The members of The Nude Party first came together in the freshman dormitories of Boone, North Carolina’s Appalachian State University in 2012. Patton Magee, and later Austin Brose, linked up with childhood friends Connor Mikita & Alec Castillo and step brothers Shaun Couture & Don Merrill. The following summer, the young men moved into a lake house outside of town to begin learning their respective instruments and jamming on rudimentary riffs. Friends came by the lake house to swim and party and soon there developed a group obsession with performing in the nude. They quickly gained a following as the house band at a notorious Boone party palace referred to as the 505 House, and the bare honesty of their performances was so contagious that their audience also started partying au naturel. While these traditions may appear risqué to the casual observer, the band explains, “These weren’t orgies, they weren’t sexual even. It was just kind of a wild exhibitionism that we felt gave us freedom.” Best known around campus as “the naked party band,” this informal aggregation of musicians became a defined unit and chose to call their group simply “The Nude Party.”
Ironically, they began playing fully-clothed as soon as they were christened since their birthday suits were not welcomed in any decent live music establishment. They hit the national tour circuit and soon found a mentor in Black Lips’ drummer, Oakley Munson. He produced their Hot Tub EP and in exchange for cheap rent and physical labor gave The Nude Party a new home deep in the Catskills Mountains. An isolated place to focus entirely on writing music and playing together, and the culmination of six years of experimentation and refinement of material, has resulted in the band’s first full-length. Newest POW writer Kevin Messing gives his take on the band’s debut LP:
“A friend of mine describes the album as “The Arctic Monkeys go to the beach”, and though every musician finds band comparisons annoying, the line was too good to not use in the opening of this review. The Catskill Mountain-area band The Nude Party’s debut, self-titled album stands on its own though. This is a quintessential rock n’ roll record. There’s obvious chemistry in the band. Patton Magee’s vocals are powerful and altogether excellent. The band sings their harmonies in all the right places and have a decent sense of dynamics. They aren’t averse to playing clean rhythm parts and the guitars sit nicely in the mix. The track “Wild Coyote” stands out as a cut above the rest. The boys manage to pull off that dark, spaghetti western sound (minor key, throbbing tremolo) without sounding trite – and the lead riff is catchy as hell. After only a few listens, this song has become permanently etched into my mind. The band isn’t breaking new ground so much but what they do, they do very well and The Nude Party is a definitely worth a listen. Take your clothes off and keep rocking, boys; you’ve got a bright future ahead of you”
Get the record:
https://thenudeparty.bandcamp.com/
Follow the band:
@thenudeparty
Review written by Kevin Messing for POW Magazine
kevindeanmessing@gmail.com
