On a chilly Thursday evening in Cleveland, Ohio, the air carries a bite that lets me see my own breath, yet isn’t so frigid that the hairs in my nose cling together. We’re gathered inside a crowded Superelectric Pinball Parlor in Gordon Square, where the walls wear a patchwork of local sports banners and groan-worthy trinkets, and someone’s tooting a bugle into a microphone. I’m here with the five-piece group Suitor, one of the city’s most thrilling acts since their formation in 2020. Guitarist Chris Corsi hints that the horn blare marks the start of a warmup for the pinball wizards in the room.
It’s oddly funny to find ourselves in a pinball bar, given that for nearly six years I’ve known this band I’ve always felt their guitar lines had a pinball-like quality—spring-loaded, with a jagged post-punk staccato. Put on almost any track from their 2021 debut EP Communion, and you’ll feel as if you’re trapped in the famous tennis-ball scene from Challengers, being flicked back and forth across the court in a sensually disorienting shudder.
Just down the street sits Happy Dog, a beloved hot-dog shop and musician-run venue that serves as Cleveland’s nerve center for premier guitar-driven bands. Suitor played their first show there in August 2021, and I was still stunned by their hypnotic precision and Emma Shepard’s dreamy, half-whispered coos. The band return to the Dog on March 21 to headline and mark the release of their first full-length, Saw You Out With The Weeds, which drops the day before on Cincinnati punk label Feel It Records. Following last month’s lead single “Factory,” the album’s closer—at once pretty and punishing—“Dull Customer” is out today.
Suitor are quintessential Northeast Ohio natives. Shepard grew up in Akron and Hudson, meeting her bandmates while they were students in Kent. Her mother and uncle played in Akron’s new-wave scene (Unit 5 and the Bizarros, respectively), and her father runs Time Traveler Records, a local institution for more than 45 years that persists despite occasional health scares. Shepard connected with Corsi while working at a Kent coffee shop, where they’d gush about early-aughts indie rock like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Chris Corsi, his brother and bassist John Corsi, and guitarist Stephen Ovak all attended Brecksville-Broadview Heights High School, where their paths would cross at football games and they’d debate hair metal. Drummer Ryan Matricardi hails from Lakewood, and Shepard remembers their first encounter in Kent when Matricardi swapped her PBR for a Lady Bligh and Coke and simply declared, “Turn it up!”
With such deep roots, it’s no surprise they carry strong—and often humorous—views about Cleveland life, from punk politics and college-radio turmoil to the Cavaliers’ newly bearded, high-scoring star guard. One recent chunk of local punk lore that traveled far and wide was the viral hardcore shows staged in a Taco Bell parking lot on West 117th Street. The five of them say that what began as a goofy bit of fun has become a burdensome spectacle, with tickets near $30 and meager discounts for low-income attendees. “I love neoliberalism in the punk scene,” quips Chris. “Is anyone selling those West 117th Taco Bell hardcore fest tickets for, like, 300% profit?” Shepard counters with a grin.
In other news—and of far greater consequence to Suitor—Ideastream Public Media, the NPR affiliate serving Northeast Ohio, suddenly seized control of WCSB, Cleveland State University’s student-run radio station and a cultural cornerstone for almost half a century, retooling it into a professionally run jazz station. “Cleveland has always prided itself on having two exceptional radio stations—WCSB and WRUW—so that you could stumble upon weird post-punk, no-wave, and other oddities on the airwaves within city limits,” Ovak notes. “I’d rather fetch a guy from Ideastream his daily coffee than host my own radio show; that feels like a much better opportunity,” Shepard jokes with a laugh.
As for the Cavaliers’ acquisition of James Harden, Suitor are excited by what he brings on court—and off. “He’s going to bring strippers from all over to the Cleveland area,” Matricardi jokes. “Does James Harden have a stripper problem?” Ovak asks. “No, he has a stripper solution,” Matricardi retorts.
From their banter, it’s clear these five are tightly knit, and their creative lives extend beyond Suitor, having explored various configurations over the years, most notably in a trippy indie outfit called Small Wood House, active until 2020 before fading. In the depths of lockdown fatigue, Chris Corsi and Shepard began crafting new material together, writing some songs, wiring a computer, pointing a microphone at a practice amp, and recording what would become Communion.
“I used to have terrible stage fright, and Communion let me keep pursuing music even if I wasn’t up onstage,” Shepard explains. “Then, as we started getting offers and discovered people connected with the music, we realized this could become something bigger.” The first few shows we played were nerve-wracking, she adds, but they quickly grew comfortable and she began confronting her fears head-on.
