Oxbow Founder Eugene Robinson Leaves Band After 35 Years

Eugene Robinson, the lead singer of San Francisco noise-rock experimentalists Oxbow, is leaving the band. Robinson, who co-founded and has been with the band for over 35 years, announced his departure on Substack, explaining that the exit is due to “irreconcilable differences, none of them aesthetic or musical.” Oxbow have not yet released an official statement. Read a longer excerpt from Robinson’s note, which also includes news about the band’s now-ended European tour, below. Find the full thing at Substack.

Robinson and guitarist Niko Wenner, former members of the hardcore band Whipping Boy, formed Oxbow in 1988 in San Francisco. Oxbow released their debut album, Fuck Fest, the following year, and quickly gained a devoted fanbase for their uniquely punishing, experimental noise rock and intensely raucous live performances. The band went on to release records at a steady clip, sharing works in the 1990s like the Steve Albini–recorded Let Me Be a Woman and Serenade in Red, and continuing on with the more recent Thin Black Duke and Love’s Holiday.

Eugene Robinson:

While I don’t feel that my life is being threatened, my physical life, I do feel, under the weight of irreconcilable differences, none of them aesthetic or musical, that I now must leave OXBOW. Recent circumstances have caused me several dark nights of the soul and while it feels/seems crazy to kill my involvement in that which I started, I think it necessary so that maybe a kind of healing can take place that will make OXBOW a comfortable place for me to be again. If not, then not.

So the last five shows of the tour were scrapped and I’m sitting in a cheap hotel in Fuengirola, Spain, thinking of how the band began, and how the last video we just released from Love’s Holiday was so aptly named. “All Gone” it was and perhaps seems to be.