If you are younger than 40, there is a very good chance that the words “Madder Rose” will mean absolutely nothing to you. They might mean nothing to you if you’re over 40, too, but that just means that you weren’t reading, like, Magnet and CMJ and the pre-MySpace-emo version of Alternative Press every month. Madder Rose came from New York and made an awesomely shimmery form of fuzz-pop. They never blew up, but they were really good. Now, they’re about to play their first show in nearly a quarter-century.
Madder Rose have actually been quietly back for a while; they just haven’t been playing live shows. The band broke up in 1999 after releasing four albums. Singer Mary Lorson continued to work with her guitarist husband Billy Coté in the band Saint Low. Madder Rose got back together to release the 2019 album To Be Beautiful, and they followed it with another one called No One Gets Hurt Ever last month. Now, as Brooklyn Vegan points out, they’re playing live as part of the indie rock label Dromedary Records’ 30th-anniversary celebration in Catskill, New York.
Madder Rose are jumping on the Dromedary anniversary-show lineup as last-minute replacements, after veteran Connecticut band Monsterland had to cancel. The weekend-long show includes a ton of other ’90s indie rock bands, including Lotion, Antietam, Sleepyhead, Das Damen, and Feelies side projects Yung Wu and Speed The Plough. The show goes down 9/15-17 at venues around the Hudson Valley, and you can get tickets here.