Mike Polizze

Philly musician Mike Polizze shifted away from the ragged fuzz rock that defined his long-running Purling Hiss project once he chose to record under his own name. Where his earlier reputation rested on grunge-informed loudness, the 2020 solo debut Long Lost Solace Find presented a mellow collection of acoustic folk-rock instead.

Having relocated from Media, Pennsylvania, to Philadelphia in 2004, Polizze immediately formed the band Birds of Maya. A few years afterward he launched Purling Hiss as a markedly noisier solo outlet, later expanding it from grainy home-recorded albums into a full-fledged touring band whose releases appeared on Drag City. From 2009 through 2016 he maintained activity with both groups while occasionally adding guitar to friends’ projects and one-off experiments. The 2020 album Long Lost Solace Find marked the first release under Polizze’s given name; its largely acoustic material included contributions from longtime friend Kurt Vile and came out on the Paradise of Bachelors label in July of that year.