Throwaway Style is a monthly column dedicated to spotlighting the artists of the Pacific Northwest music scene through the age-old practice of longform feature writing. Whether it’s an influential (or overlooked) band or solo artist from the past, someone currently making waves in their community (or someone overlooked making great music under everybody’s nose), or a brand new act poised to bring the scene into the future; this space celebrates the community of musicians that makes the Pacific Northwest one of a kind, every month from KEXP.
This month, Martin Douglas visited the home of Justin R. Cruz Gallego—founder of Seattle psych-punks Dreamdecay and creative nucleus of J.R.C.G.—ahead of the release of the latter’s new album Grim Iconic… (Sadistic Mantra), which was recently released on the iconic Sub Pop Records. For about an hour in the backyard of Gallego’s beautiful Central Tacoma home, they chronicled his musical life up to his point. From his childhood in Tucson, Arizona, to moving to the Olympia Peninsula and ingratiating himself into its punk scene, to the present day, a few short weeks prior to releasing what he describes as his “pop album.”
Perhaps I shouldn’t start out on such a personal note, but I will anyway. In all the years I’ve been doing interviews—a considerable number of years past a decade if you’re curious—I’ve rarely been invited into an artist’s home to conduct one. Not even artists whom I have a great relationship with; not even artists whom I consider friends. There was the one time I was invited to interview a band at a punk house, but a punk house is different. They are more often than not somewhere between a guerrilla performance space and a squat. Squatters’ rights aside, being a guest at a punk house is not quite as intimate as, say, being in the place where an artist winds down after a tough day or prepares breakfast for their kid.
I think about all of this shortly after asking Justin R. Cruz Gallego to point me in the direction of the bathroom. Somewhere in Central Tacoma, there is a resplendent home with toys scattered in the living room and musical instruments in the basement. And a bathroom where, as of this interview, notable music journalist Martin Douglas has peed. The house is well-furnished, tastefully designed, and (at least to the naked eye) well-organized; two telltale signals that grown-ass adults live here.
The basement, however, signals the workspace of an artist who thrives on controlled chaos.
After wandering his basement and taking a few photos for this feature, the decision of where to conduct our interview was easy on such a lovely midsummer afternoon—no better place than the backyard. During our conversation, planes flew overhead; a natural consequence of being about a dozen miles north of McChord Field. In the moments leading up to our recorded conversation, we naturally chatted a bit about Tacoma—where I lived for nearly a quarter-century and where Gallego has called his home for about one-fifth of that duration; of which he has had plenty of prior familiarity from living just a little ways up Highway 16 in Kitsap County.
When Justin R. Cruz Gallego moved to the Olympic Peninsula from Tucson, Arizona, his access to punk rock was limited to its mainstream. He says, “I feel like my understanding of the trajectory of a band was: ‘Oh, you play music…’ and then you’re on MTV, you know?” Until he moved to the Pacific Northwest, the idea of a local punk scene was mostly foreign to him. It was at a time where the internet was just beginning to become widely accessible, let alone the normalization of social media being available to anyone with a phone and a working set of fingertips.
Luckily for Gallego, the region was recognized as near the top of the list of the world’s localized punk rock communities. His friends took him to a gig at a grange hall. Two bands burned into his memory: Maurice’s Little Bastards and Holy Ghost Revival. Gallego mentions only attending radio-sponsored arena shows prior.
Even more so than the music, seeing those bands at that grange hall introduced Gallego to a music community beneath the surface; one that included neighbors and friends, people who made becoming an artist actually feel possible. “It wasn’t until being exposed to that where [I felt] there [was] so much else going on,” he says. “This whole other world that is doing something a little bit more meaningful; this other offshoot of culture.”
In his four years on the peninsula, Gallego became very familiar with Highway 16, breezing south to attend punk shows in Tacoma and Olympia. Even back in Tucson, he had plans on playing in a band. In Washington, he was given the means and opportunity to do it. One of his earliest groups was a punk outfit called Degania, who, in Gallego’s words, were influenced by Northern Virginia hardcore bands like Majority Rule and Pg. 99. He says, “Even though we were pretty young, we had people from Belfair in the band; people from Bremerton in the band. For being that young, it’s kind of interesting to have such sprawling member involvement.
Gallego still speaks of the Kitsap County punk scene with a twinge of astonishment in his voice. The constellation of insular little punk scenes, full of young people roughly or exactly his age, putting on their own shows and coming up with their own sound and meeting people from the larger communities (but not by much) of Tacoma and Olympia—it was all thrilling to him. The collective aspect of the peninsula/South Sound scene meant a lot to him as a young punk. “I didn’t have much wide ambition towards [figuring out my own sound]. I think I was just more focused on really being involved in the larger thing,” he says as he leans forward ever-so-slightly in his backyard chair.
