REVIEWS

It's not enough to call the veteran local group Big Lazy virtuosic. True, the instrumental trio's precise evocation of urban moods and tensions on its fourth album, Postcards from X , is done with wrist-flick assuredness. But anyone can practice themselves into slick competence; these guys tuck their magic into subtle details, as when guitarist Stephen Ulrich lets a melody go just slightly flat, or the audible slack that reverberates off stand-up bassist Paul Dugan's strings. Of course, immense talent is required to charge so confidently through a version of tango king Astor Piazzolla's "Pulsacion #4." It's Big Lazy's ease with a range of emotions—peering up from NYC's gutters and down from the city's night sky—that makes its music right for jukeboxes in bars both divey and swank .
Time Out New York

...an impressive bittersweet album called "Postcards from X." Led by the elegant guitarist Stephen Ulrich, the band's new material consists of dark songs featuring Ulrich's reverb-and-tremelo drenched playing backed by junk-yard grooves from the rhythm section.
The New Yorker

So much music is spoonfed these days with ubiquitous YouTube and MySpace coverage that it's encouraging to find a band that begs you to visualize its own video. This all-instrumental NYC combo cooks up the soundtrack to a bleak '50s black-and-white flick – all hipster cool with stand-up bass, stark percussion, spooky Farfisa organ and guitarist/songwriter Stephen Ulrich's reverb-heavy guitar acting as auteur/ director/ producer/ screenwriter. Picture Robert Mitchum or Montgomery Clift trawling the rain-soaked back streets littered with cheap gin joints and cheaper women. Add one part old Tom Waits minus the vocals, a jigger of Ennio Morricone mood, some '50s rockabilly and gumshoe attitude and roll film to your best imaginary anti-hero B movie. Sticky floor not included.
Creative Loafing - Atlanta

The lead track evokes the mood of Orson Welles classic 1958 film, Touch of Evil with instrumentation that is all at once gritty, thrilling and suggestive of an undercurrent of corrosive fear. While Welles' masterpiece was set on a Mexican border seething with corruption and rock-and-roll nihilism, Big Lazy hail from Brooklyn. In addition to technical brilliance, this instrumental group also displays an ample emotional range.
Yes Weekly - Greensboro, NC

...The Big Apple Creme de la Creme: an instrumental trio that doesn't so much balance Jazz dexterity and rock aggression as stick 'em both in your ear. Right, they're suitable for soundtracks. But anybody who wants to call them ambient better talk to me first...The smart soundtrack noir of their eponymous CD turns fierce- Tin Hat Trio with hard-hat brio, Tortoise in a bunker instead of a boite, Mingus by split decision over the Raybeats. They're very New York and perfect for a time so more-than-words-can-say. 
Robert Christgau/Village Voice 

Big Lazy, the elegantly gritty instrumental trio led by the extraordinary guitarist Stephen Ulrich The band, which was formerly known as Lazy Boy and recently lost a long-running battle with the La-Z-Boy corporation over its name, plays stunningly beautiful music that evokes everything from truckers' romps to the haunting film scores of Bernard Hermann. 
The New Yorker 

The supple Instrumental trio Big Lazy has two releases you should check out; New Everything and an earlier self tilted one that conjures up dark city streets, wailing sirens and the rumbling of trucks. 
Playboy Magazine

 If Big Lazy has a claim to fame, it is the on screen gig playing the brooding soundtrack for Meldrick's wedding in Homicide. Back then the name was Lazy Boy - recliner execs forced a change, says guitarist Stephen Ulrich, "fearing mass confusion between the overstuffed chairs and spooky, evocative music." This cd offers more neosurf instrumentals with upright bass, drums, and Telecaster twang - just the thing for new-millennium nuptials.
Wired 

