Madder Rose was a New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

-based alternative rock

Alternative rock

Alternative rock is a genre of rock music and a term used to describe a diverse musical movement that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1980s and became widely popular by the 1990s...

 band who recorded in the 1990s. The band was fronted by Mary Lorson

Mary Lorson

Mary Lorson is an American singer-songwriter and composer. Perhaps best known for her time as the lead singer of Alternative Pop group Madder Rose, Lorson founded the group Mary Lorson and Saint Low in 1999, and that group released three full-length discs. Lorson and Billy Coté created the...

, who shared songwriting duties with guitarist Billy Coté. The two singer/songwriters continued their collaboration, Cote as guest producer on Lorson's three discs with Saint Low, Lorson as guest vocalist on Cote's Jazz Cannon disc. Lorson and Cote have also created the original scores to several films, notably HBO's documentary of Sally Mann) and in 2008 released a disc with Kathy Ziegler as The Piano Creeps. The name Madder Rose came from the herb-based paint rose madder

Rose madder

Rose Madder is the commercial name sometimes used to designate a paint made from the pigment Madder Lake - a traditional lake pigment, extracted from the common madder plant ....

. Many of their songs, including "Panic On" and "Car Song", were featured in John Peel

John Peel

John Robert Parker Ravenscroft, OBE , known professionally as John Peel, was an English disc jockey, radio presenter, record producer and journalist. He was the longest-serving of the original BBC Radio 1 DJs, broadcasting regularly from 1967 until his death in 2004...

's end-of-year round-up, the Festive Fifty

Festive Fifty

The Festive Fifty was originally an annual list of the year's fifty best songs compiled at the end of the year and voted for by listeners to John Peel's BBC Radio 1 show...

, major feature films, and television shows. The band released three albums on Atlantic Records

Atlantic Records

Atlantic Records is an American record label best known for its many recordings of rhythm and blues, rock and roll, and jazz...

, and one on Cooking Vinyl

Cooking Vinyl

Cooking Vinyl is a UK-based independent record company, founded in 1986. Its original orientation was toward contemporary folk music—notably Billy Bragg, and Michelle Shocked's Texas Campfire Tapes, recorded on a Sony Walkman, one of its first releases...

, before breaking up in 1999.

Description

Their music has been described as suggesting druggy languor, which inspired the British music press to trumpet Madder Rose as the second coming of the Velvet Underground. A 1994 review in Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...

characterized their sound as an "alloy" of grunge

Grunge

Grunge is a subgenre of alternative rock that emerged during the mid-1980s in the American state of Washington, particularly in the Seattle area. Inspired by hardcore punk, heavy metal, and indie rock, grunge is generally characterized by heavily distorted electric guitars, contrasting song...

 and "the buttercup sighs of The Cranberries

The Cranberries

The Cranberries are an Irish rock band formed in Limerick in 1989 under the name The Cranberry Saw Us, later changed by vocalist Dolores O'Riordan. The band currently consists of O'Riordan, guitarist Noel Hogan, bassist Mike Hogan and drummer Fergal Lawler...

". Their sound progressed from indie pop rock, not unlike peers Velocity Girl

Velocity Girl

Velocity Girl was an American indie rock band formed in 1989 in College Park, Maryland, although it was generally known as a Washington, DC-area band...

, Lush

Lush (band)

Lush were an English alternative rock band, formed in 1987 and disbanded in 1998. They were one of the first bands to attract the "shoegazing" label...

, Helium

Helium (band)

Helium was an American alternative rock band formed in the summer of 1992. Originally calling themselves "Chupa", its founding members were Mary Lou Lord, Jason Hatfield , Shawn King Devlin and Brian Dunton...

 and Juliana Hatfield

Juliana Hatfield

Juliana Hatfield , is an American guitarist/singer-songwriter and author from the Boston area, formerly of the indie rock bands Blake Babies and Some Girls. She currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts....

, to shoegaze and trip-hop. After the breakup, Lorson founded the alt-folk outfit Saint Low

Saint Low

Saint Low is a band and vehicle for singer-songwriter Mary Lorson, formerly of Madder Rose.In Madder Rose, Lorson sang lead vocals, but guitar player Billy Coté wrote the majority of songs on each album, leaving Lorson with a backlog of her own songs. After Madder Rose released its last album,...

. Madder Rose members included Billy Cote (guitar), Mary Lorson (vocal, guitar), Matt Verta-Ray (bass, vocal), Rick Kubic aka Johnny Kick (drums, vocal) and Chris Giammalvo (bass).

Currently, Madder Rose founder Billy Coté is working on a covers record with Johnny Dowd

Johnny Dowd

Johnny Dowd is an American alternative country musician from Ithaca, New York. Typical of his style are experimental, noisy breaks in his songs and strong gothic elements in the lyrics as well as in the music...

, focusing on unusual interpretations of R&B and blues work from the 1950s and 1960s. They have contributed the song "Bound For Hell" to a Love and Rockets

Love and Rockets

Love and Rockets may refer to:* Love and Rockets , a comic book series by Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez* Love and Rockets , an alternative rock band formed by members of Bauhaus, named after the comic...

' tribute album

Tribute album

A tribute album is a recorded collection of cover versions of songs or instrumental compositions. Its concept may be either various artists making a tribute to a single artist, a single artist making a tribute to various artists, or a single artist making a tribute to another single artist.There...

, New Tales to Tell, and another, "Constant Waiting", to We Are Only Riders, a Jeffrey Lee Pierce

Jeffrey Lee Pierce

Jeffrey Lee Pierce was an American singer, songwriter and guitarist. He was one of the founding members of the 1980s punk band The Gun Club...

 tribute collection.

Discography

• (1993): Beautiful John
• (1993): Bring It Down
• (1993): Swim EP
• (1994): Panic On - UK
  UK Albums Chart
  The UK Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales in the United Kingdom. It is compiled every week by The Official Charts Company and broadcast on a Sunday on BBC Radio 1 , and published in Music Week magazine and on the OCC website .To qualify for the UK albums chart...
  
  #52
• (1994): Car Song EP
• (1995): The Love You Save EP
• (1997): Tragic Magic
• (1999): Hello June Fool