Big Nobody’s guitar pop offers light in the darkness 

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Anxieties about money, gentrification, the numbing repetition of a 9-to-5 job color the lyrics on the debut album from Rochester band Big Nobody. But the record still sounds like a blast — fitting for a group which makes so-called “heavy pop classics.”

The album, “Ripped From the Dream,” is the effort of Jake Walsh, who works as CITY’s art director when he’s not crafting tunes. It finds Walsh availing himself of the unease and stress of everyday life to churn out loud, cathartic guitar crunches.

The album’s 10 energetic rock songs buzz with unexpected moments. A swirling keyboard melody cuts through thick, anxious distortion on “Know.” Harmonized power-pop guitar materializes to lighten the mood on “Death Fears.”


Those flashes, along with novel lyrical moments like “If it doesn’t rain soon, I am gonna freak out,” keep Walsh’s songs memorable. But the liner notes make it clear how he couldn’t do it alone. Though Walsh played all the instruments on the album apart from some additional guitar and vocal work on the song “Not Moving,” Big Nobody’s live band is credited in full.


Bassist JT Fitzgerald played with Walsh in Big Nobody’s scrappy precursor, Total Yuppies. Drummer Connor Benincasa is known for leading the local indie band Comfy, while guitarist Kyle Waldron has contributed to numerous releases from local and affiliated artists like Calicoco and Barbarosa.

Together onstage, the four transform Big Nobody tracks into searing punk monuments, as they did recently at the Bug Jar. They also covered Everclear’s “So Much for The Afterglow,” a true heavy-pop classic.

With its alternately jangly and ferocious moments, “Ripped From the Dream” may join it in the pantheon eventually.

Patrick Hosken is a freelance writer for CITY. Feedback on this article can be directed to [email protected].