Denver locals Horse Bitch rather defy classification. On one hand, they’re an intensely promising young group on the come up. On the other, they’re a band that exists in the grey. They embody punk sensibilities and a lack of interest in joining the mainstream and combine that feeling with a willingness to revel in absurd humor while constantly reinventing themselves with each new release. They are quite difficult to define as a result.
Horse Bitch’s new single “Mountain Climbing,” released on March 17th, is a powerful example of this reinvention. The first single the band’s released since 2021, the song resembles a kind of Irish jig rather than the more indie-punk vibes of the band’s past. It feels joyous, like dancing with friends on a cold Spring night, and proves the band’s incredible versatility that will only continue to grow as they do as artists.
303 Magazine recently spoke with Horse Bitch about the single, applying humor to music without sacrificing message, the band’s origins and process and more.
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To start, how did Horse Bitch come to be?
Ashley: We would have jam sessions and have fun telling silly stories to music when Dave came to me wanting to write a song about a space cowboy together. From there, the “Space” album was written together, and as time went on, more friends joined in, and HB got more awesome!
It’s been about 3 years since your last release. How has the band changed or evolved in that time?
Adam: In the past, people have said that we’re really not that good, but I think they’re wrong. Our songs are good. Adding melody to all of David’s vocals has really helped us not look like buttholes. Also, I think it’s been pretty cool that we’ve spent a lot of the money we made from the last record on getting better gear. Like now, David plays this really cool Gibson flying-v that’s vintage. It cost a lot of money to ship it from Amsterdam or something, and it just sounds sick. It sounds really heavy.
What does your songwriting process look like? Is it usually one person taking the lead, or is it more collaborative?
Alec: A haiku:
We big family
Screaming at fam-ly table
Songs come from food fight
(Evidence: JJ’s food fight shirt)
Another haiku:
Sleepover at Glen
Chauncey gives us wet-willies
We sing pretty now
Last haiku:
Turn on PS4
Riles kills babies in GTA
We cheer and think good
Do y’all have a general philosophy when it comes to making music?
Dave: We mostly just try to have fun and try out different ways of doing music.
This song reminds me a whole lot of an Irish jig or something along those lines. It’s a pretty marked departure from much of your previous work. How’d the song come to be?
Riley: We REALLY wish we were Irish. We listened to a lot of the Chieftains, the Dubliners, and punk bands like Flogging Molly, and it was so cool. And we were like, “We can do that”, even though we couldn’t, and then we didn’t! For the instrumental breakdown in the middle I was thinking of the title screen theme to the Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. The lyrics were written collaboratively in 10 minutes and keep getting changed because we’re pretty scared of how brilliant they are.
One thing I really love about you is how you’re able to imbue humor in your music without necessarily diminishing a message or making the joke the point of the song. How do you blend humor with musicality in your songwriting?
Dave: Thanks for saying that! I’ve always really connected with art that combines humor with sad stuff. My favorite writer right now is George Saunders and I feel like he’s just the master of blending really tragic life stuff with almost slapstick-like comedy. I really aspire to be able to do that with music. There are also a lot of lyrics that I intended to be more emotional that people think are jokes. For instance, Adam’s favorite singer is Weird Al and he joined the band because he thinks it’s like that.
What informs your music? Do you take cues from other artists, movies, or books, or is it more about your life experiences?
Riley: Yeah so definitely Zelda, definitely GTA 5. For jokey seriousness, we really like emo music. It’s silly but the joke is how sad the schmuck is–that hits home for me. Also sad; honky tonk. Gary Stewart is a class-A schmuck and would have ate up Modern Baseball. But then there’s one more problem: How do we do it if we’re all really good at our instruments? To make sad music is to be bad at music, which we unfortunately are not. So the goal becomes to seem like we’re quite bad when we’re actually quite good. This looks like eye-rolling during a guitar solo. Wearing a stained slob shirt and bib while playing a complex polyrhythm (all of us know what that means) on the drums. It’s fascinating and exhilarating trying to understand how bad musicians think.
Finally, Is there anything on the horizon you’d like to plug or any people you’d like to shout out?
Olivia: Yes, there is. If you look a little bit to the west, you can see a part of the house where we live. There are people in there. Those people are us. Sometimes, late on Tuesdays, we tell each other stories in the basement under the soft glow of the overhead light. Other times, we make each other little treats or go get treats from 7-Eleven. And yes, there have been times when we like to plug things in there, too. Like our amplifiers and stuff. I think there’s a toaster and an air fryer plugged in upstairs. And we’ve definitely liked plugging in a TV there and watching shows on it. There is absolutely no one in Denver, CO, or the surrounding areas who we’d like to shout out.
Stream “Mountain Climbing” here!