“I moved to Seattle. I think I was like 19. My wife and I, we were just dating [at the time]. We moved into a house, a punk house that a friend of ours had already been living in, and they had a room open.”
I had just asked Gallego about moving to Seattle from the peninsula. He mentioned that he had been attending shows at this punk house—Camp Nowhere, a veritable landmark for DIY punks around the Seattle area—for about six months prior to making his home there. Par for the course with punk houses, turnover happened regularly, and Gallego and his partner moved in as others were moving out. He began helping book shows out of the house, including bands he played with, and outfits from all over the country stopped through.
In Seattle, Gallego and his circle of friends developed a closeness with the folks at Iron Lung Records. Says Gallego, “Iron Lung showed [us] how to go on tour, how to put out records, how to build a nationwide network, how to run a band, how to run a budget, how to do all the adult things within a band. How to put on shows, how to maintain a space…”
To Gallego, it felt like a graduation of sorts, from being initiated into a regional punk scene to a nationwide community. On the peninsula, he was already very familiar with the large network of Get in the Van-type road dogs who literally played in every city that had a house full of punks for not much more than hot dogs and handshakes. Living in Seattle proper and taking up headquarters in Camp Nowhere, he made acquaintances with bands who toured the national rock club circuit.
A short handful of years later, Gallego and his partner moved to the Central District and he began recording songs in his bedroom. He named the project Dreamdecay. He says, “You know, it started as a bedroom project and evolved into the band that it is now; equally shared by the four of us.”
Not only did Dreamdecay evolve into a band—for a select few punk weirdos in the region, those obsessive music fans who saw the encroaching trend of young professional normie-ism seeping into Seattle’s music scene, Dreamdecay was the band. They’re formally described as post-punk, but hearken back to a time where “post” could mean “experimental” rather than “meaningless” in terms of genre (see also: “indie” rock as “independent” rather than “negligible”).
Even more so than the sprawling darkness of their 2017 full-length Yú (released by their friends at Iron Lung Records)—where Gallego zeroes in on his Mexican American identity (right down to the hybrid Spanish-English title)—Dreamdecay’s musical apotheosis is emblematized in the Sub Pop Singles Club entry “N/O.” The titular A-side is the band in its purest form: dark, pummeling, prone to unexpected rhythmic phrasing and melodic shifts. Its B-side, “H/S,” is a lurching, downtempo banger built like a bridge over a current of guitar and keyboard drones.
The single shows the cohesion of musical ideas congealing into what Gallego describes as a democratic writing process. “I don’t know if it’s just the way we’ve built up a working routine,” Gallego says, “but we all have to have our fingerprint on it somehow.”
It is the democracy that Dreamdecay was always intended to become which led Gallego to start another solo project in earnest. He says, “Being so immersed in a collaborative setting, maybe you rely a little too much on the taste and input of the people you trust, you know?”
The process of becoming J.R.C.G. involved what Gallego described as forcing himself to make his own decisions and have trust in those decisions as an artist. To be boxed into a situation where it doesn’t come down to a vote; he has the final say on whether a composition has been completed. To not make space—or to be involuntarily compelled to not make space—for anyone’s structural input but his own.
The idea of Tucson, Gallego’s birthplace and childhood home, is crucial to the composition of his first album as J.R.C.G., Ajo Sunshine. First off, his father made field recordings in the Arizona city, which float in and out of the album’s songs and interludes like memories from a dream. When speaking about his childhood, Gallego fondly recalls the family-orientedness and strong values from his Mexican elders and ancestors. There are vague elements of the Tejano and ranchero music he was weaned on—very rhythmic stuff, which tracks for a drumming frontman—but with an experimental punk spin. “It’s an ode to [the lifestyle and ethos of] living down there to me,” Gallego says. “There’s so much focus on your family being the center of your universe in a way. Incorporating my father—who is not a musician—into it was super important.”
Gallego’s family history is a crucial factor in the subtext of Ajo Sunshine. Young Justin grew up in a family of cowboys, most of them stalwarts of the rodeo scene. His father was a team roper, his brother a bull rider, and his grandfather and uncles were all team ropers and ranch hands. Gallego found important parallels between the punk scene that thrived with his involvement and the rodeo culture of his youth.
“Someone collecting money at the door, someone doing sound, someone making sure everything’s okay [and running smoothly]. I always felt that was a unique experience to be able to make the connection [between] those worlds,” says Gallego. The rodeos were often held on someone’s private property in the community. In most cases, rodeos are more pleasant-smelling than punk houses too.
