Boston alt-rock trio expands its sonic palette and unleashes
‘fun, weird, colorful’ new album on Thursday, August 27
Right now we find ourselves in the Year of the Horse, the seventh sign of a 12-year cycle in the Chinese Zodiac calendar, and it runs from this past February to this upcoming February. Specifically designated as a “Fire Horse” year, which has not happened in a half-century, the time is marked by high energy, independence, and strong momentum. And those elements could also be used to describe the new, and both rather sudden and years in the making, album from The Rupert Selection.
The Boston alt-rock trio release their latest record, Music For Horses, on Thursday, August 27, fueled by the early Bandcamp release of explolsive brass n’ riffs single “Riddance.” The vinyl pre-order launches on September 4, with the physical product surfacing shortly.
And the album arrives amidst a flurry of benefit shows and fundraisers for the band’s co-founder and creative leader, vocalist and guitarist Reilly Somach, who was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer over the summer.
Music For Horses was originally slated for release either later this fall or sometime in the spring. It’s the follow-up to 2023’s Crumbs for the Sun and features The Rupert Selection’s original lineup of Somach joined by bassist and multi-instrumentalist Peter Crofton and drummer and percussionist Zak Brown, two friends he’s known since they were all about 12 years old.
The band was taking their time with it, dusting off old demos and tracks from their early days and merging them with new songs written in between live gigs and all of life’s mundane responsibilities.
But Somach’s cancer diagnosis sparked the band into action, and The Rupert Selection headed into the studio over the past few weeks with producer Steve Lord at his Rusty’s Recording Studio in Salem. With newfound energy, independence, and momentum, they finalized Music For Horses and opened up several new sonic lanes for the band through six new songs, four interludes, and an intro and outro that leans into its horse-theme over 43 minutes.
Somach calls the album “fun, weird, and colorful,” and in making The Rupert Selection album he’s always wanted to make, has uncovered a spectrum of eclectic and expansive sounds that stretches the band’s sonic imprint well past its familiar avenues of psych- and prog-rock.
“Music has always been everything to me, but there’s definitely a stronger sense of urgency now to stay as creative as possible and try to do as much as I can while I can,” Somach says. “There were a lot of tribulations throughout which seems to be a continuing theme with all our albums so it just feels very cathartic to finally put a bow on it and move on, start the next thing. I just don’t see any sense in waiting. We do this for ourselves at the end of the day, anyway, and I’m still alive so let’s not waste time, right?”
A few days before Music For Horses’ release, friends, family, and fans sold out Off Cabot in Beverly, not too far from their North Shore home base, on August 23; and a Boston-area benefit show goes down Friday, August 28 at Warehouse XI in Somerville with Mallcops, Merry Brigade, The Freqs, and Neverless.am.
Various breweries and other spaces around Massachusetts have set up fundraisers for Somach, and his GoFundMe has raised nearly $75,000 for his medical bills as he undergoes chemo and radiation treatment.
The Rupert Selection have spent the better part of the last year playing live all over New England and writing new music, but during that time Somach had been battling increasing health issues with no clear resolution.
“I fell into a place mentally I’ve never been before,” he admits. “I’ve always had struggles with mental health and depression since I can remember, but this was a new level of severe and borderline suicidal depression I was battling while also experiencing excruciating abdominal pain throughout the winter and spring, which I was repeatedly told by doctors and x-rays was just muscle pain and nothing serious.”
But something was just not right, and after falling ill at work, a stay at a local hospital and a series of tests uncovered an advanced form of cancer was the culprit.
“I felt paralyzed when it came to inspiration to write or want to create music during this time and felt completely lost with no motivation to want or be in a band in general,” he adds, “which I eventually learned months later was the result of me unknowingly battling Stage 4 cancer that entire time. Obviously that made it very hard to stay focused on anything and stay engaged but once I learned of the diagnosis, it definitely made everything make a lot more sense and help us find the camaraderie, urgency, and inspiration to finally finish it.”
Music For Horses leans into that camaraderie especially. With its three members taking a multi-instrumentalist approach – Somach on vocals, guitar, acoustic guitar, synths, percussion, plus additional production and mixing and writing lyrics; Crofton on bass, guitar, acoustic guitar, piano, synths, percussion, and soundscapes; and Brown on drums, percussion, piano, synths, soundscapes, and vocals – they’re joined by a lively network of friends and collaborators.
“I feel so grateful and lucky to have been able to make music with so many talented and great people in this band that have helped contribute to where we are today,” Somach says. “This stuff takes a village.”
Alongside his production and engineering, Lord provides additional synths and soundscapes; longtime collaborator Derek Tanch supplies additional keys on all songs; and a horn section composed of Ben Ellington on saxophone, Garth Retallack on trombone, and Bryan McCulloch on trumpet gives the new Rupert Selection sound a brass element that enhances their familiar all-encompassing wall-of-sound rock and roll.
