The drums we left in 2020: What happened to Pottery?
If you can stand the mental strain, cast your minds back to 2020, focusing primarily on the music of the time, rather than the untold horrors unfolding in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Horrors aside, it was a pretty solid year for independent music; seemingly, everyone being stuck inside for months on end worked out quite well for DIY musicians. It was the year that Yard Act released their inaugural singles, Fontaines DC tackled their tricky second album with A Hero’s Death, and Phoebe Bridgers captured the essence of the time with Punisher. One of, if not the greatest, albums of that year, however, came from a new band by the name of Pottery.
Emerging from the indie and garage rock scene of Montreal, Canada, the band came entirely from the left-field with their debut LP, Welcome To Bobby’s Motel, and its masterful lead single, ‘Texas Drums’, which was essential listening in terms of keeping spirits high in the lockdowns. With its distinctive rhythm and off-beat sensibilities, coupled with a genuine knack for DIY songwriting, it was among the most exciting albums of the year, and it seemed to set Pottery up to be ‘the next big thing’.
From an outside perspective, the band had everything going for them: a unique, fresh sound that subverted the increasingly identikit post-punk and indie scene of the day, along with an impressive degree of coverage in the music press, both independent and mainstream, and a deal with one of America’s most prominent indie labels in Partisan. Six years on from that landmark release, though, the band seem to have disappeared into the ether.
Such was the nature of that 2020 album that it conjured up a multitude of questions upon its release: Who is Bobby?, where on earth did Pottery come from? and, crucially, when will the next album come out?. Now, the only question that remains is, where is Pottery?
If you go to the band’s social media accounts, their Instagram hasn’t been updated since May 2022, when they shared an innocuous post celebrating the second birthday of their first EP, No 1. Meanwhile, their artist profile on Partisan’s website hasn’t been updated since the release of Welcome To Bobby’s Motel, but the profile is still present on the website.
Typically, when a band, particularly one with as much attention on them as Pottery had back in 2020, disbands in this digital age, their departure is marked by social media statements, label PR releases, or, at the very least, a notes-app apology for some scandal. Pottery, on the other hand, seemed to disappear into thin air, leaving the musical realm as abruptly as they had entered it.
Individually, the activities of the band members themselves have been relatively scarce. Paul Jacobs, the member responsible for that incredible percussive performance on ‘Texas Drums’, has undertaken various solo projects, both during his time with Pottery and before. However, his last release was the EP 185 On the Corner in the summer of 2022.
Lead singer Austin Boylan has had the most active output since Pottery’s disappearance, providing lead vocals for the Montreal-based country-rock outfit Steel Saddle, who released their self-titled debut album in 2024. Aside from Boylan and Jacobs’ extra-curricular activities, though, the Pottery realm has been almost eerily quiet.
Exactly what happened to the band is unknown to anybody not connected with the band members themselves. It could certainly be that the attention and pressure afforded to them after Welcome To Bobby’s Motel was simply too much, spurring on the break-up of the band. Equally, they might have decided to take some time off, which has since snowballed into six years of no contact. There are a multitude of possibilities.
It is worth remembering, in fact, just how many great bands there have been throughout musical history who only released one album, and perhaps Pottery are destined to fall into the same category as The Postal Service, The La’s, or the Sex Pistols. More optimistically, though, you might choose to believe that the band have spent the past two years, since the release of that Steel Saddle record, working on a magnificent comeback.
Either way, there is no taking away from the fact that Welcome To Bobby’s Motel was one of the best albums to emerge from the pandemic era and, if only for a brief moment, Pottery were the most exciting band on the independent landscape.
