Photo by Edwin Cubillos

Though it comes out blue on the political heatmap and typically is at the forefront of equal rights for all, Massachusetts’ history is seeded in old blood money and a privileged hub of power that still has a heavy sway over the narrative of the Commonwealth, whitewashing away its darker history with touristy monuments and calculated press campaigns to keep that rep in check. Landowner are the alternative to all of that. Based out of Holyoke, a depressed industrial city out in Western Mass doing its best at the moment to rebuild itself as the lower cost solution to the opposite side of the state’s increasingly steep cost of living, vocalist Dan Shaw, guitarists Elliot Hughes and Jeff Gilmartin, bassist Josh Owsley, and drummer Josh Daniel are an apt reaction to the state’s front of high end professional veneer and scholasticism in their inflation-fucked post-punk discharge. “A farmer’s market is held to commemorate / A sign is erected in place to commemorate / A traffic median is named Memorial Square In memory of Gail, first name only,” Shaw’s quips sardonically over its hyper-nervous energy. They’re all such wholesome and honorable things, but they’re also built distract you from the reality that the sins of the forefathers continue to lurk over modern times ‘til this day.

Landowner’s Escape the Compound will be released July 21st on Born Yesterday Records.