by Dusty Hayes (@dustyshayes)
The greatest bands are not those that come prepackaged with a crew of Grammy-winning producers, Ivy League PR teams, and music written by self-fellatiating think tanks, which is then performed by a group of musicians delicately assembled from a roster of nepo-babies. No, great bands, the kind that will live on in the public consciousness until the seas boil, must be carved with terrible effort out of the minds of ravenous outlaw poets who have an all-consuming compulsion to rock. They must be handcrafted, not with delusions of wealth and fame, but with the goal of creating masterpieces; they must be like SKORTS.
SKORTS is the hottest thing that the New York City music scene has to offer these days. In a time when alternative music, a genre that at one time was entirely focused on creating music which went against the status quo and refused to conform to expectations of what it should be, has by and large turned into a cesspool of overproduced slop, SKORTS is writing the kind of high-impact rock which once defined alt. With origins going all the way back to 2021, when frontwoman Alli Walls moved to New York to pursue her rock and roll fantasy, she met Char Smith, who would become SKORTS' guitarist. Smith brought bassist Emma Welch into the fold, and soon after drummer Max Berdik was enlisted to complete the lineup.
With the band now a full force to be reckoned with, they began playing gigs religiously, developing a name for themselves in their local club scene and creating a unique style, which would be captured on their debut album, Incompletement. What is there to say about that record that hasn’t already been professed? It’s a gem, a modern work of art. It’s a frenzy of infectious riffs and explosive melodies which perfectly captures the grimy underbelly of the alt-rock scene, a classic which left listeners foaming at the mouth wanting more. Finally, we have gotten more with the band's new EP, Muse and the Marquee.
Their latest is a six-track record jam-packed with tasty hooks, thundering bass, booming beats, and the ever-enchanting vocal stylings of Walls. Here we find everything that we loved about Incompletement and more. Muse and the Marquee encapsulates that day-glo-soaked sleaze which defines SKORTS: the wild-eyed, fast-paced rock which nips at the soul and commands the feet to move. Yet we also see a new, softer side of the band. Don’t get me wrong, there were plenty of hauntingly beautiful ballads on Incompletement (such as “Steal the Night,” a personal favorite), but the new EP takes it a step further. Take, for example, the new tracks “Bad Habit” and “Tomorrow Land,” songs which have taken the pace down a notch; the sort of things you would expect to hear at some underground dance party. It’s the kind of music which you could sway to for hours in the arms of your dearest one while the night passes in an intoxicated haze of neon lights. Of course, no punches are pulled here; that iconic, in-your-face thrashing rock we all know and love is ever-present on new tunes like “Amy” and “Head Rush,” but they have been counterbalanced by a fresh style, breathing new life into an already cutting-edge monolith of a band.
You don’t have to go rooting around the New York underground to find the crème of the alt-rock crop; it’s available on your favorite streaming platform now. SKORTS isn’t so much redefining the genre with Muse and the Marquee as they are tapping into what made alternative music a phenomenon in the first place. They’re demanding more not only from themselves but from the culture as a whole, insisting that the genre move forward into bigger and better things instead of rotting idly in the confines of an old-money record conglomerate. Muse and the Marquee is the best of alternative’s past, the cutting edge of its future, and every mind-melting jam that came in between; it’s simply everything.