“We are Maggie and Terre and Suzzy”, the Roches sang in the first line of the first song on their first album as a trio. That was 1979’s The Roches, produced by Robert Fripp. Yes, if you recognized his name and did a double-take, you read that right. Around that time, Fripp also worked with Daryl Hall of pop-soul hitmakers Hall and Oates, so for him, as a player, producer, and collaborator, it was never just the progressive rock of King Crimson, the soundscapes of Brian Eno, or the art rock of David Bowie.
For the Roche sisters, however, it was never just prog rock, soundscapes, or art rock. Before Suzzy joined them, Maggie and Terre Roche did backup vocals for Paul Simon and released one album as a duo, 1975’s Seductive Reasoning, a sweet folk-country-pop collection with one track produced by Simon.
The Roches‘ early collaborators suggest the high esteem in which colleagues, fans, and critics have always held the sisters. To most of the world, the question remains: Who are they? Alas, the past tense is appropriate for the trio. Maggie died in 2017. Terre and Suzzy are still with us and performing separately. The last Roches album happened two decades ago.
Maggie, Terre, and Suzzy were three sisters from New Jersey—inextricably associated with New York City and especially Greenwich Village—who sang, sometimes together and sometimes not, mostly their own songs. Beyond that, it’s always been hard to pin down exactly what the Roches did. Their music combined genres or ignored borders, which partly helps explain why it has never reached a mass audience.
During a radio interview back when they were a trio, the Roches noted that they were sometimes mistakenly called the Roaches. That spelling made them seem like a punk band. They laughed. “We are a punk band,” one of them claimed. The word might even have been “hardcore”; it was a long time ago, and I forget. More laughter followed, but there’s truth in the sentiment.
Although their music rarely rocks hard, the Roches’ uncompromising, vinegary attitude, their overriding sense that there was more to life than the entertainment-industrial complex, made them punk in the deepest sense. Maybe it was an illusion, but they always seemed grounded and approachable, quick to see the irony or humor in most situations. Someone once called them “toughies”, and that categorization gets at the Roches’ hard-edged humanity.
These 10 recordings foreground the Roches’ edginess.
1. “Hammond Song” from The Roches
A year after making a guest appearance playing electric guitar on Blondie’s “Fade Away and Radiate” and around the time he played on Talking Heads‘ “I Zimbra”, the prog-art-ambient-pop-rocking guitarist Robert Fripp produced this album—”in audio verité”, as the credits specified. In other words, expect no fancy stuff in the sounds here, just a kind of purity and, at times, pure magic.
Blondie and Talking Heads were never punk, of course. At this point, they were arty new wave and the epitome of cool. Through their association with the East Village venue CBGB’s, these bands were the closest Fripp ever came to punk. Thus Fripp’s working with the Roches established them as on the experimental side of the Greenwich Village folk scene, and his Frippery guitar solo here raises the song’s sonic stakes. Otherwise, the music consists of deliciously thick layers of strummed guitar, plus Tony Levin’s bass, over which the sisters harmonize gloriously, glorious harmonies being their trademark.
This song’s lyrics explore the tension between two sides. Advisors warn someone not to go “down to Hammond” with “that fella”, and the individual being advised is determined to do what she wants. The tension remains unresolved.
Do a YouTube search for “Hammond Song” and its line “We’ll always love you”, and you’ll find that this song has been sampled and covered, including by a 1980s new wave band fronted by a man and a 21st-century pop-horror-metal band with a rude name. The latter version, straightforward hard rock, works! Any of the following Roches songs could be recast that way.
2. “Nurds” from Nurds (1980)
On their second album, produced by the Simon and Garfunkel alum Roy Halee, the Roches combined their acoustic-based slices of life with spiky declarations reminiscent of New York’s Patti Smith and London’s Raincoats. On rocking songs such as the title cut, the rhythm section featured CBGB’s veterans Jay Dee Daugherty, drummer for the Patti Smith Group, and Fred Smith, no relation to Patti but bassist for her friend Tom Verlaine’s band Television.
