Search - His & Her Vanities :: The Mighty Lunge

Madison, Wisconsin-based His & Her Vanities developed when Ricky and Terrin Riemer began writing music together in their basement while their infant son was asleep at night. With Terrin playing around on bass and Ricky on drums, the couple worked up entire song arrangements, recorded them, and layered other instruments and vocals on top. After amassing a collection of slightly angular, post-punk/pop-rock songs this way, the couple decided to bring the songs to the stage with a full band. In 2001, drummer Sara Quigle joined the Riemers, and with Ricky moving to guitar they played several shows together before recording their self-titled debut, released in June 2002. With the addition of Matt Abplanalp on rhythm guitar (also a bandmate of Ricky's in spazzy math-rock band Transformer Lootbag), H&HV emerged as a four-piece for live shows. While the debut album's extensive use of back-up vocals and synthesizer tracks at times gravitated toward sonic chaos, their sophomore effort, A Thought Process (2004), took a toned-down approach presenting the songs closer to the way they would sound live. Immediately following the disc's release, Ricky and Terrin's second son arrived, making it a little trickier to find creative time to work on new H&HV music. Concurrently, their self-run record label, Science of Sound, began growing as well. After existing solely to release their own bands music, the label's reach expanded to other Midwestern acts including the garage-folk punk of Sleeping in the Aviary and orchestral-pop outfit Pale Young Gentlemen. Between time spent promoting the label, more extensive recording work for others in their basement studio and raising two active young boys, it took awhile for H&HV's third release to emerge. But The Mighty Lunge makes it to the finish line in October 2009. Self-recorded, mixed and produced, with eight tracks and a running time just shy of 30 minutes, The Mighty Lunge combines many of the band's past sounds along with some fresh forms of experimentation.