“I’ve always wanted to be a band that can do everything, and we’ve been described as psychedelic rock and proggy and all these terms but all our albums to this point are pretty straight ahead rock for the most part with some curve balls,” Somach notes. “So this one feels like it’s a lot more purely, genuinely Rupert; no boxes, lines, just trying to make something fun that we like, that makes us smile when we hear it. I don’t know what someone would describe this album as sounding like, which feels like a mission accomplished.”
That sentiment plays out across Music For Horses at the loudest volume possible. “H.P.P.D.” is a 14-minute alternative rock cruiser that incorporates some of Rupert’s traditional jam-out tendencies and extended sonic journeys. The fiery “Riddance,” released as a Bandcamp-exclusive ahead of the album drop, is an adrenalized romp aided by the aforementioned horn section, with Somach’s weathered vocals providing a gritty compass.
Elsewhere, “Devil’s Dance” and “Bears” take on a funk and R&B spin without losing its rock and roll DNA, while “Scorching Scorpion Phoenix Bag: It’s Over” pairs massive, almost metal-like riffs with arena-rock ambition across eight minutes. These new compositions unfold all while horse-themed interludes pull the overarching theme together, even as the songs themselves stray into territories for subjective interpretation.
“The first song we did was ‘H.P.P.D.’ and Peter and I were talking about what we would do for a music video for it hypothetically, just to get ideas flowing, and he kept saying that he just saw horses in it for some reason,” Somach says. “We went outside during a break in the studio session and noticed a ton of toy horses all over the lawn from Steve’s kid. We then went back into the studio and somehow noticed for the first time a massive picture of a horse Steve had in his studio and then shortly after realized 2026 was the ‘Year Of The Horse’.”
Somach adds: “It was just weird and funny how many coincidences that referenced horses had happened in such a short period of time that we thought calling it Music For Horses would be a funny title and just felt like a very Rupert vibe.”
Add in the interludes, with various friends reciting facts about horses over music pulled from a 20-minute noise avante garde song the band spontaneously banged out, as well as album’s cover art, by Talk Chalk’s Crystal Araiza depicting a pair of horses, almost from a carnival-like setting, leaping over grass (“It has an almost dreamlike vibe to it which I really loved,” Somach gushes), and the connective tissue for the album was formed.
And that provides a bit of a relief for Somach, who says the songs featured here on Music For Horses – some written over a decade ago but never properly recorded or rarely played live – don’t particularly subscribe to any set theme or narrative.
“Everything I write lyrically is usually pretty depressing by nature but this one is a little all over the place,” he reveals. “No real themes were focused on or any particular messages trying to get across. Just some words I wrote at that particular time that seemed to fit this music. I’m really bad at explaining what songs are about mainly because I don’t usually know. It’s just words I’ll write and then later on be like, ‘oh yeah maybe I meant that’. I’ve never been one to be like, ‘oh this happened to me so I’ll write a song about it’. It’s just hard for me to be really literal when it comes to creating music, words, whatever.”
Music For Horses has a bit of an anything goes, just-keep-it-fun-and-loose mentality across its 12 tracks, showcasing a band that’s making music the way they want to make it, knowing that nothing in life is guaranteed, all while crafting something with intent and purpose at a time when the future is uncertain.
“From the beginning the mentality going into this was ‘let’s make that really fun, weird, colorful record we always wanted to make’ and have horns and keys and a bunch of friends all over it and have a song that’s over 10-plus minutes long,” Somach concludes. “Let’s just celebrate creativity and making art for art’s sake, especially during a time where that seems to mean less and less by the day.”
Connect with The Rupert Selection:
MULTI . INSTAGRAM . FACEBOOK . SPOTIFY . BANDCAMP . APPLE . YOUTUBE . GOFUNDME
‘Music For Horses’ production credits:
Written and performed by The Rupert Selection
Lyrics by Reilly Somach
Produced and mixed by Steve Lord at Rusty’s Recording Studio in Salem, MA
Steve Lord: Additional synths, soundscapes
Ben Ellington: Saxophone on ‘Riddance’, ‘Devil’s Dance’, ‘Bears’, ‘Scorching Scorpion Phoenix Bag: It’s Over’
Garth Retallack: Trombone on ‘Riddance’, ‘Devil’s Dance’, ‘Bears’
Bryan McCulloch: Trumpet on ‘Riddance’, ‘Devil’s Dance’, ‘Bears’
Derek Tanch: Additional keys on all songs
Album artwork by Crystal Araiza
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The Rupert Selection is:
Reilly Somach: Lyrics, vocals, guitar, acoustic guitar, synths, percussion, additional production and mixing
Peter Crofton: Bass, guitar, acoustic guitar, piano, synths, percussion, soundscapes
Zak Brown: Drums, percussion, piano, synths, soundscapes, vocals on ‘Chippy Dagels’
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The Rupert Selection upcoming calendar:
Sunday, August 23: A Birthday Benefit for Reilly Somach’s Cancer Fund at Off Cabot in Beverly with Bad Larrys, Spinworld, and The Rupert Selection
Thursday, August 27: Music For Horses album release
Friday, August 28: Being For The Benefit of Reilly Somach at Warehouse XI in Somerville with The Freqs, Merry Brigade, Mallcops, Neverless.am, and The Rupert Selection
