HUMANWINE

2008 Clippings
Boston Phoenix
BEST FEMALE VOCALIST: Holly Brewer
Even without Holly Brewer up front, HUMANWINE would be a pretty exotic band — mashing together heavy cabaret, arty pop, twisted circus music, and whatever else strikes their fancy. But it’s Brewer who draws you in, the singer who makes all the weirdness inviting. Offstage, Holly Brewer is a friendly force of nature, prone to expounding on the political backstory in HUMANWINE’s songs. But her intensity darkens onstage, where her piercing stare and facial tattoos seem well-matched to the deep, foreboding tone of her voice....Although she doesn’t work much outside the band (which she co-leads with guitarist M@ McNiss), she appeared this year and last at Shaun Wolf Wortis and Suzi Lee’s annual Mardi Gras show at T.T. the Bear’s Place, where she did the most chilling cover of the traditional “St. James Infirmary” I’ve ever heard.
— Brett Milano
Boston Herald
"To stand out in the ultracompetitive Boston music scene, a band must bring something extraordinary to the table or have a good gimmick. At a glance, HUMANWINE is an act that manages both. But scratch the surface and the gimmick reveals itself as a philosophy that encompasses music, art, politics and life itself."
2007 Clippings
401 Media
"Holly Brewer is that rare hard music female singer that actually sings well and shows her pipes and range on this disc along with the ability to howl with the best of them when needed. They fill a void in music and I think can be appreciated by lovers of all types of music.
So far this year, this is the best, most complete CD I have heard. Each song seems to have earned its exact place on the CD. There are no throwaway filler songs. Even the pirate inspired "Dim Allentown Cove (Part 1)" is catchy and will have you singing along even when you don't want to.
The standout track on this record is "Rivolta Silenziosa" M@'s menacing vocals dual with Holly's vocals and you can't help but feel you are in the middle of some weird old world fairytale and that is what make these songs great, because they certainly have political undertones, but you certainly can listen to them and just have fun.
Punk rock types could learn something from the uncategorizable HUMANWINE who take influences from all over the place and put them together to create their own new sound."
Bostonist
"It started with comic books flying from the stage. Some people need eBay or Craigslist or a recycle bin to offload their Arion: Lord of Atlantis collection; HUMANWINE 's Holly Brewer needs an audience. Friday night's crowd at the Paradise had come to celebrate the release of the first HUMANWINE album, Fighting Naked, and to catch airborne back issues. When M@ McNiss and the rest of HUMANWINE appeared, they launched into "Big Brother," a defiant rant that's both paranoid and mocking of paranoia: Let him watch! Placed on a continuum of political art with, say, Get Your War On on the accessible, affable end, HUMANWINE would be somewhere past the middle, but not quite at the other extreme, with the giant puppet heads and the poetry published in MIM Notes. Brewer, McNiss, & co. are, after all, artsily protesting the post-apocalyptic woes of an alternate universe America-shaped country called Vinland. It's a place of ruins and fascism, or so we gather."
Boston Music Spotlight
"In just a short time on the local scene, HUMANWINE’s message has been well received by a growing fan-base that is much more like a small family. Just like McNiss and Brewer, their fans are thoughtful and reflective on problems in today’s society. Although their music isn’t the most customary, they’ve found people really respect and appreciate the gap they seemed to have filled in the music business these days." - Erin Kelly
Boston Globe
"In lesser hands, giving one’s band an all-caps moniker might be considered empty hubris, but Boston’s HUMANWINE makes musical statements just as brazen and bold. The cracked cabaret stylings and elaborately weird performances staged by co-founders Holly Brewer and M@ McNiss have garnered the band three Boston Music Award nominations (outstanding new act, outstanding lead female vocalist, outstanding local punk band) and a slew of gushing publicity. HUMANWINE also took ‘‘BEST NEW ACT’’ honors in the WFNX/Boston Phoenix Best Music Poll this year."
Northeast Performer
"Each HUMANWINE song is conceived as a mini movie soundtrack involving actors, color schemes and a plot filled with antagonists, protagonists, conflicts, resolutions that take place in the fictional ‘Vinland’. Like any good surrealism, it is the realism that packs the artful punch, and the emotional content of HUMANWINE‘s songs are as real, powerful and accessible as their very human composers."- Sonja Tordorovich"
The Pitch
"HUMANWINE's songs are often a grotesque take on proletariat life. But so enchanting is lead singer Holly Brewer that lyrics such as Will this dust ever settle/Even better now the sky is bent/I've got a stomach full of finger-nails/And another's femur on my head will propel listeners into believing they're hearing a vaudeville act. All the band's songs are based on life in a fantasy world called the Vinland." - Andrea Noble
RFT
"The sign of a good storyteller is the ability to lift listeners out of their own lives and transport them to a new realm."