Styrofoam Winos - Any River Styrofoam Winos

A decade ago, three employees of Jj’s Market and Cafe became Styrofoam Winos. Lou Turner, Trevor Nikrant, and Joe Kenkel bonded over their mutual adoration for Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, Leonard Cohen, and dollar bin country records. They amplified each other's enthusiasm, freaking out over every new song they came across. After a friend moved and left behind a drum set, all three Winos learned to play the drums. Early experiments in group songwriting were born from jam sessions and erasure poetry, blacking out words in old books to generate new poems. They all sang lead and swapped instruments regularly. Seeing Michael Hurley for the first time left a lasting impression and provided the band with one of its creative north stars. Years later, Snock himself would send the Winos his blessing to release their cassette of covers of his songs.

Styrofoam Winos have always gone with the flow, which makes Any River an apt title for their new album, the follow-up to 2024's Real Time. Their playful approach is bolstered by the chops of seasoned musicians who have performed many hundreds of concerts, both together and as touring members of Ryan Davis and the Roadhouse Band, MJ Lenderman and the Wind, and as solo artists. This is one of their key strengths that can’t be overstated: they are extremely good musicians! When three talented people develop such a deep level of chemistry, the result is nothing short of majestic. Each song on Any River came out of jam sessions at Turner and Nikrant’s home studio, and a shared Google doc of lyrics soon followed. They recorded in Louisville—their first album made outside of Nashville—with Roadhouse bandmate and Equipment Pointed Ankh mastermind Jim Marlowe. Marlowe's understated production kept the band’s unique synergy on full display.

This leads to another essential point about this band. They manage to strike a perfect balance between reverence and irreverence for the musical traditions they're working within. Their knowledge of the canon is scholarly, but such knowledge is always followed by a wink. No moment on the record encapsulates this more than the trumpet solo on ‘New Friend’. It’s a deft performance, but the way Kenkel dips down below the tonic before resolving the solo’s final notes is hysterical. Performed live, he plays the solo note for note on a kazoo while playing the drums at the same time. This music is that of experienced shapeshifters, defying easy categorization while remaining instantly recognisable.