Words by Jason Lee
Photos by Tommy Krause
Ivy is notoriously difficult to kill. English Ivy in particular, brought over to the Americas by European colonists (go figure!) try pulling it up by the roots it’s just gonna sprout up again from tiny seedlets deposited in the soil and even herbicide alone won’t usually do the trick unless you totally go to town with it but then you’ll probably end up killing the trees and plants and grass you were trying to save from its grasp in the first place, or if we’re talking about man-made structures, the aerial rootlets of ivy stick like cement, trapping moisture and attracting insects that together will rot out the walls of a building from the inside out soon enough if left unattended.
So, in other words, ivy is akin to a plant-based virus (or akin to America’s internal rot of late if you’re inclined to such thinking) and you gotta be super vigilant to get rid of it once it’s taken root but at the same time it sure looks pretty cool if yr prone to appreciating how it subsumes everything it touches under a lush, leafy canopy and while we’ve not sure exactly how much this has to do with the band under discussion here, namely Ivy Kill, or the music video they just released for their debut single “Wasting,” it sure sounds like it could be related to the song’s repeatedly mention of “apathy and atrophy…fucking up my state of being” not to mention the thick canopy of fuzzed-out sludgy guitar and propulsive, thrashing drumbeats laid down under the lyrics…
…plus there’s some other parallels, both more obvious and more abstract, like how in the music video (directed by Eva Froehlich) the rock ’n’ roll duo perform the song in a forest clearing blanketed by a thick layer of ivy or maybe that’s some tall weeds but same diff and then there’s the fact that Ivy Kill was formed in the wake of the COVID-19 virus effectively shutting down all of NYC and didn’t we mention ivy as a sort of virus above which led Kyle Duke (guitar, vocals) and Brian Duke (drums) and yes they’re literally blood brothers to move into a Stamford, CT recording studio where they lived, wrote, rehearsed, and recorded for months on end which was a good thing for Kyle in particular seeing as he’s immunocompromised…
…but then on the more positive side of things Ivy Kill seems to be all about Brian and Kyle getting back to their roots as the latter lays out in more detail int he interview below and how when you’re brothers those (musical) roots can’t so easily be pulled up and disposed of (thank goodness!) and certainly not when you’ve been playing together since the ages of 6 and 9 anti-respectively and while each has developed multiple successful band projects of their own in the years which has sometimes included collaboration Ivy Kill marks their first return to a duo format with equal creative input since those halcyon grade school days so you wanna talk seedlings laying dormant for years and then re-sprouting well here ya go…
…cuz there’s something downright primal about familial bonds we figure and just wait ’til you hear the upcoming six-track EP that Ivy Kill’s gonna be dropping in 2024 cuz we got a special sneak preview and while all their other musical projects most certainly rawk (and do many other things) this record’s the most rooted in raw-boned down’n’dirty riff-laden primality from the record opening psych rock of “Psychosis Mission” to the lighter-waving mid-tempo grunge ballad turned rager towards its conclusion “Concentric” but hey we’re here for “Wasting” which quite appropriately for the lead-off single covers all bases in being both melodic and heavy AF (check out that head-nodding, half-time middle section) but that’s enough from us so please take it away Kyle…!
Kyle Duke: This is Kyle from Ivy Kill. I wrote and demoed our song “Wasting” over the summer of 2020. At that point Brian and I were both living for a period of time at a studio in Stamford, Connecticut called The Carriage House. Brian has known the owner, Johnny, for years and done many sessions there with other bands. Basically, when shit hit the fan in the spring of 2020 with Covid, Johnny was not getting business.
So he offered to Brian that we could come and stay with them. We ended up doing some landscaping and construction work in return for staying in the apartment that’s connected to the studio and basically shoeing free reign of the studio for writing, demoing, ecording, mixing, um, what have you for a few months, which was an incredible opportunity and something that I am very grateful for, in particular, because I happen to also be immunocompromised.
Living in Bed-Stuy during the spring and early summer of Covid was entirely overwhelming and terrible for everybody living there. And as someone with pre-existing health conditions I felt like anytime I stepped outside of the door I could die. So it was great to have an opportunity to not only go somewhere safe where I felt, at least to a degree, protected from the disease. But it was a very productive environment getting to live and work in a studio. “Wasting” was the first song I fully finished writing-wise once we moved in there.
