A recording of two concertgoing dweebs is tacked onto the end of Side B of Deep End, the debut of Arlington, VA’s Tsunami. These guys tag team Jenny Toomey’s poor answering machine with a barrage of lauding, woe over having missed Tsunami’s last show, and pleas for them to come out to Philadelphia to play a gig that they’re eager to facilitate. You can almost hear her snickering while they prattle on obsessively; their antics are somewhat charming toward the end and their only crime is being huge fans. (That, and maybe bogarting that many minutes of tape space on one’s machine in the ‘90s!) Truthfully, it’s hard not to be a dork for Tsunami. The outfit’s core songwriters, Toomey and Kristin Thomson, ran the Simple Machines record label in concurrence, perhaps most notable for The Simple Machines Mechanic’s Guide: a pamphlet detailing how to make and distribute one’s own music. Think of it as the auspicious and fiscally resourceful cousin to Steve Albini’s infamous essay “The Problem with Music”. It’s said to have influenced the birth of many indie labels. So all while managing this healthy enterprise, home to a slew of legends, their own project Tsunami saw the release of three LPs and one collection of rarities in that time. Numero Group’s Loud Is As comprises those elements in one convenient box set, long after they’ve gone out of print. Thank goodness for caller ID these days. After familiarizing yourself with Tsunami’s discography, you too may find yourself itching to spam their voicemail in hopes that they’ll play your town.
1993’s Deep End introduces the band’s sound with the dual forces of Toomey and Thomson’s razor guitars and lyricism. The act of strumming a guitar is so universal and recognizable whether you play or not: you arrange your fingers according to a chord chart and pick all strings involved. Their strum is a unique one, all their own. Brazen, even. There’s a big open sound to these songs, a byproduct of abandoning caution and hitting more strings than necessary. Some may call it sloppy, but isn’t rock music best unmanicured? Often awash in a blitz of distortion, these chunky, shimmery open chords flank the speakers with messy brilliance. Being the DIY businesswomen they were, they certainly get their money’s worth out of their guitars. “Genius of Crack” and “Writing Letters”, for instance, both are grounded in slightly different forms of a simple C chord, and the sheer passion behind each attack takes these songs to entirely different places. It’s the mark of impressive musicianship, as the notes may resemble each other on paper but the similarities end there. Every part of the proverbial buffalo is used and the sound they achieve is big and in your face. All without a heavy bass presence as well, as Andrew Webster opts for a baritone voicing throughout, matching the range of contemporaries Sleater-Kinney and Unrest.
It’s a scuzzy and outraged first impression, righteously so. The first two numbers “In a Name” and “Slugger” take aim at ignorant and manipulative men, and later tracks “Lucky” and “460” both make explicit mention of women having been “had.” Toomey in particular bears one of the purely inimitable voices in independent rock, at once exhausted with your bullshit but stopping on a dime to deliver a beauteous melody that masks the poison she has loaded in response. Deep End’s acerbic wit and guitar majesty make for a remarkable debut and a massively underrated document of the indie boom.
Sophomore records are often such joyous occasions from circumstances alone. Not only does an artist revisit the studio smarter and quicker, they’re often hungrier too. The Heart’s Tremolo saw shelves the following year and made good on that expectation. It opens with “Loud Is as Loud Does”, the namesake of this box set; a de facto anthem for Tsunami. It’s a rallying call and a warning to make your message matter if it’s to be delivered at high volume and not “force the mouse through the megaphone.” This song does in fact burst through your speakers to offer this advice. Timely advice at that, given that 1994 was prime real estate for the major labels Toomey and Thomson operated in defiance of to poach any act deemed fit to wear the next “alternative” or “grunge” crown.
“Quietnova” ensues right after the bombastic opener, and as the name would suggest, it is an equally urgent but quizzically subdued affair. Tsunami evolves into a properly dynamic group on Tremolo. The fidelity has improved by this point and has given space to more sophisticated arrangements. The menacing, slinking 5/4 riff of “Fast Food Medicine” boasts the magic interplay between guitars; a distinction not rung quite so vividly before. Toomey’s croon expands to new heights, at times giving into gorgeous pop sensibilities. One of her most electrifying moments across the entire catalogue is her impassioned, gymnastic performance on “Be Like That”, a portrait of a man possessed by revisionist glory days and doomed to a cowardly, sedentary lifestyle that ensures a future of nothing better.