From the Raybeats and Love Tractor to Tortoise and the Thinking Fellers Union and Frisell Feeling Frisky, guitar based instrumental groups have long been a fact of the rock 'n roll life, and generally they split the difference between expert and professional. These three guy headman Stephen Ulrich, playing one guitar at a time, agile Paul Dugan dwarfed by his string bass, and show drummer Tamir Muskat doubling as chief producer- up the ante. They cross genres without making a thing of their eclecticism. They love melody and they also write it. They seem through composed even when they're improvising. They're virtuosic and interactive without speed runs or shows of collective sensitivity. Most endearingly they don't think intelligence requires subtlety There last album was soundtrack in mood. New Everything is more program music - told that one track was called "Train Travel" and the other "Tavern Life" you'd know which was which. You might have more trouble distinguishing "Tavern Life" from "Homesick". But by then you wouldn't care much.
Robert Christgau/Village Voice

 whatever you call Big Lazy's music it is Ulrich's guitar   with it's fat, low-register melodies and traces of blues and jazz - that define the band's sound. His playing on Big Lazy's self-produced Big Lazy (Tasankee) alternates between controlled cool and passionate recklessness. Imagine the lovechild of Link Wray and Bill Frisell and you're halfway to hearing Ulrich's Telecaster twanging in your head.
Guitar Player Magazine

Given these days of boilerplate, prefab pop culture, it's pretty damn rare that you actually hear anything truly original. Thank the gods then for Big Lazy, an all-instrumental Brooklyn trio who, while influenced by the past, are in no way beholden to it. Combining Rain Dogs -era Tom Waits, bottom-heavy Link Wray grind, and a certain rockabilly savoir, this guitar-bass-drum trio raises a compellingly inventive racket. Daring, noirish music ideal for the soundtrack to the film you wish Quentin Tarantino would make.
Creative Loafing Atlanta

The NYC instrumental trio Big Lazy has provided music for television and movies, which should come as no surprise: its music has an atmospheric quality that lends itself to cinema. Simple in both instrumentation- guitar, stand-up bass, drums - and in structure, the songs on it's self-titled disc recall, Ennio Morricone or Pell Mell more than Tortoise, although that comparison has been made...
The Onion Chicago 

Brooklyn trio Big Lazy -- known as Lazy Boy prior to objections by the manufacturers of the ubiquitous cozy recliner -- makes music that is literally and figuratively just across the river from Manhattan's downtown scene. Influenced by everyone from bohemian jazzbos the Lounge Lizards to sunny surf rockers the Ventures, this tight combo cooks up a cool instrumental sound that never implies that it's cooler than you are. Guitarist Stephen Ulrich's twanged, highly reverb-ed riffs steal the show, setting a beat-poet mood while carrying an infectious melody. The cagey groove and distorted guitar squawk of "Crooked," sounds like something Tom Waits wouldn't mind growling over, while the addictive, rockabilly romp "Princess Nicotine" could attract its share of Link Wray fans.
CMJ New Music Report 

New York City's Big Lazy plays big, bulbous, rainy day music with a twang and a bang. The trio - comprised of bassist Paul Dugan, drummer Tamir Muskat and guitarist Stephen Ulrich - delivers wet, trembling instrumental pieces filled with reverberation, noire atmospherics and sneaky shifts in tempo and dynamics. Echoes of Tom Waits, Pell Mell, Morphine, and the Pixies can be heard on the band's new self titled album. The swirling 11-tune collection shuffles effortlessly at a lazy but persistent pace from one junky sonic lounge to the next. Ulrich's Fender guitar sound blankets the sultry and delicate bombast of the rhythm section. The cold, mathematically complex instrumental "post rock" of the Tortoise/Chicago scene and the frantic, mechanical electronic music phenomenon was the 1990's reaction to the hollow modern alternative-rock radio of that decade. Big Lazy's organic music pulsates with emotion, despair, humor and life in reaction to all of it...
Flagpole Athens, GA

New York's Big Lazy has what might be considered "the knack", that deft musical awareness of themselves, a lengthy acquaintance and a cognizance of their place in the universe. A knack which allows them to convey even the simplest of messages with the greatest of meaning. You need something tangible? Imagine Medeski, Martin and Wood as a surf-rock band doing soundtracks. Truth be told, that's only half of it...
Punchline Richmond VA 

It's driving down the strip with windows down on a cold, rainy night with too much on your mind and no place to go. It's a mad dash to the club. It's Big Lazy, the twangy, sultry, smoky trio from Brooklyn. Steve Ulrich's reverb dripping guitar, backed by throbbing and thrumming stand-up bass, and snare drum snapping maniacally, all add up to a loping blues soundtrack that just makes you feel hip...
The Washington Times

