Press and Words
“At number nine, this next band hails from Ohio, I believe, and they go by the name Touchdown Jesus. This is their It's All Feast or Famine EP. If you like your art punk and rock super heavy and a little demented with odd vocals and sinister lyrics, and unhinged performances where everyone in the band is letting loose. I promise you, you are going to get a lot out of this project.” - Anthony Fantano
“Cincinnati post-rock quartet Touchdown Jesus’s newly released sophomore EP, It’s All Feast Or Famine, opens like an apocalyptic horror movie with “I Love My Wife”: The first thing you hear is this nails-on-chalkboard glissando that abruptly lurches towards a headbanging thrash of militaristic percussion, screaming saxophone, and sludgy electric guitars. The prelude sounds like the musical precursor to an announcement that the end is nigh—but it isn’t. “When I get home, you’re the first I see! Come around for a kiss on the cheek!” co-lead vocalist Miller Kaye exclaims on the first verse in a manic, Isaac Brock-like sprechgesang. He’s no doomsday prophet—just a guy that’s really, really into his wife. The musical arrangement bears an erratic temper and a cocaine-shot heartbeat, but “I Love My Wife” lives up to its name as a refreshingly straightforward, and surprisingly sweet, love song (among the most romantic lines: “My evening commute ain’t got nothing on a face like yours!” It’s downright poetic, in a distinctly 21st-century sort of way). The ode isn’t exactly tender, but there’s no question of its sincerity: Kaye roars the titular words like they’re his last, pelting them over the stomping, punk-ish rhythm (laid down with his bandmates Ethan Kimberly, Jack DePrato, and Lee Sullivan) like nuclear bombs. You’ll be hard-pressed to come by a wife-guy anthem more fervent than this—nor one that rocks even half as hard.” —Anna Pichler
“The track itself is a 4-minute psychout, a track that feels intensely anachronistic but oddly relevant - frankly, any track that begins so assuredly with soaring saxophone is guaranteed to catch my ear. What follows feels like a jam band version Between The Buried And Me - somehow never abrasive, it’s a propulsive track that abruptly hits the brakes, slows itself down, then turns up the weird again before it’s all over.” - Jared Bowers on Touchdown Jesus’s single “Four Grand”
