A Conversation with: Lip Service

Imagine Godzilla competing in The Great British Baking Show, or the cast of King of the Hill competing in Jeopardy! —add some frantic guitar, layer in charismatic shouts, lots of fuzz, a little early 2000s soul, and you might have an understanding of Lip Service: a talented fellowship of genre-defying musicians from Boston. The four-piece formed when members Chris Baxley (guitar, vocals) began writing songs with his friend Drew Bunge, also a guitarist and vocalist, at a college in Boston. Mutual friends Alec Rosenberg (bass, vocals) and Wilson Reardon (drums) soon joined to round out the band’s sound. 

“Lip Service is Hittin’ the Green!” is the first EP released by the group and features three diverse songs that showcase the band’s (excellent) stubbornness to conform to any singular defining genre or sound. At times the EP sounds like it could belong in a coked-up 90s skateboarding montage, only to quickly pivot into a soft, grungy verse that could’ve come out of dreary Seattle. Another track draws on smoother, more soulful jazz influences, with deep complimentary vocal harmonies that are reminiscent of those found in cult-classic musicals. The resulting mosaic of sound is starkly individual, energetic, and personable in the best way—after listening, you can’t help but want to meet this gangly group. Below is a q + a to help you do just that—say hello to Lip Service! 

Juniper: Who does the songwriting? What does this process look like? 

LS: We all construct songs together, but the songwriters of the group are also the singers in the group, and we usually come to each other with unfinished ideas. The four of us help finish each other’s musical thoughts and tangents.

Juniper: What does recording a Lip Service song look like? 

LS: We do most of our recording in a basement in Allston, MA, in a house where Chris and Alec live. We pride ourselves on seeing the songs we make through their entire creation process by ourselves, from writing to performing to recording to mixing. Zach Bloomstein has mastered our latest releases. 

Juniper: Were there any certain pieces of gear/instruments you felt defined the record or carried the production process? 

LS: Mostly what we have available to us is what ends up defining our sound. We all pool our gear together and try to make active decisions about how the sound exists in our heads, and then we try to make it a reality. It doesn’t usually come out exactly the way we imagine it to, but it usually takes some fun twists and turns and we end up with something we all love.

Juniper: When setting out, what did you all hope to accomplish in writing and releasing your first EP? 

LS: We wanted to represent the songs we’ve made together as best we could. We like to play our material out at shows before we begin to record it, because there’s always little adjustments that we can make after we try a song’s wheels, or after seeing how people react to it in a live setting. Once we knew that we had these songs completely down, through playing them by ourselves and at shows, then we start the recording process and add those embellishments that turn it from a performance to a record. 

Juniper: And why the Golf theme of your new EP? 

LS: We thought it was a funny juxtaposition, we’re definitely not the type of people who really go out to the course every weekend with our “work buddies,” talking business and such. We liked the idea of putting ourselves in a setting which doesn’t necessarily suit us at all. And we thought the name was funny.

Juniper: “Lip Service is Hittin’ the Green!” seems to draw from a lot of different genres, what sorts of stuff inspired your sound on the record? Do you consider yourselves to fall within any one dominant genre? 

LS: We try not to resign ourselves to one distinct genre, although it is hard sometimes when people ask you “what kind of stuff do you play?” We listen to lots of music, and we listen to music together a lot of the time. We listen to old music, to new music, and we listen to the music that we like. The four of us all have our own personal inspirations and artists that we look up to, but the real amalgamation of genres in our music mostly comes from the different voices and styles that the four of us have uniquely. It’s nice to feel it lock into place, like a puzzle or something. Risk of cliché here, but we do sort of complete each other artistically and musically.

Juniper: What’s your favorite lyric off the new release? 

LS: We’re not sure that we can decide. “I wanna get to know ya, but we haven’t found a date,” is a nice opening line cause that’s what this EP is about in some ways. We want our listeners to get to know our sound, and we want them to hear us out if they’re at all intrigued by what they’re hearing.

Juniper: What does a Lip Service live show look like? Do you have any plans to tour?

LS: We try to bring an energy that is true to the music that we’re playing, and we try to dissolve any barriers that might exist between us and the audience. It can be a little spontaneous, and it’s kinda like if you were just surprised for an hour. We’re hoping to set up a Northeast tour this spring, but we are still working out the booking.

Juniper: Describe your relationship to DIY music—what kind of value does it hold in a community? 

LS: We create and record our music ourselves, as we’ve said, but we also have a real shared relationship to the community that surrounds us - the bands that we play with are usually friends of ours and the people who own the houses that we play in when we’re doing the DIY shows are usually friends of ours as well. We live and eat the stuff, and we’re happy to say that we are part of a community that’s down with working hard for the art.

Juniper: What aspirations and goals do you have as a group? 

LS: We just hope to continue playing and writing, as long as we can make this work. Success is a goal, and supporting ourselves is a goal, but what makes this band really great is it is shared by the four of us very equally in terms of weight and personal involvement. This is something that we don’t really see as much anymore, cause usually it’s just one or two people doing their solo project and the band are kinda hired guns. Our goal is to keep making this music together, and keep bouncing these ideas off of each other, cause that’s when we really get the good stuff.

Listen to Lip Service on Spotify and Apple Music.

Thumbnail and Social Media photo: Tara Maggiulli