Wrong Hole

In 2012, Wrong Hole ’formed’ as an excuse for singer/lyricist Nick Flanagan and guitarist/drum programmer Andrew Moszynski to meet up and eat pizza while quizzically looking at musical instruments before going their separate ways. After about a year of this incredibly satisfying process, and (shockingly) the completion of a few songs, Jon “Shoutin’ ” Schouten came into the picture, bearing keyboard. His OK-with-nonsense attitude and Jack Nicholsonesque “Joi De Vivre” forced Nick and Andrew to actually put some effort in. This collective pooling of enthusiasm resulted in Wrong Hole’s debut LP 2012, described by none other than nobody as “an 8 song tour-de-farts”. The album was released digitally in June 2014 and physical copies can now be ordered through Pleasence Records in North America, and P-Trash/Cut The Cord/Prugelprinz in Europe. Some background: Moszynski is known for drumming in late ‘90s garage rock neo-pioneers the Deadly Snakes, and has recently massaged guitar strings in hazy hashish-fueled psych warriors Quest For Fire and now Comet Control, while Schouten is best known for guitar-blasting all who dare in his garage-kraze-EDM group Teenanger and running respected label Telephone Explosion, while Flanagan sang in uncontrollably stupide emo-caveman-90s-hardcore vintageers Brutal Knights. What does any of that mean? It means that Wrong Hole is a colossally dumb mixture of straight-up punk, garage and vague “weirdness.” It’s a new genre called Lean Punk, not because the songs are thin, but because each member has to lean down to deal with a bunch of musical bullshit. Nick has a Memory Man vocal effects box to deal with, Andrew handles (Handrews?) the drum machine, and Jon is just trying to figure what the keyboard he’s using does, as he has many keyboards and they are all different and confusing. Flanagan’s lyrics in previous bands have always been a source of audience interest – there was even an article about it once that has since been completely erased from the Internet. Lyrically, 2012 covers the major events of the 21st century: HDTVs, the slow domination of our species by dogs (as predicted in the prescient film Battlefield: Earth), the fact that the “We Generation” is getting older and must have a legacy, and most importantly, Wrong Hole aren’t afraid to ask the question that is on all of our minds: What is a car? Is it a man? Is it a machine?