Purling Hiss

Purling Hiss

Drag On Girard

Drag City

***It’s 2023, and even the turn of century seems a long time ago now—but oddly, Purling Hiss’s guitar-band ethos feels ever more timeless, even as time accelerates and passes us in the outside lane. The Hiss aren’t just a simple part of the tradition going back 50-odd years. Their DNA, pulsing in waves of punk and classic radio rock, grunge and slacker, is ineffably, re-singably music—but their signature crushed guitar harmonics, fused with deep soulfulness, meld into something that cuts us with fresh heartbreak, an eternal recurrence that seems to be happening right now today, as it pours off the turntable and runs down the street. Drag On Girard, the first Purling Hiss album in six years, cruises through these states of mind and places in time—dreams from the past and the future, careening lawlessly as they slide around loose on the road, an ever-present youth in their roll. As before, but with new twists, Mike Polizze and his gang let loose with the chaos and noise implied by their name, applying high-end splatter and slow-rolling low end to eight vehicles, running the gamut from gleaming pop gems to head-cleaning epic jams before they’re done.

Purling Hiss

High Bias

Drag City

***Since 2009, the fuzzing rock power of PURLING HISS has taken many different forms, all emanating from of MIKE POLIZZE's instinctive approach to playing guitar, writing songs and hooking a feeling from disparate memories, sensations and desired effects. At times carefree and apparently footloose in the world, other times intensely focused and wrathful, Purling Hiss are the orphaned kids of last century’s rock and roll generations, lost in a society that has forgotten its way but determined to find their feet again. High Bias moves with rageful, dazed humor and soulfulness against the darkening times in which we find ourselves. With no way out, Purling Hiss hit today’s bullshit head-on, employing pounding psych-rock and punk effects, slipping signature Hissian backup “oooo-ooh”s and Polizze’s blistering guitar pile-ups in a full-bodied, head-ripping brew. High Bias is a brave and bold blast of popular music that lays it on the line to keep the rebellion alive in the streets of our mind. This is rock we will need in our ears as we venture into the darkness, and the next unexplored stretch of the wasteland. (STREET DATE - 10/14/2016)

Purling Hiss

Something EP

Famous Class

***MIKE POLIZZE, recording as PURLING HISS, has a fuzz-glazed output full of poppy pearls. On the Something EP, Polizze returns to the original Purling Hiss approach, a vibe harking back to Lounge Lizards and Public Service Announcement. He has collected here four self-recorded tracks made at his home in Philadelphia on which he tackles all instrumentation, giving you a brief peek inside the power pop process. Three tracks along with a bonus cut on the download.

Purling Hiss

Weirdon

Drag City

***BACK IN STOCK!!! Received a 7.5 rating from Pitchfork. After they got back from Mars, PURLING HISS went back down to the basement—but they came up again after they got their Weirdon! Full-tilt with tunes, aggro riffs, feedback peals, stoned soul-searching, pop turnarounds and magisterial portraits of the go-nowhere lifestyle in abstract, Weirdon is also a new-phase Purling Hiss album, using the songwriting and guitar style of MIKE POLIZZE to come up with a quicksilver sound touched on only briefly on previous records. Replete with handclaps, pounding pianos, tambourines and vocal effects, but steeped in guitar roar, Purling Hiss streamlines up nicely, serving the new songs and directions of Weirdon while still slamming down hard on your ears like they like to do.

Purling Hiss

Dizzy Polizzy

Drag City

***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.5 rating from Pitchfork. THE PURLING HISS sound is revered by discerning listeners for its devastational waves of guitar rock crashing atop sweet melodies and pile-driving rhythm tunes alike. The effect of these contrasts in the hands of MIKE POLIZZE touches buzzing pleasure centers for these listeners, more of them with every lick—people who like rock songs and like to sing along and don’t mind a little dirt for their trouble. No matter what the resolution is for Purling Hiss, the devastational waves come on with the same warm, cracked obsession they’ve had from the start. Mike Polizze bought his tape machine in 1999 and immediately ran himself around the bases. Skipping towards home he wound up in the outfield, crafting sounds, songs, and fragments to cassette for the next several years, never to be the same. It was when he moved to Philly around 2004 and joined up with BIRDS OF MAYA that he was crowned DIZZY, and things began to focus. He had access to all the instruments needed, Birds’ BEN LEAPHART drummed on a couple songs, and in 2006 a CDR called Dizzy Polizzy came together. Mike made around 50 copies, just for friends, lovers, and the occasional hate-fucker, with a cover he silk-screened hiss-self (represented on this here LP). A few beers and two years later, Purling Hiss became official and took off with three BERSERK albums released in quick succession (seriously, if you don’t own Hissteria, then wake up, “rocker!”) Capitalizing...

