The Ivy League of Punk: Loner Chic

Photo: Zachary Gomez

Peter Stroczkowski is freaking out. At six-foot-six, you can see despair take over his body when he slouches. We've just abandoned one of his friends in the opening band, All Riot, to do this interview at a nearby restaurant.

"We should go back," Stroczkowski says. "I feel so lame leaving them like that."

That sort of one-for-all mentality might be the only unifying characteristic between the four band members of Loner Chic, who are otherwise wildly different. One of New England's foremost punk acts, their latest album, Year of the Goth, came out in February on Broken World Records, the label run by The World Is A Beautiful Place And I Am No Longer Afraid To Die's Derrick Shanholtzer-Dvorak, and this is the hometown show concluding their two-week tour supporting it. (We eventually turn back and watch All Riot.)

Composed of Stroczkowski, an outgoing gentle giant on bass (who literally greets strangers with "Wassap?"), Brian Grochowski, the quiet Band Dad of the group on drums, Jason Moriarty, a clear-headed beam of positivity on guitar, and frontman Chris Cappello, the singer and guitarist going to Yale whose intellect is intimidating. On a two-week tour, he's read Oblivion by David Foster Wallace and started Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner, a book that Evan Stephens Hall from Pinegrove recommended to him after they played a show together.

Live photos by the author

You wouldn't expect someone raised on basement shows on TWIABP's label to be an Ivy Leaguer, but Cappello is more than aware of that.

"It's a real give and take," he says. "When I decided to go to Yale, a big part of my motivation was being able to play my music with the same people and participate in the same scene I've been a part of since freshman year of high school. But at the same time, there was a lot of anti-Yale sentiment, especially in New Haven where I'm from, so there's some ambivalence about that. But it's been really tough."

"I enjoy being able to participate in both communities a lot. But certain segments of both parts feel like I'm not participating enough in their respective community. I can't dance at both weddings at the same time, you know? It's something I struggle with, but that's also influenced some of the album, especially since I wrote it when I was there for the first time, immediately trying to reconcile those differences my freshman year."

The album packs a share of love songs and a blend of bitterness with distorted pop wit. Tracks like "Liminal Space" and "East Rock Beauty Kids" may both be ballads, but they're worlds apart in energy, and both diverge way beyond the standard love affair in introspective lyricism: "Liminal Space" tackles being a punk at Yale, while "East Rock Beauty Kids" confronts the contrast between who people are and who people say they are. Others like "Childhood Bedroom" talk of growing up as relationships change—always keeping that feel that these songs would hold their own acoustically, but get an extra push from the musicianship all four possess.

The quartet has a history in wildly different bands: Moriarty plays guitar in emo band Milkshakes and records electronic music as Trillanthropist; Stroczkowski plays lead guitar in post-hardcore group Setsuna, played bass in post-rock band Breakthrough Frequencies, and played in two high school acts, an originals group called Ambigo and an Incubus cover band called Stinkubus, while another of his, The Framecell, went to local fame by appearing on morning show Better Connecticut. Grochowski is the most varied, having played guitar in indie act Sub Verso and Breakthrough Frequencies, and drums in Prisms, The Exposure, and The Gentle Stunts. He also used to play bass in Setsuna and released several solo albums before helping form Loner Chic.

Cappello was in the folk act Circle Circle, but also a solo artist in his own right before starting Loner Chic. Running a local music blog, Lewis and his Blog, fellow Connectican Anthony Fantano followed along and solicited him for an internship at The Needle Drop, one of the most prominent music video blogs.

"He followed my blog when I was really into and messaged me," Cappello says. "It was weird; he sent me a Q&A like, 'what are your five favorite albums from last year and why?' out of the blue. I answered, and he asked how old I was. I said '15!' and he asked if I wanted to work for him, so I was the first intern. I did that for two summers. It's on my resume."

Moriarty actually points to one episode of the show as his discovery of Cappello's presence. "The video of albums that were ahead of their time. I was sitting in the living room, and I knew Chris at the time, but I watched the video with my mom there and was like, not to sound cheesy, but, 'wow. Chris sounds like he's ahead of his time.' I was blown away."

Cappello's first solo album got reviewed on The Needle Drop as well. Fantano has heard Loner Chic, and ran into Cappello at a recent Dan Deacon show, but he's not around tonight.

After the show, we go to an all-night diner even though it's Easter Sunday. (Moriarty and Cappello are vegetarians, but Stroczkowski orders a meal with enough meat for everyone: a triple-decker Philly cheesesteak.) The four-headed monster has a fair share of normal tour stories—Moriarty and Cappello "developing a language that's completely divorced from reality" but still bro-speak, strangers learning trumpet parts to give the band a badass live moment—and a decent amount of unusual ones—like when Moriarty, a pop fan who keeps The Life of Pablo on constant rotation, ended up seeing Rihanna leave her apartment during their day in New York City.

Me and Rihanna pic.twitter.com/enIUs3necV

— Jason Moryardgoat (@jasonmoriarty) March 30, 2016

The ball rolls fastest when we touch on an idea they've already been thinking about: how our presentation and our actuality are two different things.

"There's this bizarre thing nowadays where I have a lot of people on my friends list just from booking shows and talking on the internet," Moriarty says. "But then you meet them in person and it's like, whoa, you're a real person, and far more complex and deep than you've let on."

It strikes a particular chord with Cappello, who thinks of it in terms of social media, but also in terms of the band.

"I'm not sure that we can even say there is an essence or an actuality to anyone. In some ways, it's always an identity," he says. "There's a tendency for writers and performers to associate the music with the individual whose writing it; in some ways being the songwriter or a singer in a band is the same sort of abstraction you get in a social media profile. The version presented in the songs, whether they're autobiographical or not, is mediated through this band. Maybe that's why it's a fascination of music people."

"With a band name, you can say you're hiding behind it, but also it's a little more honest because it's so vague. You can look at Facebook and see a picture and the full name and say, ‘this is you,’ but it's not; it’s a construct pretending to be you. It's the implied author, but it's not really the person. With a band, it's more of an abstraction. In some ways, that's more of an honest representation: it doesn't purport to be something that it's not, it doesn't pretend to be a perfect representation."

"I feel comfortable contributing to the construct that is our band, rather than trying to present who I am as an individual."

After the diner, Grochowski and Stroczkowski leave separately, while Moriarty takes Cappello home—they both have classes the next day. Moriarty has a ton of homework left to do (and he won't get home till after 3 AM.) Individually, it's hard to tell who any of them really are. But after seeing them tear up a show by with their extensive musicality, hyper self-awareness, and raw punk energy, it’s clear Loner Chic already have their identity.

Dan Bogosian went to college once. Eventually, they gave him a degree. Find him on Twitter at @dlbogosian.