Events

[INDIE] On their third full length, Plaza, out late last winter on Mexican Summer, Bostonian quartet Quilt trimmed the fat. Which isn’t to imply that the album lacks an expansion of ideas; they’re just presented in a more concise, tightened-down manner than on previous efforts. Plaza is a distillation of Quilt’s genius, melding tunes written by three distinctly different personalities (guitarist/vocalists Anna Fox Rochinski and Shane Butler, plus a single contribution from drummer John Andrews) into a surprisingly cohesive mix that seasons the band’s psychedelic-pop base (“Roller”) with woodsy folk (gorgeous opener “Passerby”), garage fuzz (“O’Connor’s Barn”), and occasional funky bits (check out “Hissing My Plea”). The songs were written far-and-wide, some being pulled as fragments from ideas for previous records, while others were penned on the road, on the fly. For a band that must keep moving in order to survive, there’s little down time to stop and write, but Quilt sounds neither hurried nor harried on Plaza, which magnifies their collective strength in musical chemistry and lets it play out in tidy, mostly four-minute segments. Rochinski’s voice is both sultry and dreamlike, while Butler’s heartbroken warble adds a tempering, earthy element to the mix. Plaza is a meeting of musical minds that’s more likened to a thin, colorful blanket than a heavy Quilt—less stifling, it functions well for all seasons. See for yourself on Saturday, September 24 when Quilt plays Mohawk Place with Jordan Lee’s project, Mutual Benefit, touring behind his shimmering new Skip a Sinking Stone (Mom+Pop).