Podcast: Dumb Vision on centipedes and collaborative songwriting

The Madison punk outfit joins us to discuss their new cassette and their growth as a band.

Madison band Dumb Vision recently released a self-titled cassette spanning eight tracks that thrive on the friction between gritty noise and swaggering, almost playful melody. Dumb Vision represents yet another bubbling up of Madison’s busily collaborative scene of young punk and power-pop bands: Guitarist/singer Erick Fruehling and drummer/singer Alex Ross also play in Fire Retarded, guitarist/vocalist Chris Joutras plays in Coordinated Suicides, Dharma Dogs, and The Momotaros, and Wood Chickens’ Griffin Pett recently joined the band on bass, replacing Joe Darcy of Paint (who also wrote and sang in Dumb Vision, and contributed the song “All Dried Out” on the new cassette). (Full disclosure: Tone Madison contributor Mike Noto is one of Joutras’ bandmates in Coordinated Suicides.)

Ahead of Dumb Vision’s February 10 show at Mickey’s Tavern, I spoke with Fruehling, Ross, and Joutras for our podcast. We talked about some of the standout tracks on the album—including “Warm Meat,” “One Hit,” and “All Dried Out”—how each member has used Dumb Vision to stretch out and grow as songwriters, and what’s in the works this year for some of the members’ other bands. Fruehling also runs the new Rare Plant label with Proud Parents’ Claire Nelson-Lifson, and he talks a bit here about the label’s plans for the coming year. And intentionally or not, the interview ended up stirring up the band’s internal debate about centipede-related art.

Don’t forget to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes and catch WORT-FM’s weeknight news show In Our Backyard, which partners with us to produce these. Thanks to Dylan Brogan for producing and editing this interview.