This song reiterates the theme of doing what you want, except the singer doesn’t make choices as much as be herself. Being oneself has been an issue throughout human history, especially when a particular kind of self isn’t in fashion. To get a sense of how groundbreaking the Roches’ declaration was, bear in mind that “Nurds” came out decades before being a nerd became cool or hot, before the label was claimed by dorks everywhere.
While the Roches might have been nurds or nerds, mainly they were singers. If anyone wanted to label the Roches punk or post-punk or whatever, the next track on Nurds was a lovely, lovingly a cappella version of Cole Porter’s 1933 standard “It’s Bad for Me”.
3. “Want Not Want Not” from Keep on Doing (1982)
Guitarist and producer Fripp and bassist Levin returned for the Roches’ third album, but you’d never know it from this weird little rant. The music combines acoustic guitar, piano, and handclaps, and the sisters indulge in some melodic variations, but the song’s basic attitude and propulsiveness are pure Ramones. Take it, Maggie and Terre and Suzzy. One, two, three, four:
4. “Keep on Doing What You Want / Jerks on the Loose” from Keep on Doing
The album opens with about the least punk music imaginable, an utterly serious version of “The Hallelujah Chorus” from Handel’s Messiah. Of course, challenging the listener that way could be seen, paradoxically, as badass. Weirdness, including an instrumental with chanting, ensues throughout the album.
On this track, the album finale, the Roches ride a new wave into post-punk, sounding like an acoustic, drumless Joy Division on their Closer album, with a melodic nod to Devo. It’s a shame the trio never covered the former’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart” or the latter’s “Uncontrollable Urge”. Meanwhile, the two-part title could be a Roches manifesto.
5. “The Angry Angry Man” from Another World (1985)
Multiple producers helped the Roches aim for a radio-friendly sound on this collection, but even their excursions into 1980s glossiness never lost heart. Below the surface were tales of urban isolation and dislocation, as three-part harmonies hymned being “face down at Folk City”, “being weeded out”, and so on. In concert, the trio presented this particular chiaroscuro portrait as “rock and roll”, and the recording suggests roots rock treated as art pop.
6. “Pounding” from the Crossing Delancey soundtrack (1988)
Continuing in the 1980s-lite vein of Another World, the Roches look back at the pop-punk of the Go-Go’s, the Bangles, or the Buzzcocks if those boys had been three sisters inspired by 1960s girl groups.
7. “Big Nuthin'” from Speak (1989)
Together with their coproducer, Jeffrey Lesser, the Roches crafted an album of glistening, largely electronic textures. No one would have made pop music like this in the 1970s (although Stevie Wonder was heading there), but they might make it now. It would be perverse to say there’s anything punk about most of the album, although even the unironic “I Love My Mom” acknowledges pain and sorrow. For edge and even cultural critique, though, how about this featured track’s look at how expectations can become deflations? The video playfully reveals images being manufactured and shrugged off. “I guess I never knew how big nuthin’ could be.”
8. “Too Tough Hide” from A Dove (1992)
On this otherwise gentle, ethereal album, produced by Stewart Lerman, the Roches delve, for the first and only time, into Western-soundtrack rock, once known as cowpunk. The loner in this pounding, arresting song is not a horse-riding gunslinger. It’s an urban apartment-dweller who has developed the title carapace.
9. “When You’re Ready” from Can We Go Home Now (1995)
Opening and closing with a Laurie Anderson-like voice announcing, “I am about to lift up the Empire State Building with my thumb”, this uncategorizable composition and recording, produced by Stewart Lerman, embodies the DIY spirit of not taking no for an answer or closing off avenues. What did the Roches sound like? Sometimes they sounded like beings from another realm, sent here to suggest other possibilities.
10. “No Shoes” from Moonswept (2007)
Punk rockers complain, but they also laugh at complaints. While Brooklyn-based performer Paranoid Larry wrote this amusing litany/examination of dissatisfaction, its attitude fits the Roches perfectly. Their recording bookends their early combinations of watchfulness and wry humor. It’s easy to imagine their take, co-produced by Stewart Lerman and the sisters, recast by a hardcore band into full-on electric thrash. Everybody ready? “That really blows / He had no nose / That really sucks / He had no luck.”