It was one of those tunes that I sat down and the first draft of the song just came out in one sitting. And that’s part of why it’s the song we put out first because it was basically the birth of Ivy Kill. I also play in a band called BRKN LOVE and like any other working band, all of the touring we had lined up for 2020 fell through. We got back from a run in Canada in March, a few days before lockdown started here. And the whole spring and summer got canceled. So “Wasting” definitely came from being paranoid and frustrated, reflecting on the whole situation.
It was initially written for a potential Brown Bag Boys project—my older band that I’ve had since the beginning of college that Brian has also been part with a more mellow indie vibe. But this group I’ve toured with for coming up on five years now, BRKN LOVE, has exposed me to a much heavier scene. It’s brought me back to music that I was into when I was a kid, metal and more punk-influenced alternative rock music. So I’d say the writing on “Wasting” and the subsequent tunes written during those few months, the way they came out sonically, stylistically, was informed by the time I’d been spending playing in this heavier band.
The result was a group of tunes that didn’t really fit in with the records I’ve put out as Kyle Duke and the Brown Bag Boys. I felt like it was enough of a pivot that it was an opportunity to start over and try something new. And Brian and I have never done a band in this way, where it’s more of an equal partnership type project than before.
So it was all of these kinds of factors, but especially the timing and where we were writing the songs, that led to Ivy Kill. Brian helped me demo them while I was helping him demo other projects, for his other bands, and we just ended up with this group of songs that didn’t really have a place with my existing projects. And we wanted to do something together with it. And even though it’s a “pandemic song” now that it’s coming out, years later in the wake of COVID, I think the themes are as relevant as they were in the midst of the lockdown—the theme of apathy and atrophy being like the main lyric in the chorus. There’s a lot to do with how we ended up where we are just from those two words. I think “Wasting” is a good introduction to the group of songs we recorded.
And it’s been great doing a project with Brian, too. We grew up playing music together. I started playing guitar when I was six, and he was nine at that time and got his first drum set probably within a year of that. It’s something both of us are very grateful for. We’re able to work together easily, having that history and the musical chemistry of playing for so long together. Itfelt like, you know, why’d why wouldn’t we do something together? It would be a shame to a waste that connection. And I think that’s exemplified in that when we play live. Ivy Kill is a two piece live, it’s just the two of us. It’s just us doing what we’ve done together our whole lives.
Playing lie, it’s just the two of us—doing what we can with the drum set and myself playing guitar going through a pedalboard that hits the guitar amp and a bass amp at once. So that’s been challenging. It’s also been a lot of fun. I think it’s helped me grow a lot as a musician to take songs that were produced and arranged one way, and transform them into something where I do my best to convey the parts that are built on multiple layers, and put it into a new context, something I can play on one instrument through two amplifiers.
So that’s probably the biggest difference between Ivy Kill and the other bands we play in. Ivy Kill is definitely heavier than our other bands. It gets a little bit more psychedelic and has a little more grandeur. It’s got its own thing, you know, drawing on influences from all these other things we’ve done together and on our own. But of course it ends up being its own thing that hopefully people enjoy because we have a lot of fun with it.
B&W photos by Tommy Krause, Jack Schneider, and Michelle LoBianco a.k.a. Brooklyn Elitist
And as always one should let the drummer have the last word but first it bears mentioning that Brian has been holding down the drumming duties for official friends-of-the-Deli Pan Arcadia for a minute now and what’s more they’ve been blowing up recently with gigs at large capacity venues like Bowery Ballroom—and oh by the way they just put out a new EP American Alter in November and a brand new single “Hysteria” so here’s Brian now with a few insights into his Ivy Killing existence…
Brian R. Duke: To me we chose “Wasting” as the single because it was one of the more upbeat and catchy tunes [from] the recording session. It defiantly captures the power of the project and lets some of our strengths shine—Kyle’s riffs, my grooves. We actually did this session at our buddy’s house upstate; we brought all the gear and recorded in his living room! We tracked as a three piece but we’ve been performing live as a duo!
It’s really cool working with my brother Kyle. There is a deep bond with a shared understanding of music that comes out during the writing sessions and the performances. It’s a unique and special dynamic for sure! Ivy Kill is one of my two duo projects, Cold Sugar being the other. These duo projects are a lot different from the experience of being in a large band like Pan Arcadia, mostly in the freedom to come up with and play whatever I want [versus] more people contributing to the writing and arranging process.
Ivy Kill “Wasting” additional credits:
Henry McGrath – bass
Mars Rx – bg vox and assist engineering
Quinn Cyrankiewicz – mix engineer and some choice percussion overdubs
Black Crow White – cover artwork
Tommy Krause – band photography
Eva Froelich — music video director