I Was Totally Destroying It

On April 1, 2010, Chapel Hill quintet I Was Totally Destroying It announced a shocking bit of band news via Facebook: Drummer James Hepler was now dating keyboardist and singer Rachel Hirsh, and bassist Joe Mazzitelli was leaving after that night’s show because he disagreed with some of the band’s “personal decisions.” They were looking for someone new to man his four strings immediately, but, otherwise, it was business as normal.

It was an April Fools’ Day joke, of course, but if only for an instant, the realignment seemed believable. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time IWTDI went searching for a new bassist, and it wouldn’t be the first time the band had written a new album in the midst of relationship turmoil. Hirsh and frontman John Booker ended their long-term relationship just as the band was writing its second LP, the personal and poppy Horror Vacui. That drama worked well on tape, too, affording the batch of songs—with bittersweet ballads and slashing indie rock builds augmenting the band’s usual power-pop delights—increased energy and intimacy. Every word and grievance seemed to ring true to life because, well, the hurt came from wounds so fresh they’d yet to turn into scars. 

But Hirsh and Booker are dating again, and the quintet—with Mazzitelli still behind the bass—is currently writing its third album, tentatively due on Portland, Ore.’s Greyday Records early next year. In July, IWTDI and Greyday will release a stopgap diversion, a limited-edition 7” single called Get Big. An indulgent tribute to the baroque rock of the ’80s, it does all it can to look and sound like the past. A cover of Big Country’s “In a Big Country” takes the A-side, with an updated version of “The Big Rock,” by Hepler and Booker’s old band, En Garde, on the B-side. Always entertaining, these guys. —Grayson Currin