Photo courtesy Victor DeLorenzo
Victor DeLorenzo
Victor DeLorenzo
At first thought, it seems unlikely that Violent Femmes and Bauhaus would intersect. It’s a long road from “Blister in the Sun” to “Bela Lugosi’s Dead,” yet 40 years on their paths met in a new group, Night Crickets. The Violent Femmes’ original drummer Victor DeLorenzo and Bauhaus bassist David J formed the lock-down time, long distance recording group with J’s manager, multi-instrumentalist Darwin Meiners. The trio’s debut album, A Free Society, was released last week on the Omnivore label.
DeLorenzo met Meiners in 2013, backstage at Coachella, after one of his final shows with the Femmes. They kept in touch. “He called and asked if I’d like to create some drum tracks,” DeLorenzo says. The project gained momentum. “He said, ‘Let’s take the idea further. Why don’t we see if David wants to get involved?’ I’d send drum tracks to them and they’d send their parts back to me. Between the back and forth we came up with six finished pieces.”
Night Crickets
The recordings were composed through file sharing: J lives in Los Angeles, Meiners in San Francisco and DeLorenzo in Milwaukee. “I took it upon myself to find a record deal,” DeLorenzo continues. He contacted Omnivore Records whose owner, Cheryl Pawelski, is from Milwaukee. Within two days of receiving the tracks, she called DeLorenzo and offered a record deal. The trio recorded an additional seven tracks for the album.
A Free Society sounds nothing like the Femmes and not much like Bauhaus. The hypnotic grooves, cloudy mood and dreamy vocals form a Ketamine high of an album that encourages the listener’s mind to free-associate. A Free Society emerges from diverse DNA strands from rock’s past 50 years while sounding somehow contemporary—or better yet, out of time. However, lyrical references to the present are audible amidst the ashram sheen of “The Unreliable Narrator” (the tale of a recent president). Lead vocals and songwriting are shared amongst the three. “We worked in a true sense of collaboration,” DeLorenzo says. “We agreed with each other’s sensibilities and writing styles.”
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Could live dates follow? Maybe, and another album too.
