West Philly's Radiator Hospital has an ear for the classics and a DIY heart
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
Left to right: Sam Cook-Parrott, Cynthia Schemmer, Jon Rybicki, Jeff Bolt
Neal Santos
Neal Santos
It’s 2014, and Sam Cook-Parrott prefers to record and release music on cassette.
Aside from last year’s Something Wild (Salinas), which was pressed on vinyl, every Radiator Hospital release — including his recent Total Request split with Kyle Kaos — comes in the form of a tape packaged with a digital download, a handshake between old and new.
“Look, tapes are super cheap,” Cook-Parrott says, slouched against a wall in his West Philly bedroom. “If you’re going to press something yourself and release your own music, tapes are cooler than CDs.” He scratches his head. “Who the fuck even buys CDs?” He motions toward his own towering collection of cassettes and vinyl. “I like tapes,” he mumbles, almost to himself. “I have a bunch of them.”
Cook-Parrott is 22 years old and DIY through and through. He began recording under the Radiator Hospital moniker when he still lived in Grand Rapids, Mich. (where he would play in as many as five bands at a time), cementing his sound as lo-fi, unapologetic power-pop. He amassed eight releases on small, tape-exclusive labels. In September 2012, he moved to Philly.
“I just sort of felt like I needed to get out of Michigan,” he says. “I knew a bunch of people here already so it just made sense. … And the fucking music scene is awesome here.”
Since the move, Radiator Hospital’s lineup has been fleshed out with guitarist Cynthia Schemmer (also of Heavy Bangs), bassist Jon Rybicki and drummer Jeff Bolt. Their rep as a fun, hard-working DIY band was cemented by Something Wild, the first full-band Radiator Hospital album, released this past summer. They plan to record a follow-up in May.
When schedule conflicts occur, Cook-Parrott still tours solo, usually via Megabus.
Radiator Hospital songs largely concern themselves with moments — memories, moonlight, staring deep into a beautiful pair of eyes, wildfire bedroom romance and tape-hiss heartbreak. The ideas are timeless, mined from a half-century of pop music, the lyrics driven by pining, wanting, needing.
“And when you look at me/ Will you remember all/ All of the songs I sang/ Before we fell out of love?” Cook-Parrot sings on “Dead As Dreams,” from 2012’s Some Distant Moon EP.
“I should’ve known that you’d leave the room/ When I said I can’t stop thinking about you,” sings guest vocalist Allison Crutchfield (of Swearin’) on Something Wild’s “Are You Feeling Me?”
This is a band that knows something about pop mythology, a band that’s studied the classics. “We 100 percent play to that. That’s a big part of the music that I make. Part of it is paying tribute, but we’re also trying to actively engage and participate in the history of pop music,” says Cook-Parrott. “To be using ideas or phrases or music or melodies — anything that can be a call-back to things that have been done for a long time. … There are ways of using the same tools to communicate different ideas.”
He cites an example from early on Something Wild, near the end of “The Great Escape.” It’s one of the record’s full-band songs, a song about fantasizing that the one you’re yearning for will suddenly burst through the bedroom door. The track winks out with “This is my party/ I can cry if I want to.”
“I certainly would be the first person to say that there’s nothing original about Radiator Hospital,” Cook-Parrott says, laughing. “It’s all been done before, but that’s the beauty in what we’re doing.”