Listening to Big Lazy's music evokes images of a late night/early morning drive on David Lynch's Lost Highway. Tom Waits is at the wheel, the local rockabilly station is blasting loud and clear, and nobody's saying a word - the boys just keep passing the bottle of whiskey back and forth. And there might be blood on their hands - it's hard to tell in this light.
Village Voice

 Big Lazy are musical visionaries. Their noiresque brand of instrumentals curl out a thick and second-hand smoky set that conjures WeeGee crime photo albums Big Lazy's most recent, self titled release on the bands own Tasankee Records has 11 reverb-heavy tracks that evoke images of shady characters, wayward women, Link Wray-meets-Tom Waits-and-Morphine at an Eraserhead   It's a beautifully dark soundtrack to downtown's sour romantic underbelly.
The Advocate New Haven CT 

Big Lazy make atmospheric music for nights spent drinking absinthe on the rocks and are by far the highlight of this (Reverend Horton Heat/Los Straight Jackets) bill...
The Spectator Chapel Hill, NC

Slinky, Smoky, Sexy, Slightly askew surf guitar. The sound of Big Lazy is anything but formulaic. Seamlessly stitching together noirish guitar, upright bass and drums, the Big Lazy boys don't need lyrics to paint scenes of wee-hour walks through alleys, underground opium dens and men in fedoras up to no good.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Solid scratch 'n twang from the trio formerly known as Lazy Boy...eleven new reverb-soaked excursions... This slinks along with an insinuation of perpetual equinox, like a bordello scene minus dialogue, unfolding in a kind of emotional Alaska. "Skinless Boneless" twitches as the audio equivalent of 'Johnny Got His Guitar', swaggering with paresis... "Just Plain Scared": wherein lassitude is finally fed enough rope to force a confession.... "Amnesia" is a dusty road & you are now entering a town called PSYCHIC TORTURE, where Jim Thompson is buying a round of drinks at the Whammy Bar & Grill...."Hero Turned Suspect" has all the languor of Coppertone, the licentious straps of a diamond bikini in free fall over a bed of sand... Music for grifters, strangled with smoke and regret, encircling laughter's despair in rings of exorbitant truth. Exquisite. 
KFJC 89.7 FM Los Altos Hills, CA

No Surprise that Big Lazy has composed music for the TV show Homicide: the jazzy, tremolo-heavy, late-night instrumentals of the New York City trio recall spy movies, spaghetti westerns, surf music and David Lynch soundtracks, all at once. Great sultry-bar background music, but you can listen close, too, for the pretty and gritty shifts that will keep the dancers minding their steps and William Holden watching his back. Tonight at 10pm at The Beachland Ballroom.
Cleveland Free Times

On its self -titled debut album Big Lazy traverses several genres in the course of 11 songs. The player's chops are undeniable, allowing for lots of tasteful experimentation. Throughout the disc, the band produces taut songs that pull in the listener without going too far into self indulgent displays of technical virtuosity, which they could easily pull off without breaking a sweat. With the good taste and restraint of Seasoned musicians, Big Lazy keeps it cool, playing low-key explorations that mix the sounds of Mark Ribot, Link Wray and even Tortoise, if that's possible. This show should appeal to jazz hipsters, rockers, and anyone with adventurous musical tastes.
Metro Pulse Knoxville TN

Big Lazy's self-titled new cd is still firmly planted in the aforementioned David Lynchland, they just explore it a little more than their previous cd. Tracks like Skinless Boneless and Amnesia have a dark and seedy yet strangely intoxicating strip club feel to them. And Influenza and Princess Nicotine make a perfect soundtrack for an insomnia-laden midnight roadtrip.
Austin Citysearch

On their latest recording, the members of Big Lazy are intuitive masters of letting pure sound form content. The moorish instrumentals of this New York trio fall left of center, somewhere between sultry lounge jazz and fractured surf pop. Although they owe obvious nods to a number of hip influences, Big Lazy's true sound is as unique as it gets. The only real comparison would be to Angelo Badalementi's quirky David Lynch film soundtracks.
Chattanooga TN Times