The Rochester Trio Turn Basement-Built Grunge And Alternative Rock Into A Bruised Meditation On Mental Static
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SIPUL’s In The Still feels like it was built in the middle of a storm cellar: close, damp, and alive with static. The Rochester trio — James “Spaz” Spaziani on guitar and vocals, Al Bellanca on bass, and Doug Folen on drums — channel the pressure of alternative rock and grunge into something bruised but deliberate, with the kind of momentum that comes from playing like the room might disappear if they stop. The music is heavy, but not blunt. It moves with purpose, carrying its damage in plain view.
The record holds a serious emotional charge. SIPUL wrote much of it while moving through a rough mental stretch, and the songs lean into that unease without dressing it up. There is a recurring fantasy of waking up and finding the worst of life was never real at all, a desperate escape hatch that gives the album its uneasy pulse. OCD and depression sit at the centre of the writing, but In The Still never sounds defeated by its subject matter. It sounds like someone fighting to name the thing that has been naming them.
That tension gives the album its shape. Margarine of Error
distils the record’s core anxiety, pairing spoken-word passages with a sense of spiralling thought, as if the song itself is trying to outrun the brain that made it. No End
pushes into a colder, bleaker corner, its mood stretched taut until it feels almost too thin to hold. Elsewhere, the band’s grunge roots remain visible, but they are bent through stranger angles: Pixies snap, Hum’s weight, Modest Mouse’s ragged nerve, and flashes of Radiohead-like unease all flicker through the mix.
What makes In The Still especially vivid is how hands-on it feels. Recorded entirely by the band in Bellanca’s basement, the album keeps the air of the room intact. You can hear the edges, the small imperfections, the sense that these songs were chased down rather than polished into submission. On Familiar Stranger
, they even let odd little textures creep in — rotary phone, typewriter, wood saw, bells, shovels — details that make the record feel lived-in and slightly haunted.
For SIPUL, this release clearly carries personal weight, but it also lands as a statement of craft. The band sounds sharpened by the process, more confident in its own noise and more willing to let discomfort sit in the open. In The Still does not reach for easy relief. It stays with the mess, then keeps moving anyway.
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