Performing Communion live wasn’t just about conquering stage fright; they also had to swell from a two-piece to a five-piece unit to do the songs justice. After bringing in Ovak, Matricardi, and John Corsi, the EP’s clean, prickly textures grew into something denser and louder, cementing Suitor as a must-see act and laying down the DNA for their debut LP. By the time the Kansas post-punk duo Sweeping Promises (Feel It Records, Sub Pop) rolled into town for a 2023 show, Suitor had become an obvious opening choice, alongside local punk supergroup Disintegration. The performance impressed Sweeping Promises’ Caufield Schnug enough that he offered to record the band at his home studio in Lawrence, Kansas.
What they didn’t anticipate was how serious Schnug’s invitation would prove. Although they assumed it was merely polite, they kept in touch, and Schnug followed through with the offer to track their album. With little experience touring out of state, the spring 2024 trek to Lawrence became Suitor’s first cross-state road trip. A U-Haul weighed down the car, and frequent pit stops for nature’s calls punctuated the journey, which ended up taking longer than the planned twelve-and-a-half hours. Upon arrival, aided by a Panza Foundation grant, they spent four days recording with Schnug and his Sweeping Promises bandmate Lira Mondal, who provided vocals and synth—and baked goods, to boot.
“Every day we’d roll up and Caufield stood outside, animatedly talking on the phone,” Chris recalls. “Then we’d start tracking around ten in the morning and run through take after take all day. It was unlike anything I’ve done—live, in one continuous flow, with no breaks. By the end, we were exhausted—musically at least. The room was huge, sunny, and open, and it sounded so good we could hardly believe it.”
While they cherished the opportunity to work with one of their influences and praised the studio atmosphere Schnug creates as producer, they recognized they had only two days to record the instrumental tracks and two days for vocals, so the clock was always ticking. “Meat Puppets had a rule: you just record a song two or three times; if you blow the take, that’s simply how you play it,” Shepard explains. “That approach fits this album for us.”
Unlike Communion, they’d already had chances to test out album cuts in live settings over the years, and their full-band, live-recording approach yielded a raw, high-energy sound that embraced the room’s bleed. So, while it may be apples and oranges, Saw You Out With The Weeds definitely leans harsher and louder than its predecessor. Matricardi’s cymbals hiss and itch, Shepard’s airy, spectral vocals float above and dip into the mix with an eerie charm. Their dual guitars weave jagged, fractured lines and churn with newly found force. Meanwhile, John’s tactile, deep bass drives and steadies the entire project. The result evokes the Chameleons’ driving mood and, more recently, Robber Robber, with guitars that twist with an Omni-like slyness. Shepard’s dynamic voice lets them shift from floaty drone-pop to talky punk, and on toward melancholic post-punk and noise-rock.
“We had a vibe board of inspirations, and looking at the artists we added back then, you see both super-clean productions like Interpol and Yeah Yeah Yeahs—those quintessential early-to-mid-2000s New York indie acts—as well as rougher, dirtier sounds from Swell Maps and the grittier end of punk,” Shepard explains. “We wanted it to feel big.” Chris adds, “When I was mixing, the number-one priority was size. I instinctively like records that are a touch murky, so you can really feel the thunder of drums and bass.”
As night settles over the pinball arcade, it seems a full-blown tournament is underway. Casual players drift away from the glowing machines, pushed along by the regulars’ breathy anticipation, while the band wraps up their Tetris and Mega Man runs. Shepard laments that the Tetris machine isn’t equipped with her preferred controls but brightens when describing the thrill of performing a “T-spin.” Ovak, meanwhile, is a touch disappointed with Mega Man’s free-play limits but talks up the Where’s Waldo? NES game he used to play. The notion of a Where’s Waldo? live-action film is floated, and the group even nominates Adam Friedland to play Waldo. Matricardi defeats Chris at pinball by a staggering margin—roughly ten million points, though it’s unclear whether that’s typical. Chris admits he’s only average, but notes that he keeps a scores app with a dozen milestone badges that tell a different story. Shepard rounds out the night with a final game of Ms. Pac-Man, and we say goodbye, stepping into the cold of West 65th Street’s night air amid the rumble of a motorbike revving at a nearby light.
***
A few days before pinball night, I meet the band at Shepard and Ovak’s new West Park home, a short walk from Cleveland’s finest punk dive, the Little Rose Tavern. The sky swirls with rain and snow, and just before I step inside, I plunge my foot into a puddle that soaks my sneaker and the bottom of my pant leg in slushy meltwater. Their living room wall is plastered with Raincoats artwork, and their shelves host an array of VHS tapes. Their orange cat Clarence is placid yet relentlessly restless—at one point he leaps onto the back of the couch just behind my head, forcing me to play it cool.
