When Particles Collide

Sasha Alcott moved from New York to Bangor to teach, and whatever frustrations those kids might fill her with spill out in her energetic vocals and crunching guitars. She and drummer Chris Viner make music that’s hard to pin down, a powerful mix of art-rock and pop-punk. - Paste Magazine

Teacher at an elite boarding school by day. Rock musician at night, on weekends and during the summer.

That’s the dual identity of Phillips Exeter Academy chemistry teacher Sasha Alcott, half of the husband-wife rock duo When Particles Collide. She’s the band’s singer, guitarist and bassist, and her husband Chris Viner plays drums. They live on the Phillips Exeter campus in New Hampshire, and when school’s out they go on tour.

Alcott and Viner’s latest album, “Photoelectric,” is out this week, and before they hit the road for the summer they joined WBUR’s Sacha Pfeiffer. - WBUR Radio Boston

It’s not hard to figure out what gets Sasha Alcott’s picture in the Boston Globe: Chemistry Teacher at Phillips Academy Exeter + Rock Chick = Great Story. We storytellers are suckers for that shit. She educates the future hedge fund managers of America and owns all-leather outfits!?!

Thank Christ her band, When Particles Collide, is so kickass. Their first proper full-length, Photoelectric, fulfills all the promise of last year’s excellent EP, Ego. If anything, the duo (hubby Chris Viner plays drums and helps out in the Exeter theater department) have upped their game. Alcott’s vocals have an increased polish and range, delivering yet more of her trademark immediacy, and the band has settled into a songwriting comfort zone that doesn’t apologize for stripped-down arrangements and focuses on the kind of straight-ahead rock that’s gone a bit out-of-vogue in contemporary music making.

Alcott’s use of the falsetto is particularly striking on this record, employed as though her eyes are rolling into the back of her head as she inches toward euphoria. “Constant Disaster” is a revelation, with a Pixies-style open, a line of notes on distorted and grimy guitar, that moves into more of a Black Crowes rock chorus that features “the ashes of your catastrophe.”

It’s a serious head-nodder, and the chemist even ventures into biology: Her adversary is a Venus Flytrap, “but your nectar’s already turned.” There’s a delightful piano break that comes out of nowhere before a final furious flourish.

But we were talking falsettos, and the one Alcott employs at the end of the “Disaster” bridge, breathy and alluring over Viner’s high hat, is downright deadly.

Just like the teasing open to “Don’t You Wanna,” where she outlines the situation: “Yes it’s true, I’m coming over/ But I won’t stay the night/ That’s how this goes.” My goodness. Seems like maybe she’s channeling some of that teen lust going on down there on the Phillips Exeter campus — better make sure you don’t get caught out on the quad!

She’s a fun guitar player, too, here pulling out little three-note chunks that ramp into continuous strumming, and generally focusing on driving rhythm over cycling riffs. But there’s serious riffage in the open to “Leave Me Lonely” — almost metal, just without the down-tuning. It’s a great contrast to the delicate bridge, where Alcott makes it clear “I won’t ever forget what’s mine” while Viner rides a rolling snare.

Viner’s roll through the toms in the finish to “You Want It All” is a brilliant exclamation point on a song that is hot as fuck-all, a true tribute to the ’70s scene at Max’s Kansas City in NYC: no nonsense (well, other than the makeup and whatnot), always on, and so easy to dance to it’s impossible to stay still. In fact, “we’ll go dancing till dawn,” Alcott declares, accompanied in this close-out section by a chorus of voices who’ve got the same intentions. “It might be time to go/ But it might be time to stay.”

Just like Alcott nakedly sings in the album opener, “I know you haven’t had enough.” And how could you, really? With songs like “Enough” featuring layered melodies sitting on top of desperate guitar slashes, or “If I Asked You,” where Alcott is every bit as direct as Regina Spektor, or “Time,” with an upstroke funk to match Ego’s “Distraction,” there’s just so much to dive into. The dynamics push and pull at you, like they’ve each got one of your lapels and they’d like to shake some sense into you somehow.

