QUARTERBACKS

While living in New Paltz, New York, songwriter Dean Engle began Quarterbacks as a minimal punk-pop band, playing his fast devotional pop tunes on guitar while a friend backed him up playing a drum kit consisting of only a snare drum. This incarnation of the band was short-lived, playing only a few basement shows before fading out of sight. Engle regrouped in 2012, bringing the rhythm section of Max Restaino and Tom Christie into the fold and expanding the more stripped-down early version of the band into a high-energy twee pop power trio playing at manic punk tempos. Engle's romantic and sometimes charmingly naive songs spilled out at a prolific rate, due in part to their economical song structures, usually clocking in at less than two minutes. The band played locally for the next two years, writing more songs and releasing some of them on various cassette album releases. Over the course of a 12-hour recording session in 2014, Quarterbacks tracked 19 songs that would make up their 22-minute self-titled debut full-length. The album saw release early the next year on Team Love Records.