Local bands keep the rock in tact: Pinstripe

By Meredith Gordon

Not hardcore, not indie, not pop or funk or ska; Pinstripe's posters say rock. And rock they do.

"I usually say it's bass, drums, and acoustic guitar," says Webster McBride, BK '99, vocals/guitar/drums. He adds emphatically, "But it's not folk." Karl Tupper, BK '00, bass, describes Pinstripe's music as effectuating a "murky overlap between Fugazi and Shift and Soul Coughing and Soundgarden, but played acoustic, as opposed to loud and electric and distorted."

"I used to say it was `indie rock with an emo touch,'" attempts Hrishikesh Hirway, MC '00, drums/guitar/vocals. "But that's not it entirely. The thing about using the term `indie rock,' especially in conjunction with `emo,' is that people sort of assume it's pop. But we're not poppy, right?" Hirway looks to his compatriots to see if they concur, and they do.

Pinstripe's sound is melodic and rhythmic, digressing on occasional discordant tangents, but strongly grounded in basslines that you can feel reverberating in your ribcage. The sophisticated beats are replete with out-of-nowhere tempo changes and frenetic bursts of energy that set off the intense and fantastical, yet soothingly familiar vocals.

The three started Pinstripe in December, and by February the group was already performing, though not under their fashion-conscious name. "Since our name was still pending," says Hirway, "we played our first show [at Hamden's now defunct Outer Space] as Pending. It was very clever." They have also appeared at The Taft Caffé, Salem, MA's Front Street Coffee House, and various on-campus venues.

For Pinstripe, writing and performing music is not just another extracurricular activity. They see themselves, as Hirway says, not as a "Yale Band," but as a band "whose members happen to go to Yale." The connection they have with their music is like a relationship between two people. "It's not just something you go to and get what you need from it," says McBride. "It's a whole lot more."

The schoolboys of Pinstripe are decidedly unpretentious, unassuming, and incapable of taking themselves too seriously. Between questions and answers they try to decide whose chair creaks more and trade stories about Yale music legends. "I wonder what Mia Doi Todd was like in high school," they muse, deeply contemplative. Pinstripe are rockers in the truest sense of the word, and they put on one hell of a show.

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