The feedback-laden instrumental “Slaw” and manic “Cowed By the Bla Bla” are excellent strides in the heightened compositional aspect of Tsunami—a strength that would be explored and refined further on their third and last record. One tune that does retain the simpler sound and framework from Deep End though is “Kidding on the Square”. While it’s not as statement-making as “Loud Is”, it serves as a subtler definition of the band’s ethos, turned on its head. It’s an ode and dirge to busting one’s ass. Classically, Toomey coats a bummer sentiment in honey, sweetly pitying the “cardboard” scent of the song’s subject: an overworked, tired woman. It’s rife with self-doubt, spurred on no less by the unkind words of some asshole man, hopefully not in her life anymore. Shifting tempos match the hectic nature of creating art that means something, all while lyrical pot after pot of coffee drain every last bit of essence from her as she works. It’s hard not to imagine this song representing the burnout felt from the elbow grease that goes into Simple Machines and Tsunami at the same time. She concludes with the open-ended question, “Do you have the strength to pick up a penny off the ground?”
After the better part of a decade at the label, the strength to pick up pennies off the ground wavered. Simple Machines and Tsunami shuttered their doors. “In about 1998, we realized that the label couldn’t really function the way we wanted it to,” Thomson explains in the liner notes. “Tsunami and the label were inextricably linked and it was just impossible to do one without the other.” This revelation came soon after 1997’s swan song A Brilliant Mistake. It’s a record whose bookending of their trajectory unwittingly mirrored that of The Spinanes a year later: an album that expanded the roster of contributors after two core lineup recordings, pushing the project’s sonic and conceptual capabilities to their logical ends.
By this time, Tsunami are no strangers to a commanding leadoff track. “Old Grey Mare” stands for a lot of things. It’s an elegy to an era, it’s a soapbox for artistic dignity, and most importantly—despite this chapter being the book’s final—it’s a call to arms to never become complacent. “Don’t go drown in a shallow pool, we’ve got so much work for you,” Toomey echoes at the slow burn finale of this stuttering, tearjerking paean. Yet another masterpiece added to an already robust assortment.
Thomson clocks in career highlights with the raucous barnburners “Unbridled” and “Double Shift”. The former marries Tsunami’s polar modes stunningly in a loud-quiet-loud rocker with hushed, breathtaking vocal harmonies. The latter, adorned with horns, yanks at hair while acting as a diatribe for the daily hustle. Even at their most spent, they cannot help but sound galvanized and hypervigilant.
Whereas they began this journey never sparing their amplifiers a reprieve, Mistake finds Tsunami discovering a new flavor: delicate. They’re less crackling here, instead having their still capable rocking years behind them, preferring to pontificate and reflect. It’s no stretch to say this is a record cognizant of its own finality. Toomey’s inspirations grow increasingly more literary on their face in “David Foster Wallace”, both titularly and in its literal reading, and in “Great Mimes”, interpolating Allen Ginsburg’s “Howl”. Songs like “Liar’s Dice (Flight of the Chickens)” and “DMFH” ruminate on flames, whether roaring or extinguished in context, who can say. “DMFH” more pointedly conjures idyllic images of escaping from it all, like Thelma & Louise, imagining a quiet life with a lover in a perfect house, guitar in hand. “PBS” closes things by spending its remaining two minutes in a repeated groove of pastoral bliss. No words left, just an easygoing bounce between two chords. Simple and powerful, as it was from the start.
World Tour and Other Destinations collects two LPs worth of odds and ends, from the early Cow Arcade demos tape through various singles and compilation appearances afterward. It’s extremely worth digging into, featuring covers of heroes such as Jonathan Richman and Minutemen as well as scene buddies Flower. The rawer, beefier alternates of “Genius of Crack” and “Kidding on the Square” included are arguably superior versions of the album cuts, capturing their raw punk fury more accurately.
Gone are the days when you could phone the Simple Machines office and request Tsunami taking the van out to your neck of the woods. Fortunately, along with former labelmates and kindred spirits Ida, they’ve announced a hefty 2025 jaunt in March and April. Loud Is As is a marvel of physical preservation, as Numero Group is wont to do, as much as it is an imperative reminder of the band’s large-looming legacy. “Loud is as loud does,” but Tsunami’s existence moved the needle in quiet ways, fueled by persistence. Much like the old adage of the first Velvet Underground record spawning myriad bands in the wake of its listeners, we’ll never know just how many creative types were sparked by the reach of these Arlington firebrands. Practicing what they preached, they wrote winning tunes and just as crucially worked damn hard at their craft.
You may purchase the box set here.
