Strange load

Thom Waddill, frontman of rock quintet Austin Font, calls out his lyrics with half-conscious instincts. Dream recall and automatic writing. scrambled poems and silly mutterings. Waddill seems to live among towers of haphazardly stacked pages-Cormac McCarthy Essays and dog-eared Dostoyevsky — snapping away from them like a happy child with scissors. The angular, polyrhythmic outbursts from his bandmates are just as reflective, often building from the drums to periods of improvisational practice. On their debut album, album/strange-burden” class=”external-link” data-event-click=”{"element":"ExternalLink","outgoingURL":"https://fontmusic.bandcamp.com/album/strange-burden"}” href=”https://fontmusic.bandcamp.com/album/strange-burden” rel=”nofollow noopener” target=”_blank”>Strange load, The Font combines grimy post-punk guitar, searing percussion and incredible synth riffs, tying nearly three years of evolving live sets to tape. They lose nothing in the process. Strange load it's meticulous and crackling—a concise, compelling record that sparks and sizzles like cracked lightning.

The font is completed by multi-taskers. Most members dart between strings, synthesizers, or a sampling pad at all times. During the shows, bassist Roman Parnell and guitarist Anthony Laurence trade machines with Waddill at the front of the stage, while Font's two drummers, Jack Owens and Logan Wagner, deliver dueling beats in the back. Wagner stands while playing and of course also plays a sampler. This kind of dexterity only helps with the full Font settings, which dissect and animate a bunch of dashed stuff. But trying to identify Font's music is a slippery slope. post-punk, art-rock, dance-punk, noise-pop… are all accurate but insufficient descriptors.

The Fonts have been pretty upfront about their influences: Talking Heads, LCD Soundsystem and Radiohead have all been name-checked. But they also channel the warped disco of Ian Dury and the Blockheads, the agit-jazz of James Chance and prog fuckery à la Squid and Black Midi. Font's first singles are impressive and pressing. “album/sentence-i” class=”external-link” data-event-click=”{"element":"ExternalLink","outgoingURL":"https://fontmusic.bandcamp.com/album/sentence-i"}” href=”https://fontmusic.bandcamp.com/album/sentence-i” rel=”nofollow noopener” target=”_blank”>Proposal I” is a twisted punk sermon fueled by Parnell's elastic bass licks and Wagner's chime. On “The,” Waddill warps his voice between breathy screams and shuddering screams, as Laurence's guitar screeches like a circular saw gnawing at steel. The song is an early example of Waddill's absurdist humor:

It comes through the body
He opens the door
He crawls on my leg while my mom is at the store
He insults my father
He calls on God
Sun on deck with abandon

This impersonal “It” is at first threatening, suggesting some kind hostile, inhuman species. But the sudden turn to a grocery store, then to a porch chair where “It” blackens “with abandon,” feels like a cheeky portrait of the mundane. Most of Font's songs set volume this way, and Waddill likes to create overly specific, discordant visuals—like playing a solo loop Excellent corpse.