Purling Hiss

Paisley Montage

Richie Records

***A slight return to the red-hot, fried and twisted garage/psych/punk blasts we’ve come to expect from MIKE POLIZZE’s PURLING HISS. He’s way off the leash on this one, up Hiss creek with nobody to paddle home. Recorded in various Philadelphia-area basements and men’s rooms over the course of 2007-11, the sessions were stunted and aborted as each successive borrowed practice amp blew smoke and crapped out under the strain of Polizze’s fiery fret work. Originally a cassette-only release, but just about every tape was quickly scattered and smashed along the Schuykill Expressway after being left on the roof of the tour van. Edition of 500 copies.  

Purling Hiss

Water On Mars

Drag City

***It takes balls to let PURLING HISS get in your face. Their records are a half-corroded, screaming roar of high-end guitars crushed together, obliterating vocals and even drums with their singular assault. Well, if you’ve got balls, get ready to swing ‘em. With Water On Mars, Purling Hiss have broken out of the basement, run through the bedroom and are out in the streets, blasting one of the great guitar albums in the past couple minutes. It’s a tumble of hits and ragers, sewing together nine new Purling Hiss celebration laments out of their usual patches of distortion, singing melodies and unexpected production hoohah—but this time the unexpected part is how the guitars gleam so precisely as they pile upon each other, how they work alongside of the rhythm section rather than avalanching it. And how the songs embody a variety of Hiss-teric moods. Water On Mars is Purling Hiss’s first recording outside the fuzzy confines of MIKE POLIZZE’s inner rock utopia, where the first three albums and EP were constructed in solitude with a home-recording setup. Over the past couple years, Mike’s been working with a band and fine-tuning new songwriting ideas while playing shows all over the place. Now, Purling Hiss projects their sounds and ideas onto a new platform, with a visceral and soulful presence. Now there is a center to the Hiss maelstrom, with Polizze’s guitars slugging, sizzling and spiraling their way around the rhythm throb. Polizze lyricises like a poet of the disaffected, shifting from...

Purling Hiss

Public Service Announcement

Woodsist

***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.4 rating from Pitchfork. Resident guitarist / noise-smith Mike Polizze of Philly jam-punks Birds of Maya takes another one-off vacation with Purling Hiss.  Public Service Announcement take a more song-oriented approach than Polizze's self-titled debut LP (Permanent Records) and its follow-up, Hissteria (Richie Records). With the treble down and the tape-heads bleeding, the LP is a montage of flange-covered tunes, in-the-red and submerged below sea level.  "... reminds me of some of my other favorite mystery rock albums, like High Speed and the Afflicted Man's Get Stoned Ezy, or any Les Rallizes Denudes or Vermonster records--not necessarily in style or attack, but certainly in spirit. This is full-on destroyer guitar rock, with a palpable sense of nothing to lose and everything to prove. To me, it sounds like a serious, sincere statement--and you don't hear that every day." --Ripley Johnson (Moon Duo, Wooden Shjips)

Purling Hiss

Hissteria

Richie Records

INCLUDES FREE DOWNLOAD COUPON!!!   Well it’s finally here. It’s the new LP by PURLING HISS and it’s called Hissteria. It’s two sides of hi-energy psychedelic punk rock & roll that manages to weld Funhouse‘s dialed-in sleaze rhythms to the hungover excess of Hendrix at Woodstock. Or Ginn at Polliwog Park. It’s full of clanging cymbals, howling vocals, fretboard heroics, and menacing vibes. Purling Hiss is the work of a well-mannered longhair named MIKE POLIZZE, who is best known for his reckless shredding as the guitar player for Philadelphia’s BIRDS OF MAYA. Hissteria is a suitable soundtrack for zonked drives across the dead highways of the USA. Or for predawn paranoid sessions as you pace back and forth in the kitchen trying figure out just what the hell you’re going to do, man. Or just crank it real loud when the party gets strange. Some people will love it and the rest of them can go somewhere else and go fuck themselves.