Press
“On their nimble new LP, the Polish quartet Trupa Trupa bring some poetry and subtlety to psychedelic rock.”
Evan Rytlewski, www.pitchfork.com
Iggy Pop just played our song “To Me” on his BBC Radio 6 Music show! Listen to the podcast from 1:49:50 – www.bbc.co.uk
Bob Boilen, Stephen Thompson and Robin Hilton discuss Trupa Trupa from 43:30.
METZ, Liars and Trupa Trupa with Jolly New Songs! Newsweek USA puts Jolly on the list of the 11 great overlooked albums of 2017!
“The band is Polish and the lyrics are in English, but the undercurrent of anxiety and dread that distinguishes Trupa Trupa’s music knows no nationality. Rarely jolly and unfailingly morbid, vocalist Grzegorz Kwiatkowski gets spooked by visions of falling, coffins, death and the lingering sting of humiliation as his band charts the links between psych-rock and post-punk with unswerving intensity. Occasionally, this band’s grasp of the power of repetition is reminiscent of Krautrock; “Only Good Weather” turns the titular phrase into a deranged, sing-song-y mantra, while “Love Supreme” transforms its Coltrane-inspired title into a gloomy dirge from hell.”
Zach Schonfeld, www.newsweek.com
Trupa Trupa’s debut in the Rolling Stone magazine as one of the best acts at this year’s SXSW Festival! “It sounded like the start of a rewarding friendship” says David Fricke!
“This four-piece band from Gdansk, Poland had a hellish 24-hour commute to SXSW – via Amsterdam and Minneapolis. They arrived with sense of humor intact. Singer-guitarist Grzegorz Kwiatowski pointed out that their hometown was both „a city of Solidarity” – referring to the revolutionary Polish-labor union – and where „the Second World War started,” a contrast that explains the seesaw between bleak-Radiohead turmoil and spacious Sigur Rós-like moments on Trupa Trupa’s two albums, 2015’s Headache and 2016’s Jolly New Songs. This venue – an Irish bar with its windows open to the alcoholic midnight din on East 6th Street – did not bode well for a live taste. But Trupa Trupa beat the odds with the throb-and-hammer of the perversely titled „Jolly New Songs” and the staccato surge of „To Me,” the latter laced with molten-fuzz guitar played by Rafal Wojczal on a custom instrument made from a petrol can. „Good days are gone,” Kwiatowski sang with bitter conviction at the end of the set, in the art-rock comet „Good Days.” For the few of us in this pub, it sounded like the start of a rewarding friendship.”
David Fricke, www.rollingstone.com
The gig review
“Trupa Trupa rolled in from Gdansk, Poland, with a guitar made out of what looked like a fuel can and a sound that fused East European post-punk in the mold of Plastic People of the Universe and Pulnoc with psychedelia. The dynamic, unpredictable songs shifted across imaginary continents in a blink, just like this day of music.”
SXSW summary
“Female artists, artists of color, outsiders from every corner of the world — from Africa and Poland to Jordan and Russia — filled the crowded bars and clubs of the Texas capital with dissenting guitars, empowered voices and raised fists.[…] Poland’s Trupa Trupa combined poetic introspection with abrasive post-punk guitars, one of which was fashioned out of a fuel can.”
“A strange, brilliant record. […] This is a powerful band possessing special properties, that’s for sure. On the evidence of this record they happily live between any time and place. Or, rather, they’ve carved out their own sort of time in their music and invited you in.”
Richard Foster, www.thequietus.com
“There’s nowhere to go but up for this most unique rock band.”
We talked with Mark Beaumont from New Musical Express!
Jolly New Songs appears in the top 10 albums of 2017 by Jim McGuinn of The Current: “One album I can’t get enough of is Jolly New Songs from Polish rock band Trupa Trupa. This album has been the one discovery I’ve been telling many people about – imagine rolling bits of Radiohead, Mogwai, Syd Barrett, and Explosions in the Sky together, and you might get a sense of what’s in the water in Gdansk.”
“To Me” by Trupa Trupa on BBC Radio 6 Music (Stuart Maconie, Lauren Laverne, Tom Ravenscroft, Gideon Coe). Tom Ravenscroft described it as “Epic beyond words!”.
www.twitter.com/BBC6MorningShow
www.bbc.co.uk/music/artists
“One of my favorite bands out of Europe these days is Trupa Trupa out of Gdansk, Poland. Their excellent new album, Jolly New Songs, is due out in late October, but they just released their first single, “To Me”, which sounds to me like The Beach Boys’ Surfs Up crashing into MBV’s Loveless. Give it a listen, won’t you?”
NPR places Trupa Trupa among the most interesting acts of this year’s SXSW!
“That was pretty thrilling. When they play and the direction the songs are going, it’s like they’re doing it by feel, not by: oh we listened to a lot punk growing up and this now what we want to do.”
“I listened to the record and not only does it have those elements of Sigur Ros and Radiohead that I like, but they’ve got an entirely different, I would say, even darker character of their own. […] I wanna thank Jim McQuinn from the Current Public Radio in Twin Cities, MN for turning me on to that band, the Sigur Ros, Radiohead comparisons and introducing me to something that’s actually quite even cooler, darker and deeper than those comparisons suggest.”
