Boston alt-rock trio The Rupert Selection embrace urgency, collaboration and pure creative freedom on their sprawling new album, Music For Horses.
Boston trio The Rupert Selection have released Music For Horses, a 12-track album that pushes their psychedelic and progressive rock roots into stranger, more colorful territory.
The record arrives under difficult circumstances. Vocalist and guitarist Reilly Somach was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer over the summer after months of worsening health problems. The diagnosis brought Somach back together with longtime bandmates Peter Crofton and Zak Brown with a renewed urgency to finish an album that had originally been planned for much later.
Working with producer Steve Lord at Rusty’s Recording Studio in Salem, Massachusetts, the trio turned old demos, rarely performed material and newer songs into a 43-minute record built around creative freedom. Horns, synths, piano, percussion and experimental soundscapes expand the band’s usual wall of guitars, with numerous friends and collaborators joining the sessions.
That anything-goes attitude runs throughout Music For Horses. “H.P.P.D.” stretches beyond 14 minutes with the band’s jam-oriented instincts intact, while “Riddance” charges forward with a full horn section. “Devil’s Dance” and “Bears” incorporate funk and R&B, and the eight-minute “Scorching Scorpion Phoenix Bag: It's Over” moves toward enormous riffs and arena-sized rock.
Even the album’s horse theme emerged through coincidence. Discussions about horses during the recording of “H.P.P.D.” were followed by the band noticing toy horses outside the studio, a large horse picture inside and, eventually, the fact that 2026 is the Year of the Horse. Horse-themed interludes and Crystal Araiza’s dreamlike cover artwork carried the running joke across the finished record.
Beneath the humor, however, Music For Horses captures three longtime friends responding to an uncertain moment by making something together. The result is deliberately loose, loud and difficult to categorize, with The Rupert Selection choosing creativity over restraint when waiting no longer felt worthwhile.
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