Rip Room generates a rhythmic force that gets crowds moving. The trio—vocalist, guitarist and songwriter John Reed, bassist and harmony vocalist Sarah McKinney, and drummer Gracie Malley—deliver a performance driven by fractured rhythms, unexpected shifts in time signatures and Reed’s darkly poetic lyrics. His sing/speak style drives home messages often focusing on political dysfunction, loss and death.
Rip Room came together unexpectedly. “My previous band, Command Control, had split up and I felt a little defeated. I knew I wanted to go in a completely different direction,” Reed said. “Sarah had just started playing bass a year or two before that. I got the idea to do a Ramones tribute band for Halloween.
“I asked Joe Barker [of Command Control] to play drums, and our friend Doc [Miller, from the band Glowing Brain] was our Joey Ramone,” he added. “Sarah, Joe and I really gelled, so I started writing the first batch of Rip Room songs with them in mind.”
The band made Rip Room and Monsters with the original lineup. When Barker left, drummer Malley joined them. After the new group honed some tunes, they went up to Louder Studios in Grass Valley to record with engineer Tim Green. The result was Alight and Resound, their debut LP.
“[Tim’s] easy-going, chill disposition made me feel right at home from day one,” Reed said. “While for the most part he just lets bands do their thing, he’s contributed some of my favorite moments to every recording I’ve ever done with him. The remoteness of Louder Studios is also really conducive to making a record.”
The band’s most recent recordings are collected on the Psychology Of Junk EP. “We met Tommy [Tomomi Nagai, lead singer of the Japanese band THE WAMEKI] when we played a show with his band at the Knockout,” Reed said. “Coincidentally, Sarah and I happened to be going to Japan that next month. We asked Tommy if he wanted to hang out when we were in Tokyo, and we’ve been friends ever since.”
In 2023, Rip Room booked their first tour of Japan. It had been several years since they’d recorded, so they wanted to track the songs they’d been working on. “We had some shows in L.A.,” Reed said. “Gracie had recently introduced us to Danielle [Goldsmith; engineer, producer, sound designer]. She’d just helped open Wiggle World in Altadena. Gracie has family in L.A., so we figured we’d have a little getaway, play a show, see family and demo out some songs.”
The tunes on Psychology Of Junk are short, sharp bursts of energy. “ZZ Slop” opens with McKinney and Malley laying down a rolling beat, highlighted by Reed’s power chords and shrill, single-note accents. The chanted lyric describes an apocalyptic vision of the world that unfortunately mirrors our current situation: “It’s too late, so take cover, there’s no tomorrow …”
Malley’s drums, McKinney’s throbbing bass and Reed’s distorted guitar hook drive “Piece of Junk,” another dystopian screed. It’s a snapshot of loneliness and alienation with the band screaming out the hook—“It’s all junk.”
“After tracking, we didn’t think they were ready to press an ‘official’ release, but the performances were really great,” Reed said. “We decided to mix the tracks and release it as a Japan-only merch item. We originally had no intention of releasing these songs in the U.S., and just used Bandcamp to make it easy for anyone in Japan to download if they didn’t have a CD player.
“One Bandcamp Friday,” he added, “we made the EP public, but I didn’t change the titles [from the Japanese characters] and honestly just forgot to make it private again. So it’s pure laziness. We never had a real announcement or release for these songs. It’s the no-fanfare EP.”
The basic tracks of Psychology Of Junk will become the foundation of the new album the band is working on. They hope to release it early next year.
Rip Room will open for Ted Leo and the Pharmacists at Bottom of The Hill, 7pm Thursday, July 9, 1233 17th St., San Francisco. 415.626.4455. bottomofthehill.com. Listen to their music at: riproom.bandcamp.com.