Listen to the whole podcast on our soundcloud.
“Why We’re Excited: Trupa Trupa frontman Grzegorz Kwiatkowski is a published poet, but in To Me, he limits his lyrical output to precisely three words: Away / To me. That leaves Trupa Trupa to pound out a hefty blast of warped and churning psych-rock thunder that culminates in a full-band freakout of hair-raising proportions.”
“Trupa Trupa, or Corpse Corpse as translated roughly from the band’s native Polish, don’t really come off as a rock band as such, even though they’ve got the classic four-piece lineup. There’s not a lot of in-your-face bashing or shredding or pogoing or any of that other nonsense that is so passé. (Remember kids, rock is truly dead!) No way, the double Trupas do something that very few men with guitars know how to do: Trupa Trupa creates and sustains an album-length mood. […] With Jolly New Songs, the title itself a hilarious in-joke among the Corpse Boys (meaning that the songs aren’t exactly jolly, if you get my meaning), Trupa Trupa murder rock ‘n’ roll and unceremoniously dump its corpse in the Gdańsk Bay. Their recorded rituals celebrating its demise are, ahem, music to our very ears.”
Ryan Masteller, www.tinymixtapes.com
“With their fierce guitars, anthemic sound, knack for melodies and sometimes quirky lyrics, Trupa Trupa is becoming one of the most notable new psych-rock bands.”
“To ingest Trupa Trupa’s Jolly New Songs is to wonder what kind of mushrooms are growing outside behind the band’s practice space in Gdansk. The drugs are working, just not quite how you would expected them to.[…] Jolly New Songs is not built on debt or reference but the persistence of their stark yet malleable vision.”
Ian King, www.thelineofbestfit.com
Jolly New Songs are still broadcasted on WFMU by Gaylord Fields, Clay Pigeon, Mark Reichard, Mary Wing and dj Stan. Have a listen at www.trupatrupa.com
Christian Eede, www.thequietus.com
“The latest album from Gdańsk avant-rockers Trupa Trupa is another step forward. […] Jolly New Songs picks up pretty much where Headache left off. […] Back in 2015, parts of the indie rock landscape were looking in dire need of some attention. With Headache, and now Jolly New Songs, Trupa Trupa have brought a much-needed freshness to the territory, their nimble poeticism backed up by a wintry toughness. They, as well as other string manglers like Hey Colossus, Part-Chimp, Cayetana and Beaches – there are more if you know where to look – are carving out unique, individual spaces in a zone where mould-breaking innovation has all too often ossified into idea-free conformity. Essential listening.”
Paul Margree, www.louderthanwar.com
“Something I really enjoy about music is challenging myself with what I listen to when I click play. This is complete deflated when I hear someone singing. I just find it more unique when things are lyric-less or plane sampled. Maybe it’s more of a sculpture that way than someone’s middle-school poetry they mid-life crisis’d into a hard rock trope that’s fucking northern European. However (and most importantly), I gave up “rock and roll” long ago in the old Tipp City Post Office basement with Brandon and Nick and Marshall years ago, though, if I were there now with them jamming, we’d totally pump out some tunes like Trupa Trupa’s “To Me.” Snoop the color-soaked video above and believe in a few more Jolly New Songs in October. More to come!”
C MONSTER, www.tinymixtapes.com
“While sometimes hearing rock and roll played from a non-English as first language country can be alarmingly bad or cartoonish, sometimes you hear the most interesting stuff imaginable. One of my favorite discoveries of the past year was digging into a Hungarian band from the ’70s called Illes – who were like the Beatles (or Stones) of Hungary, during the Communist era, and while reflecting the ’60s rock movement also retained elements of their native folk music and launguage. Now it’s 2017, and the world is global and information spreads more easily, so I don’t know that there’s a direct „Polish-ness” to Trupa Trupa, but there is an otherworld and unique vibe the exists in the songs – I’m not sure a band from the UK or US could sound like this. What’s it sounds like? If you take a bit of the Radiohead post-rock and a touch of Pink Floyd with a litte minimalism added in, plus whatever the second language and folk traditions their Polishness must impart, and you get this really interesting thing happening.”
Jim McGuinn, program director at The Current
“There’s range, and with repeated listens, depth.”
Joseph Neff, The Vinyl District
“It’s full of surreal constructions that worm their way inside your head with catchy melodies and then refuse to leave when their strangeness becomes all too apparent.”
Shame, HMLTD and Trupa Trupa among the best European rock bands of 2017 by Europavox!
Headache among the best LPs of 2015 and TT as one of the best rock bands – says Sasha Frere-Jones, one of the world’s most influential music critics writing for the LA Times: “One of the best rock bands doing business now is from Gdansk, Poland. The lead singer of Trupa Trupa is poet Grzegorz Kwiatkowski, who sings (and speaks, sometimes) in English. The band recalls a less woozy version of Dungen, another band who know their ’60s psychedelia but don’t sound like thirsty revivalists. Kwiatkowski leans into the conversational loopiness of Syd Barrett and the band flowers behind him. Beauty and intensity get equal space here.”
Sasha Frere-Jones, Los Angeles Times
“This is incredible work. The result is their first moment of true greatness.”
Tristan Bath, The Quietus
Strauss, Tiny Mix Tapes