Stevie Subrizi is a singer-songwriter with roots and a current residence in the New England area. Their new EP, Nails, debuted in April and follows a string of excellent releases, including two full-lengths and two covers EPs. Subrizi got their start genetically, growing up with a musical father and taking piano and guitar lessons as a child (although the latter was mostly self-taught). They started playing shows around the Connecticut area, both solo and in a melodic punk band, before forming The Crazy Exes From Hell with Kirsten Opstad in 2010.
Opstad remains a long-time collaborator and muse for Subrizi, as does Eric Ott, who often serves as a producer and guest musician (and plays drums on Nails). Although, with the current global situation, cross-state productions are proving difficult. “Right now I’m having to do things more on my own again, and I still don’t really know what I’m doing when I self-record, but I’m actually kind of looking forward to doing more of it,” Subrizi told us. “It takes me back to my early 20s when I was burning CDs and folding them into copy paper sleeves to sell at shows and open mics.”
Outside of these personal relationships, Subrizi credits artists like Jonathan Richman, X, Joe Strummer, PJ Harvey, David Berman, Janelle Monáe, and John Darnielle as influences, as well as local acts like Ad Frank, Ruby Rose Fox, Jane Park, Anjimile and Kristen Ford. Darnielle’s influence in particular is palpable in Subrizi’s music, which often feels like a current update of early, lo-fi Mountain Goats albums. Subrizi’s vocal rhythms sometimes align with Darnielle’s free-flow, conversational style, although the lyrical content is often more urgent and political.
This is especially true of Nails, which features some of Subrizi’s sharpest lyricism yet. The EP is brimming with pointed takes on the current political crises and the threat of an onset apocalypse as well as more human and personal reflections on growth, personality and gender. Statements on personal identity ring particularly powerful. “It’s a bad idea to say you love me and then try to tell me who I am,” Subrizi sings mere seconds into opener “Black Lipstick,” a scornful conversation to a disrespectful other half. “It’s a bad idea to visit my grave and tell me who I was.”
The urgency of those lyrics come coupled with those of “Defend the Night,” a much broader call to arms against a growing threat to minorities of any kind in this nation. “Not everyone’s crazy about my candles and my wine, to be honest all these swastikas on tv are giving me a fright,” Subrizi sings about the growing nationalistic violence on display across the country. On “Y2K Song,” they relate the current sense of dread back to the turn of the century. “Since 1999 there have been twenty new year’s days, and the world has ended several times in different ways but my mother and father still have all their candles all tucked away because it wasn’t the end that time.” The lyrics across the five tracks on Nails are focused on the good and bad elements of our rapidly changing times, and the importance of not losing your own personal identity amidst it all. We might feel like we’re living through two different domestic apocalypses right now, but Stevie’s music can remind us not to lose our sense of self-worth during all of it.
Nails and seven other releases are available through Bandcamp.