On a general level, music tied to a warm, sunny place often feels idyllic, even tropical. Free and upbeat. The interesting thing about Ajo Sunshine is that while it has moments of outright darkness (notably, the black, empty space of a desert at night), the “sunshine” you hear feels like when the sun is burning hot and bright, when it is powerful enough to hurt you.
Gallego says, “The stuff that sounds jarring, or the stuff that sounds more abrasive in general, it’s inspired by what it’s like to live there.” In conversation, he explores the idea that in the desert, beauty and danger coexist rather seamlessly, and there requires an inherent toughness to live in such an environment.
Ajo Sunshine is naturally rhythm-focused (it feels important to reiterate that this is the solo project of a drummer/vocalist), augmented by bleating keyboards (“Rainbow”), rumbling basslines (“Holy Hope”), and droning guitars (“Lowrider”). Album highlights “V,” “Bopp,” and the record’s title track possess the aforementioned encroaching darkness; the former and the latter stomp through the nighttime sand and sagebrush, while the middle rolls and shuffles its way through.
Titles like “Lowrider,” “Brown Boy,” and “Brother Was a Bullrider” highlight Gallego’s connection to symbols of his childhood and his Mexican American identity.
Though mostly recorded in the basement of Gallego’s Tacoma home, where we root around a little before sitting down in his backyard to talk, Ajo Sunshine isn’t the insular affair you’d expect from a genius-level punk lifer who has described the beginnings of more than one of his bands as a “bedroom project.” Underground rock scene demigod John Dwyer, co-founder of the label which released Ajo Sunshine (the mighty Castle Face Records), unleashes a wild guitar solo to close out “Lowrider.” Gallego cites Dwyer as both a huge inspiration and a mentor to him.
“I feel extremely grateful for all the creative energy that people have been able to allot for me,” Gallego says. That collaborative spirit is emboldened on Grim Iconic… (Sadistic Mantra), the brand new J.R.C.G. LP with the emblematic Sub Pop logo on the corner of the record sleeve. A veritable laundry list of collaborators help color and fill out Gallego’s compositions; including but not limited to longtime collaborator, Dreamdecay bandmate, and fellow Kitsap County scene veteran Jason Clackley; Casual Hex and Big Bite member Erica Miller; and Terminator’s Veronica Dye.
The seeds for Grim Iconic were planted while Gallego and the J.R.C.G. live band he assembled toured behind Ajo Sunshine. “We were performing a couple of songs I wanted to have for the next record [which would eventually become Grim Iconic],” he says. “And there was one in particular that was based off this jam I had recorded, the live band spruced up, and we ended up writing [the song] to have its own life within that [jam]. And that was recorded live in Texas.”
Recorded in part in Gallego’s Tacoma basement (again) and subsequently in Pawtucket, Rhode Island with Seth Manchester—who has amassed a ton of production, mixing, and engineering credits over the past couple of decades, perhaps most notably for Lightning Bolt and Battles—Grim Iconic… (Sadistic Mantra) feels like the sort of body music that only comes from rich collaboration. (Sorry, unless you’re Arthur Russell, Carl Craig, or some similar deity, nobody’s making people move like this with something they made tinkering alone.) The thrilling cacophony of closer “World i” combines all the flashpoints of the album’s focus (Latin-inspired percussion, multiple players contributing parts) into a lurching, 6-½-minute epic that sounds like the TV on the Radio of their 2004 all-time banger “The Wrong Way” and the evil twin siblings of L.A. tropical-punks-turned-new-wavers Abe Vigoda trapped together in a haunted house.
Elsewhere, Gallego’s second proper solo(?) album is, as not-so-slyly hinted at above, downright danceable. Early combo “34” to “Dogear” to “Drummy” (the latter a 2022 single wisely included nearly two-and-a-half years after the fact) are made for rock clubs with dance floors far away from dank punk houses engaging in the time-honored Northwest tradition of barely nodding your head to express musical ecstasy. And “Cholla Beat” basically just sounds like where Dreamdecay were headed anyway, only with hand drums adding Latin flavor to Gallego’s punchy rock drumming.
Most of the work Justin Gallego has recorded in the past decade has been low-key high concept, but Grim Iconic… (Sadistic Mantra) comes with a built-in social contract, where you can both ponder Gallego’s relationship to the Latin music and Mexican-rooted heritage of his youth … and shake your ass.
