Refrigerator

The lo-fi noise pop outfit Refrigerator has operated under the direction of siblings Allen and Dennis Callaci, who initiated their musical partnership during adolescence in the hair metal parody group the Bux. The Bux committed their initial cassette to tape on December 6, 1985, then continued releasing a fresh recording each year on that exact date across the next five years, with those later efforts foreshadowing the fuzzy, fractured style that would define the Callacis’ future projects. In 1990 the brothers assembled Refrigerator alongside drummer Joel Connell, shortly after Dennis established the trailblazing indie imprint Shrimper; the following year saw the arrival of the band’s debut cassette Lonesome Surprize, which was soon succeeded by the EP Rocking Horse Loser along with various compilation contributions. A further cassette appeared as 1992’s Rael, a vinyl-only LP arrived as 1993’s Long 33 1/3 Play, several 7-inch singles emerged under the titles Songs with a Story/Music for Hi-Fi Bugs, Car Alarm, and Down with Refrigerator, and numerous additional compilation tracks accumulated before the 1995 CD How You Continue Dreaming introduced new drummer Chris Jones. Later in that same year the full-length Bicycle surfaced. The eight-track recording Anchors of Bleed followed in 1996, and the 1997 self-titled album, captured with the addition of bassist Daniel Brodo, advanced the band to 16-track recording; Glitter Jazz appeared in 1999. Comedy Minus One reached stores in 2001 and Upstairs in Your Room followed in 2004. For their eighth studio album Refrigerator enlisted pianist Franklin Bruno of Nothing Paint Blue to shape the acoustic set Bottles of Make Up, which was tracked in the Callacis’ living room during August 2006 and released the subsequent January. Work on another album was halted when Daniel Brodo suffered a ladder fall that fractured both wrists, yet he had fully recuperated by 2011; Refrigerator issued the unfinished material in demo form as Dangerous and proceeded with a fresh collection of songs. Temple City arrived in 2015 to mark the group’s 25th anniversary and signaled a reversion to their noisy electric foundation. The band resurfaced in early 2018 with the eleventh LP High Desert Lows, produced by Simon Joyner.