manson for their first stab at recording together in 2011. Manson was already one of the most recognizable performers in Boston. He’d spent years howling through gas masks and bashing battered metal drums in Neptune, fronting the Young Sexy Assassins from behind an onstage desk, and courting awkward moments with junkyard Vangelis atmospherics of Magic People. From outside of clubs and basement bulkheads, you’d hear his voice carry over the rest of the band’s cacophony in its telltale crazed oration, one long and unfolding nightmare sermon. He was a perfect fit for the Gondoliers’ bleak sci-fi assault.

The relaunched band took to blasting rickety basement shows with blinding floodlights and overwhelming noise. The Gondoliers come at the whole thing with a metaphysical trickster detachment. They dress in coveralls, They dress in hard hats. They wrap themselves in plastic backyard sports equipment and spill cheap beer all over the house.

But the record is all business. Eat Your Heart Out is a nasty, bitter meditation and prophecy in the vein of Blake, Rimbaud, and possibly Ghostbuster Ray Stantz. “You read it from the satellites and you see it from the gates of Heaven and from the tallest of the lifeguard chairs and the highest horses,” says Manson in the dizzying, majestic finale “Win/Win.” “We win and we win and we win in retrospect.” Are the Gondoliers the Chosen Ones, early Americans building cities on the hill and charging toward manifest destinies? Or are they the sinister ferrymen escorting those pompous souls to a fireblasted fate? It’s tough to keep track.

There are sleek and ice cold synth pads from ‘80s dystopian night clubs. There are uncomfortable guitars tangled up and discarded from post-hardcore garbage trucks. Sickened images from feverish dreams slip past it in an oily fog. The band conjures a mish-mash of John Carpenter films playing melted and out of order at all the wrong speeds. Casts of pilgrims, castaways, backyard hobos, lusting visitors with little wrists, archrivals, and narcissistic artists jump out of shadows. The band changes directions without the slightest warning.

But there’s always a game plan. “Save our energy for when we get invited to the real event,” advises Manson in “Rebekka.” “When we learn to breathe fire and rain it down on all the children of our heroes who were falsely ired.” - Matt Parish