Squanderers with their third album ‘Bright Madness’
Bright Madness is the third album from the pinch-me-is-this-real improvising trio of Wendy Eisenberg, David Grubbs, and Bonner Kramer. Fresh off their 2025 Big Ears appearance, SQUANDERERS slid on over to Kramer’s adopted hometown of Asheville, North Carolina and laid down the glorious afternoon’s worth of instant compositions that stands before you. It’s the sound of Eisenberg, Grubbs, and Kramer doing their damnedest to dazzle one another, from shell-game sleights of hand to the effortless beauty of “Theme for the Casino at 5 A.M.,” from the ratcheting up of tension and general plot thickening of “Theme for Femme-Presenting Hands” and “Theme for the World’s Consigliere” to the epic “Theme for Nihologisms,” which hints at the scale of SQUANDERERS’ live performances.
Photo credit: Macioce
In a recent cover feature on Wendy Eisenberg in The Wire, Grubbs described SQUANDERERS as “a dream of a trio, something that I always hoped I might find in an improvising group. Part of me wants to chalk it up to attitude — Wendy and Kramer having serene confidence in what they produce in real time — but it also has to do with their consummate skills as musicians. The wild, uninhibited flow of ideas from Wendy I’ve experienced when we’ve played as a duo slows down and floats in amber with SQUANDERERS.” Wendy’s take on SQUANDERERS from the same feature? “It’s the most beautiful mermaid shit I’ve ever heard in my life.”
Bright Madness follows If a Body Meet a Body and Skantagio, two full-length SQUANDERERS offerings on Kramer’s Shimmy-Disc label. As Raphael Helfand concluded in his Pitchfork review of If a Body Meet a Body, “What we’re left with is not so much a pristine work of collective genius as a testament to the transcendence that can occur when a group of individual geniuses sit down together with no greater aim than melding their minds for a while. If only all our squanderings could be so fruitful.”
Wendy Eisenberg is an improviser and songwriter who uses guitar, pedals, the tenor banjo, the computer, the synthesizer, and the voice. Their work spans genres, from jazz to noise to avant-rock to delicate songs; their performances span venues, from international festivals to intimate basements. Though often working solo as both a songwriter and improviser, they also perform in the rock band Editrix, and in endless other combinations of their heroes and peers including Bill Orcutt, Caroline Davis, Ryan Sawyer, and John Zorn.
David Grubbs has released sixteen solo albums and was a member of the groups Gastr del Sol, Bastro, and Squirrel Bait. He has performed with Tony Conrad, Pauline Oliveros, Luc Ferrari, Susan Howe, Will Oldham, the Red Krayola, and many others. Grubbs is the author of numerous books including Good night the pleasure was ours, The Voice in the Headphones, Now that the audience is assembled, and Records Ruin the Landscape: John Cage, the Sixties, and Sound Recording.
Bonner Kramer is a composer/musician/filmmaker and multi-instrumentalist who has worked with artists as diverse as John Zorn, Butthole Surfers, Bill Frisell, Ween, The Fugs, Thurston Moore, Penn Jillette, Allen Ginsberg, Jad Fair, and Laraaji, to name but a few. He is also a renowned record producer (Galaxie 500, Low, Daniel Johnston, Will Oldham, etc.) and the founder of the iconic NYC record label, Shimmy-Disc. He rarely performs onstage, and SQUANDERERS is his first long-term recording project to include live performances since 1999. He currently lives and works in the Appalachian temperate rainforest.
