Big Fat Cow’s new EP Garbage in, Garbage out yields gold

Big Fat Cow. // photo by Sam Russell

Big Fat Cow is back with a tongue-in-cheek quip gracing their new EP title, a ploy as deceiving as their self-chosen name. Garbage in, Garbage out at once satirizes the current state of the world while exemplifying what it means to be the opposite.

Their release show was Saturday September 27, at the RINO. The four-lettered bandmates Gary Bovine (Noah Cassity), Kole Waters, Alex May, and Matt Chipman build the authentic wall that is Big Fat Cow. Throughout the opening acts, there has been a shuffle of ball caps for Flash Floods, replaced by cowboy boots for Michael B. Tipton and the Scoundrels and the folksy Timbers. A culmination of both are on the floor when Big Fat Cow takes the stage.

Self-described “post country,” their music is not able to be pigeonholed. Folk, country, rock, punk, with metal moments. Their unique sound makes them an inquisitive listen. There is no telling what genre the song will end at when it first begins.

The single “Gremlin Goop” was released first before the full EP. The drawing composed by Bovine/Cassity is a figure in an eccentric circus-esque outfit with blonde braids poking out behind a mask, sitting on a swing seeming to rise suddenly. A Dalmatian points to the right amidst grass and flowers. Bovine’s drawing turned into reality in the photograph that cinches the EP together. A real Dalmatian looks ready to run out of the frame held on short leash by a masked figure sitting on abandoned wood bleachers with right hand tossed up in nonchalance. It’s fun, a tinge dark, and mightily thought-provoking.

This is the dual essence of Garbage in, Garbage out and Cassity speaks to the fullness of the record: “A lot of metamorphosis and a lot of maturing or regressing or growing old. It’s a growing-up record. It’s an interesting thing to measure yourself by.” Wrought absurdity functions as poetry in the EP’s lines, a phrase in “Creeping Jenny” cherishing “my body is a pancake/ sticky and falling apart.” Sincerity imbues in the lyrics’ abstract imagery, leading a journey not only of different sensations but also flavors, sounds, feeling.

Ahead of the EP release, “Gremlin Goop” was reviewed by Anthony Fantano, the music critic running live-stream music review channel The Needle Drop. On Fridays, he hosts new music, and in his words, on a YouTube video clipped from the original Twitch stream, “I mean, we gotta hear Big Fat Cow.”

Waters was the one to throw it as a recommendation in the Twitch chat. He speaks to the doubt of thinking it’s not going to work out, but when it did, Fantano’s esteemed subtle reactions like lowering his sunglasses when the vocals started, along with muted surprises of enjoyment, “It was almost scary to be noticed like that.”

One could see Fantano’s growing respect for the song throughout listening. He reviewed it positively, including it in his top finds of best tracks of the week. May says, “It was all of a sudden so many more eyes on us.”

Up until this EP, all past music has been recorded in Waters’ basement. Waters shares during the show how his buddy Cassity would come over to record some stuff in his basement and said, hey, I need a guy to do this — “And I got sucked in.”

Coincidental happenstance is the beauty of this band. When I asked how the songs came to be chosen for this EP, and in what order, the answer was generally: it just did. They selected from a few songs they’d played live and “Once we pick the songs they just happen to fit really nice in a puzzle together,” said May.

Big Fat Cow. // photo by Sam Russell

There is a lyrical coherence throughout the EP. The beginning song “Yellow Belly Boy” belies “get a job, they said/ grow up strong, they said,” grieving the nature of standards in this world, before imploring “patron saint” Gram Parsons in the ballad “Goodbye Gram Parsons” to “show me your God,” wanting to know where he found comfort, to the concluding “Feel It In the Wind,” heeding the negative changes stirring around, “well I know I’m about to see the Lord/I can feel it in the wind.”

With the collaboration of engineer Duane Trower at Weights and Measures Soundlab, they were able to give themselves to the music, as the studio provided “an environment where it was all us,” said May. “We were allowed to really just be comfortable, and I think that’s the coolest part about it,” said Bovine. “Anything that just felt like us, we went ahead and did it.”

Waters was freed from the added mental thought of producing and honed in on guitar. Of the EP, he speaks to the last song, saying that it “encapsulates everybody’s consciousness right now, especially for anybody who is queer or not white. Part of growing up is developing your identity and throwing off expectations that were thrust upon you,” and Big Fat Cow’s version of doing that is being “the most genuine version of ourselves without compromising.”

The ease of which they exist around each other and the ease of how the band came to be together is far from being made of garbage going in. They are intentional with a proximal awareness of being open, letting what comes next to come next, sagaciously putting it similarly in “Yellow Belly”: “all that’s ever been is left to be.”

Big Fat Cow. // photo by Sam Russell

Watching them perform, there is a symmetry to the stage. May’s red bass is on stage left, Waters’s red-wooded guitar balancing the other side, Cassity’s hollow-body black guitar with delicate pink painted flowers up front backed by sleek black of Chipman’s drums. None upstages the other, all aware in every moment — subconscious or conscious — that they exist as one unit, down to the chosen attire of striped shirts tastefully visible in each of the headliners’ outfits. This symmetry is in motion with their songs, a balancing act so well-executed you can be duped by the time stamp speeding up, forgetting that the song started slow with rock roots and is now close to screaming metal. It works.

Flanked by Waters and May, weighted by Chipman, Cassity is allowed siren-like exploration with his vocals, beseeching a hidden song we cannot hear, bellowing with emotion, the reverberating harmonies from Waters and May keeping him grounded as his song’s desire to join something beyond sight is edged in his voice. This is a sensation the whole audience feels.

Big Fat Cow and guests. // photo by Sam Russell

Keyboardist Maret Cissner accompanies them for rendition of “Yellow Belly Boy,” and the cello, violin, and saxophone of Ian Mitchell, Aiden Sarmineto, and Benjamin Baker join to eventuate the vibrant pangs of “Goodbye Gram Parsons.”

They are grounded yet full of energy that ties the crowd to them. Their humility to let the music be what it is shines through.

It’s at once country, punk, edging into metal before loosening again into folk; crowd boot-stomping, mild-moshing, hand-clapping, partner-swinging. Big Fat Cow is big fat fun.