Fruit LoOops

A high concept award show with statues for winners and a guest host Skyping in from NYC at a dingy Westside Cincinnati basement show. A power wheels car driving against the flow during a circle pit at a Hardcore / Metal festival during their set. A band that takes a limo to their Tuesday night residency at a local Northside bar.

These are just a couple of first-hand experiences of Fruit LoOops shows that I can pull from my pre-COVID 19 memory.

Fruit LoOops are a Cincinnati-based Art-Punk band that combine bracing intensity and bursts-of-noise-as-percussion associated with Mid-Aughts Noise-Punk labels like Skingraft, Load, Siltbreeze, and Lovepump United and the high concept performance art / Situationist confrontation of bands like Macula Dog and DEVO.

Hatched conceptually by frontperson Jackie Switzer – whose affected, detached vocals bend and twist at lovely and grotesque angles – Fruit LoOops is comprised of Patrick Apfelbeck on drums (Hissing Tiles), Eric Dietrich on saxophone (Sorry Eric), and Kevin Hall on keys / electronics (Stella) and Sam Jayne as theatrical assistance. The group’s expanded line-up is in full effect on their 12” for Whited Sepulchre. Beats and electronic squalor bleed out before being flash cauterized, saxophones turned to full skronk, Apfelbeck is at his best with huge, crashing movements and electronic percussion.

Switzer’s vocals is an instrument of incredible range. It lilts high into the upper register, competing for tonal space against the bedlam around it, or dips down into an affected Valley drawl when it pronounces lines of high fashion designers before tearing it to shreds on a song like “Prada”.