Speaking on working with Manchester, Gallego says, “I had started talking to him pretty quickly after Ajo Sunshine came out, and [made] a plan with him about what the next [album] could be and where could maybe evolve from this home recording aesthetic I had in mind.” He mentioned wanting to retain the band-in-a-basement aesthetic of J.R.C.G.’s debut, “but wanting to flirt with more high fidelity kind of stuff.” Gallego flew to Rhode Island, made his way to Manchester’s Machines With Magnets Studio, and “messed [around] in his space.”
He considered the idea that actually working in a studio with a producer might have been something that would never really make sense for an artist like him, but he enjoyed the experience and seemed thrilled with the results. I could hear the excitement in his voice as he talked about Grim Iconic being made.
Listening to an album like Grim Iconic… (Sadistic Mantra), a piece of music that is substantially weird yet profoundly dance-oriented, it reminds me of a bygone generation of underground artists who fashioned their more outré/avant-garde impulses to stand alongside a lifelong love of pop music. Gallego mentioned very early in our interview that as a kid, he listened to after-midnight “Quiet Storm” R&B radio (complete with listeners calling in with requests and dedications), as well as keeping tabs of Top 40 chart placements. This eventually led to the question I wanted to ask him the most during this interview: Is Grim Iconic J.R.C.G.’s pop album?
“In my mind, J.R.C.G. is a pop group,” Gallego says while again leaning forward in his seat. “I want to be perceived as a pop artist.” He spoke about how he has a pretty natural inclination to make music that is sort of challenging, but the “rhythm first” approach we’d been chatting about for the better part of an hour was very intentional. Noise music is generally rooted in punk, rock, or ambient foundations structurally, and Gallego wanted to use that style and apply it to music that was clearly more compelling on a rhythmic level.
“At the end of the day,” says Gallego, “I do consider myself a percussionist. I want that to be pushed into a new light for sure. That feels to me like the most comfortable thing to push, because I have the most understanding behind it, out of all the things I’m playing on the record. It feels a bit more natural to squeeze a bit more out of [the rhythms].”
Gallego further says about Grim Iconic, “You can listen to this record and not feel like you have to think about it. It can just happen to you. [That distinction is] something that felt important to me.”
As Gallego and I settle into being middle-aged punks, we’ve seen a bunch of people in our communities “age out” of the scene, so to speak. Not everybody gets to carve out a living doing this; nor does everybody want to spend their thirties or forties swatting away roaches in grody punk houses to get cereal out of the cupboard (or finding that rats have chewed through their box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch). Gallego expresses a sentiment that I have thought myself: Is there a point where “aging out” or moving on will happen to me? But he also echoes a sentiment I have certainly felt: “If I’m going to stop, I would’ve done it already.”
And therein lies a not-often-mentioned but fundamental aspect of the Northwest music scene. Among the consumers cosplaying as rock stars and music industry workers groomed for their jobs since undergrad, a select few of the faces of artists and folks with (mostly) gainful employment and satisfying artistic lives are the same ones you saw at basement shows or dive bars, spending what little disposable income they had on a seven-inch or a drink from the bar. The scene lifers, the road dogs.
A short number of weeks after our interview, I find myself in a packed-out control room overlooking KEXP’s in-studio performance space, where J.R.C.G. (the band) is ripping through four choice cuts from Grim Iconic… (Sadistic Mantra).
As I’m squeezed up against the control room door so that other guests can see (a motley crew of employees from both KEXP and Sub Pop, as well as friends and family of the band), the six-piece band plows through a frenetically danceable mini-set, augmented by the free-jazz stylings of tenor saxophonist Morgan Henderson—whose resume includes but is far from limited to membership in the Blood Brothers and Fleet Foxes (as well as notably credited among the murderer’s row of players on Grim Iconic). As Afternoon Show host Larry Mizell Jr. said in his short interview with the group, “I’ve always said that if your band has Morgan Henderson in it, you’ve got the sauce.”
While I watch the J.R.C.G. band nail a live fadeout leading to the climax of “World i” live on KEXP, I see a notable member of our community who has played in a gajillion bands (including some of the biggest groups to come out of this region in the past two decades); another with an influential position at a beloved music non-profit; various others for whom this band is far from their first rodeo.
It’s not necessarily a case of “the meek shall inherit the earth,” but rather the scene being guided by the people who would probably have been doing this shit for free anyway. And that, in and of itself, is reason enough to dance.
