Dummy Ache Announce Debut LP “Shakers”

The members of Dummy Ache have known each other for about 15 years, having all spent their twenties and early thirties cutting their teeth in noisy Brooklyn-based indie bands. Guitarist Max Goransson (Quiet Loudly, Clouder), bassist Sam Rich (Miniboone), and drummer Rich Digregorio (Gunfight!, Natureboy) shared stages throughout the ’10s, usually in ramshackle DIY venues held together with duct tape and prayers or odorous, begrimed dive bars – the places you play when you’re young and in a band in New York City and your life is real but not yet “real life.”

That phase doesn’t last; it was never meant to. Bands break up, people get jobs, get married, have kids, and maybe don’t want to raise them around a permastink of stale weed and human waste. Like Snake Plissken before them, Max, Sam, and Rich all escaped New York in their own time, each eventually settling in coastal New England. Gradually, boredom and restlessness overpowered their self-consciousness and striking lack of youth. It was time to be in a band again. Thank goodness they had friends nearby.

Despite never having played together, years of camaraderie and shared sensibilities resulted in immediate alchemy. Dummy Ache’s Shakers, their debut LP, was recorded in Portland, Maine over two days at the end of August 2026 at Acadia Recording Company.

Shakers is real-ass indie rock as god intended: the melodies are forlorn, the music is both ambitious and humble, and it all gets loud as fuck. You’ll hear echoes of Red House Painters, Yo La Tengo, Galaxie 500 and Dinosaur Jr. But this is no derivative, regressive weekend-warrior claptrap. Dummy Ache’s songs are products of hard-earned sensitivity, wisdom, depth, generosity, artistry and joy – the sound of old friends opening their hearts to each other and inviting you to join in.

Goransson and Sam Rich split lyric writing and vocal duties, wrestling with complex adult emotions through regret, sadness, grotesque creatures, villains and deeply hidden fears. “Goldie” is sung from the perspective of a goldfish; “Tilly” from that of an incel porn addict; Rich’s “Baywatch Nights” arrives as a “live transmission from the low tide line.” Tying it together is the dry, dark wit of a couple smirking, self-deprecating anti-heroes who refuse to look away from the apparitions staring back from the abyss.

“You’re gonna leave me, you just don’t know it yet.” – “Honey Drops