Madrigal by Equipment

Returning to where you came from can be a drag. When composer Bernardo Pisano returned to his birthplace of Florence in the 1520s, he was accused of being a spy, tortured, and imprisoned while his Italian city lay under siege. When he was released, he created the madrigal, a form of classical music containing both more than one voice and non-religious themes. Equipment may not have the past that maestro did, but on their second EP Madrigal, they’ve returned to where their debut EP Chump was born. What emerged came from more than one voice—it’s Equipment’s first outing with an all-hands-on-deck mentality—and there’s no divine intervention on display. Self-awareness this simple must be classically trained.

“We had almost no inhibitions and wanted to go all out with our experimental ideas and punk influences,” guitarist/vocalist/keyboardist Nick Zander explains. “We asked ourselves, “8 minute two-part epic as the opening track? Sure.” With that mission statement in mind, Chump seems archaic in comparison. Yet, both EPs share much of the same sonic DNA, with Madrigal even sequenced like its spiritual predecessor. Perhaps that’s because these songs have been swirling around in varying forms since 2015—the delirious synth driving “Wet Mulch” has been a voice memo in Zander’s phone for a while, just like many of the snarky quips fueling “You’ll Never Know.” That’s canonically the first song Zander wrote when this Toledo band was a Toledo solo project. (Equipment is now Zander, drummer/vocalist Jake Pachasa, and bassist/vocalist Jacob Scott. Jacob’s sister Tori adds to Quippy’s madrigal with some choice harmonies, too.)

Madrigal unites Equipment past, present, and future with a sturdy indie-rock backbone. At times it’s absurd and winking—the collection of Guitar Center riffs tickling through “Raptured Trax, Pt. 2” comes to mind—but most of the times it’s downcast. “A lot of the EP is about the music scene, how mentally unhealthy it can be to equate your personal happiness to the success of your band, how it can hurt relationships, the money invested that you could very well never see again: gig life, baby. It kinda tackles all perspectives, including an outsider looking in at how futile everything can seem,” Zander admits. There’s diatribes on using rent money to sponsor Facebook ads, placing fan service over self-respect, and post-mortems on relationships made in the venue basement and beyond. All of it gets fed through Equipment’s brand of acoustic shimmer (“Scrimmage”) or pop-rock crunch (“Wet Mulch”) for a steady dose of guitar heroism and palpable versatility. Preach.

~ James Cassar

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