Twelve songs were recorded at Fort Apache in Cambridge, MA (with producer Tim O’Heir: Buffalo Tom, Sebadoh, Superdrag, Come) and Water Music in Hoboken, NJ (with producer Rich Grula: Rage to Live, Freedy Johnston, Big Happy Crowd) in the late 80s and early 90s. The master tapes ended up in boxes and moved around the country with band members for thirty years. During the pandemic, 2”, 1”, and even a VHS tape was gathered up and baked (so the ferric oxide particles containing all the music wouldn’t get scraped off the recordings) and were re-mastered by Greg Calbi and Steve Fallone at Sterling Sound. Fast, noisy, and melodic in the tradition of Buzzcocks, The Feelies, New York Dolls, The Ramones, R.E.M., The Replacements, Soul Asylum, and The Stooges, this collection is a time capsule of a pre-computer American indie rock: anthemic, angry, hooky, and insistent.

Falling Stairs was Charles McEnerney, John McGrath, John McLoughlin, and John Rice from Flushing, Queens in New York City who were slightly obsessed by the independent punk, post-punk, pop, and rock and roll music coming from Minneapolis, Hoboken, Athens, Boston, Melbourne, Washington, D.C., Austin, Sydney, Detroit, Amherst, and their hometown of New York. It inspired them to pick up guitars, a bass, and drums and make their own kind of noise. They played a couple of hundred shows in New York, New England, Mid-Atlantic, and Southeast US, recorded at self-released an EP and single, got some college radio airplay around the country, a bunch of good press, and then promptly imploded. Upon hearing the songs for the first time in decades, they realized maybe this quad of misfits quit too soon.

“Some lost albums should stay lost. Others you’re excited they were found, like un-covered time capsules discovered in attics or basements. I’m pretty sure I caught this Flushing, Queens’ band some enchanted evening at CBGB or Pyramid Club after their lone 1988 EP, ‘That and a Quarter,’ and noted their obvious get-up-and-go—but they didn’t last. Now, that EP’s six songs are augmented by six even hotter unreleased ones, proving their cessation was a shame. If you take the faster jump and jangle of 1981-1986 R.E.M. and Libertines U.S., plus Embarrassment, Crippled Pilgrims, and Hoodoo Gurus, with similar electric playing and songwriting acumen, you’d have the hot buzz of the heretofore unheard ‘Daylight’ and ‘Gone’ with thickened guitars like that era’s Forever Since Breakfast neophytes, Guided By Voices. Whomever preserved and baked these tapes did us a service.” —Jack Rabid, Editor-in-Chief, The Big Takeover

“Having surely made your acquaintance with Falling Stairs when I posted their marvelous “That and a Quarter” EP in 2010, you’ll be pleased as punch to know that they’ve made their slim but estimable catalog available again - physically no less. In reference to the moniker of this long defunct Queens, NY quartet, you’ll find nary a stumbling block on Falling Stairs first record in 35 years. Not that everything occupying the twelve grooves on “Life is a Kick Trial 1988-1993” is actually ‘new’ per se, considering this is a retrospective absorbing the entirety of the aforementioned EP alongside five scarce and/or heretofore unreleased tracks.  F/S deserved a better lot than their meager exposure on a few left-of-the-dial outposts accorded them, with a warm, reverby vibe that smacked of halcyon era R.E.M., not to mention lesser renown buried treasures like Bleached Black, Beauty Constant and Lifeboat, and a myriad of SST Records’ most coveted entries of the day.  From the jackhammer power pop fervor of “Man-Made” to “Good Intention’s” acousti-folk lilt “Kick Trial” makes a crucial argument for this combo’s neglected legacy. It’s available immediately as a limited vinyl and digital release here.” —Neal Agneta, Willfully Obscure