Our chat eventually veers to Shepard’s lyrics. Whereas her past writing leaned toward abstract voyeurism, the new record’s words pull from her own experiences. Saw You Out With The Weeds brims with grit, weariness from the world, financial stress, and nightlife’s excess, all steeped in noir realism. The recurring motifs—religion, fire, and the pull of home—anchor a récit that, despite its bleak imagery of guns, ad commercials, and cash advances, quietly threads a theme of rebirth, however painful it may be beneath the surface.
“Maybe this sounds corny, but sometimes when I’m creatively stuck I need to feel something extremely vivid,” Shepard says. “I drove out to my childhood home, which was falling apart at the time, only to learn later it had been bought and renovated by a developer. Sitting there, surrounded by memories and strong emotions, helped unlock many lyrics. My family is largely agnostic, but there was a period when my sister grew drawn to Catholicism in her youth—that wedge between us shows up here, even though it’s no longer her experience. The song touches on religion, economic hardship, and the crowd I tangled with in my younger days.”
Their lead single “Factory” is Suitor’s most direct statement yet, with Shepard softly murmuring lines like “Went out with some friends of mine / We go down by the river, walk by the factory light / Do you?” “I see it as the collision of two different worlds,” Shepard explains of the track. “The factory and river imagery comes from living across from an old factory in Kent, and the nights my friends and I would hit downtown bars and burn the midnight oil—those classic early-twenty-something memories. But I pair that with a memory from a first relationship with a much older guy when I was a teen, with the bruising, the slurred talking, and the fights. The Kent chapter began with that person, who was really dangerous, so I was revisiting that backdrop while hoping for a more secure circle of friends and a sense of belonging—a time of growing up and trying to assert myself.”
Just as Shepard lays bare her Kent experiences, the band also showcases their Cleveland roots in the “Factory” video. Directed by Choir Boy’s Adam Klopp, the clip follows Suitor wearing grotesque masks and a wedding dress through scenes aboard an RTA train, along the Lake Erie shoreline, and through the aisles of Marc’s, the Ohio grocery chain. “Riding the train was funny because there were only a couple of people on board, and when we stopped, the driver asked for a photo with us,” Shepard recalls. “Another memorable moment was Chris in the dog mask, getting on all fours and crawling down the aisles; Adam swore he hadn’t pressed record, so we had to redo it.”
“There are shots of us by the lake, and we shot the video in February, so the ‘feels like’ weather was probably minus twenty,” Ovak recalls. “We were suffering, and Emma cried.” “I wasn’t crying,” Shepard counters, smiling, “he just loves saying that.” “I wore my mother’s wedding dress with no coat, and it was freezing.” Perhaps their most surreal moment happened at their neighborhood Marc’s, which lived up to its no-frills reputation. “People at Marc’s did not give a damn,” Shepard laughs. “The manager on duty strolled by and simply said, ‘Hi.’”
For Clevelanders, Saw You Out With The Weeds represents the culmination of years of electric shows, and after countless euphoric nights and beers dashed, it would be hard to blame any passerby for feeling like they’re part of the record, even if they didn’t play a single note. For newcomers, the album should serve as a thunderous, unforgettable introduction to Suitor’s dizzying, pulsating universe. And for Suitor themselves, the LP stands as a celebration of five friends who have been riffing together for more than a decade—from high school jams and solo quirks to sharing stages with some of the country’s finest acts and beyond. They’ve crafted a full-length album that casts a wide net over their experiences, emotions, and talents.
“There’s this wonderful back-and-forth: the shared creative aim makes our friendship deeper, while the strong foundation of trust and camaraderie makes the music stronger,” Shepard notes. “This is the kind of experience I’ve always wanted—being extroverted and people-loving while feeding off others’ creative energy.” Ovak adds, “It’s incredibly cool to be in a band with the people you adore most in the world, watching them do great work and knowing you’re part of it.”
“Time makes you feel as if wanting isn’t enough,” Shepard intones on the album’s final line in “Dull Customer.” After the long wait for this record, if Saw You Out With The Weeds proves anything, it’s that desire alone isn’t sufficient—pursuing the real thing is what matters. But unless you’re clocking hours at the pinball bar, maybe leave the pinball to the folks who blow bugles on weeknights.
Saw You Out With The Weeds is out 3/20 via Feel It Records. Pre-order it here.
