Biography
Inheriting the ethos of nineties garage punk together with the guitar-centric lo-fi approach of outfits such as Pavement and Sebadoh, the Obsessives originated in September 2012 when Washington, D.C. natives Nick Bairatchnyi on vocals and guitar and Jackson Mansfield on drums formed the duo. Still in their mid-teens at the outset, they handled their own release of the EPs Bad Friends and Manners in 2014. While completing high school they entered an agreement with Near Mint, resulting in the 2015 arrival of their first full-length, Heck No, Nancy, whose title references a passage from Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. After settling in Philadelphia and nearing the close of a gap year spent deciding between college and a full-time band commitment, they issued the self-released EP A Great Menace Weighs Over the City in 2016. With mounting coverage in the indie press, the Obsessives next aligned with Lame-O Records in the U.S., Dog Knights in the U.K., and Cooking Vinyl in Australia for the March 2017 delivery of their second album, The Obsessives.
Albums
Singles