There was a time you couldn’t mention AJ Suede without acknowledging his superhuman work ethic. Up until about a couple of years ago, it was under the auspices of conventional wisdom that you’d have to sift through half a dozen Suede albums to pick the best one (or two) for your year-end list. Now, the bicoastal star of Seattle’s rap scene has fully implemented a “quality over quantity” approach with, astonishingly, only his second new release of 2024 (it’s already August!). Suede God taps in with an old friend and frequent collaborator for his latest, the inimitable Wolftone, who has played an important role in Suede lore. Wolf helmed the beat for “Gas Light,” one of the best rap singles this city has ever produced (along with much of Suede’s breakthrough project Gotham Fortress) and famously invited Suede to crash at his place before the East Coaster made permanent residence in Seattle.
Recorded entirely in person—a rarity for contemporary rap and suitably marketed as such—Suede and Wolf reprise their outstanding musical chemistry on Permafrost Discoveries and invite a host of Seattle music stalwarts to join in. BlkSknn and Perry Porter (the latter now takes up residence in Las Vegas) guest on two tracks each. Maya Marie (billed as the Maya Experience)—who, after nearly a decade being one of the rock scene’s most talented participants, is readying her debut full-length—gets her Beth Gibbons on over the trip-hop stylings of “Prove Me Wrong.” The loop-crazy locus of peak-position Suede is evident on “Off Track Betting,” while he and Wolf go for some vintage bounce on “No Loss” and “Limited Edition.”
It’s tough to come up with something new to say about AJ Suede dropping another outstanding piece of rap music (approaching three dozen albums in less than a decade). It’s like living in Honolulu and marveling over the weather. Another beautiful day.
Right down to the album art, Nacho Picasso’s first album in over five years is being hailed as a resurrection. Truth be told, a lot has happened in the half-decade leading up to Jesse Robinson’s titular revenge: the Seattle rap scene legend moved to California, (mostly) got sober, and took up an interest in weightlifting. This generally healthier lifestyle hasn’t dimmed the vividness of Nacho’s immaculate pen, though; if anything, the slur in his voice and his insights are clearer on songs like “Still Ballin’” and “I Be Mad!” And linking up with Portland indie-rap super-producer Televangel (formerly one half of Blue Sky Black Death, creators of some of Nacho’s most titanic early-to-mid-period work) has not only given Nacho arguably the best musical backdrops of his career, it has galvanized his inspiration for entering a new prime as one of the West Coast’s heavyweight underground MCs. I could have easily just made this blurb a list of the best one-liners here (he refers to himself as “Yellow Jack Johnson,” says his last plug resembled Ryan Seacrest, and notes that his lady companion looks like Hope Sandoval). A fitting return for one of the most influential rap talents to come out of the Northwest.
It’s hard not to lead with anything regarding Portland Country-Western stalwarts Jenny Don’t and the Spurs without referencing a particular cliché, but “a little bit country, a little bit rock ‘n roll” fits their vibe perfectly. The band’s fourth studio full-length (and first since the heartbreaking death of drummer/Portland punk veteran Sam Henry) applies their punk/garage scene roots to their most musically rich songs to date. The vocals of Jenny (or should I be formal and use Ms. Don’t?) sound more confident in places and strikingly weathered on others—the latter in the best way of course; this is country music we’re talking about after all. Their backing band (which includes band co-founder Kelly Halliburton) switches from bluesy balladry to boogie in a heartbeat, and their musical prowess is emphasized on instrumental ripper “Sidewinder.” Few bands in the Northwest have quite as consistently great body of work as Jenny Don’t and the Spurs, where you can’t quite definitively choose which album is their best. Broken Hearted Blue makes the completely subjective and arbitrary exercise of ranking even harder.
We’re not incredibly far removed from Terminator’s startlingly excellent debut, Placate Boring Flesh, and the Seattle/New York dual citizens are back with an EP that packs most everything great about the band (lovers of flute-driven, downtempo bangers will sadly be disappointed) into a tight, six-song package. As an experimental punk power trio, the band puts their best foot forward with songs like the compellingly static “Contradiction” and “9 to 9,” as well as the foreboding “Tell Me Your News.” For the real weirdos, Terminator haven’t left you behind, as “Human” is driven by bass, plinking piano, clangorous guitar, and monotone spoken-word poetry that might even make Sasha taqʷšəblu Lapointe raise her eyebrows—and psychedelic closer “Alabaster (demo)” finds some of that mystic punk seeker energy which spaced out their 2022 opus.
Ahead of a performance alongside a screening of 'El Topo,' Justin Gallego talks about his latest solo album and the intersection of music and visual art.
KEXP caught up with Justin R Cruz Gallego of J.R.C.G. and Dreamdecay in Austin while on tour behind Ajo Sunshine
Dreamdecay's Justin R. Cruz Gallego shares the John Dwyer-featured single off his forthcoming album as J.R.C.G. Ajo Sunshine
