Though Party’z is named for a venue half a world away in Nagoya, it’s hard to talk about the indie-pop sextet without talking about Chicago. The fact that several of its members have played the same tour stop in Japan only serves to underscore the degree of overlap they share in their Midwestern hometown – a city whose music scene seems to endlessly regenerate itself from networks of rich reciprocity. So their story goes: musicians who’ve spent years playing in parallel bands consider joining forces. Elements reshuffle, previous limitations are abandoned, and new aims are set – thus Party’z burst into being. If only that little bar could see them now.
Formed in the spring of 2020, an early iteration of Party’z spent its days remotely collaborating, a lockdown-thwarting system that incidentally wound up serving primary songwriter and guitarist Mark Jaeschke’s Smashing Pumpkins-bred taste for maximalism perfectly. A precedent was set: members contributed with freak flags unabated, resulting in a band of uncompromised individual voices serving a unified vision. Afterparties – Party’z debut full-length – capitalizes on that synergy, manifesting in a record marked by a bold hybrid of sweeping pre-millenium alt-rock,
oughts indie pop, and the scrappy immediacy of 2010s emo. Party’z synthesis of all of the above traditions exploits the sonic links between them, making for a varied grab-bag of tones the band uses to tackle ballads and bangers alike.
-Caleb Cordes