Finally, there is “Something,” a complete change of pace in the album’s finish, with a horn-fueled, old-time ’60s vibe, like being at the drive-in with muscle cars that have flames painted on the sides. Or maybe there are some poodle skirts. It’s not like any of us was alive back then, but you get the idea. Here, Alcott is at her most dramatic: “Don’t waste time this way/ Don’t waste my time.”

She sure ain’t wasting yours. The nine songs here form a crisp half-hour of pure elation. It’s loud without being angry, aggressive without being mean. Photoelectric is a hell of a good time.



Read more: http://portland.thephoenix.com/music/158661-double-displacement/#ixzz38OwrGqpY - Portland Phoenix

I’m a chemistry teacher at Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire. It’s a boarding school, so I advise students, I coach, I work in the dormitories. But I have the summer off. And I have a week around Thanksgiving, two weeks over the winter holidays, and two weeks in March. So, all told, 15 weeks out of the year that I can really dedicate to music, and that’s not bad.

March was awesome. My husband, Chris [Viner], who plays drums, and I played 13 shows in 12 days. [In Canton, Ohio,] people were just letting go. They were tossing each other up in the air and pumping fists and screaming the lyrics at me, and I thought, “This is the moment where it no longer belongs to me; this is for you guys, this is your night.” And that’s the beauty. We’ll be on the road for 10 weeks this summer to support the album. We’ll go to the West Coast and back.


I think what makes a really great teacher also makes a really good frontperson, in that it’s not really all about them, it’s all about the other people in the room. A great teacher — through magic and skill and experience — knows how to engage the students so that the process of trying to grapple with and understand new ideas and concepts belongs to the students, so they own it. A lot of teachers are very funny and flamboyant and people like them, but they are not as invested as the great teacher who gets you hooked on poetry.

And similarly there are lots of frontpeople who sing amazingly well and are very flamboyant or they have sort of stage tricks. But I think the ones who often have a very long career, it’s because the listener feels personally vested in the music, the performance, that persona. You can’t just put on a good show.  

(Interview has been edited and condensed.) - Boston Globe

Thirty seconds into "Constant Disaster" I knew When Particles Collide would be one of my favorite Rock 'n' Roll Rumble bands.

Fifteen seconds into their Rumble set I knew had to book the guitar/drums duo at Redstar Union -- get those FREE tickets now, they'll be gone soon.

So when drum master Chris Viner asked if I wanted to debut new single "Time," from the forthcoming "Photoelectric," I was psyched. The tune thumps with their usual fury but the verses turn toward ska then new wave before resolving into a keen bit of thrash-y, metallic rock. Just listen... - Boston Herald - Jed Gottlieb

Chris Viner is an insane drummer. Just whoa. Dude was playing 16th notes on the bass drum, and I do not recall seeing a double kick pedal. Dude switched from right hand to left hand to hit the same crash cymbal because it looks cool so why not? Dude is resurrecting the lost art of bombastic drum solos and with none of the Neil Peart-style “just play lots of paradiddles on a crazy expensive kit and everyone will think you’re great” gibberish. Somebody thought WPC sounded like The Raveonettes. I thought about likening them to a raunchier, co-ed incarnation of Local H.

Viner and singer/guitarist Sasha Alcott summoned the essence of the mighty “Stone Cold” Steve Austin via “W.P.C. 316” T-shirts. With his days of trouncing The Rock and “The Heartbreak Kid” Shawn Michaels behind him, the modern day SCSA podcasts about squirrels who sneak onto his property and poop in his truck. While the Stone Cold Stunner may be useless against such wily beasts, WPC could vanquish them handedly, because squirrels fear loud noise. “The Rumble is over. I might as well go home. These guys will win,” I thought, because I am wrong sometimes. - BDCWire - Barry Thompson