Long Read // This thesis of songwriting is one that can easily be appreciated in Font’s new record
From Austin, Texas, Font is one of the latest up and comers in the field of genre-bending alternative music. After a set of local shows in 2022 created a buzz around the five-piece group, this year has seen them take on supporting the highly acclaimed Yard Act on their U.S tour, along with sets announced for Pitchfork London and Paris shortly after the summer.
“Pretty much every show we played the crowd was very electric and immediately into our sets”, they tell of their experience on this tour, adding that the match in genres proved to really hit home with the Yard Act fans: “I’d say like most people have never heard of us before so it was a pleasure to be playing to crowds that were that welcoming and I think we were a really good pair together”.
Singer/guitarist Thom Waddill and drummer Jack Owens have been playing together since their teenage years, eventually meeting multi-instrumentalist Anthony Laurence and bassist Roman Parnell through the local scene in Austin, adding second drummer Logan Wagner to complete their current lineup.
This month Font releases their debut album Strange Burden, a project which has been in the making since the release of their first single “Sentence I” in 2022. Recording wasn’t always the group’s priority, however:
“The focus of the first couple of years of our existence was mainly on playing live. Over the couple of years there were plenty of songs that were performed and then maybe taken out of the set or reinterpreted or reimagined. I think the record feels less like a project that we went into with a vision of how we wanted it to be and more like a translation of what we’ve been playing”.
Feeding off each other’s creative abilities is essential to the raw, eclectic sound that stemmed from their collaboration. Explaining their writing process, drummer Jack Owens details how things usually go:
“We’ll record sessions which are like three hours long with just a lot of drum noise, synth noise and stuff like that. We’ll let stuff happen in session and then go back through and find beats or moments of that that we really enjoyed and then trying to see if we can stretch them out, reinterpret them and condense them into a song”.
Detailing the thought process behind this record, Waddill explains that their end goal when writing these songs was “rather than songs to be genre strokes, for the differences to be integrated into individual songs so as to make each of them unique”.
“It feels more like a collaboration for different types of noise and song ideas”, admits Owens, stating black midi’s debut album schlagenheim as a major influence on the way he approaches music:
“That was kind of a rule-breaking moment, like there’s no rules anymore, we can create as many different things as we want and we don’t have to be bound to just being a rock band”.
This thesis of songwriting is one that can easily be appreciated in Font’s new record, Waddill stressing the importance of “painting with all the colours we have”:
“From the beginning it was important to feel like there aren’t any boundaries of genre. The more we can use all the materials at our disposal, the more our identity can come into focus. Whatever persists from a big genre jump, that’s what we are”.
Strange Burden diversity and eccentricity is of not one to pass on for fans of punk, electronic or even pop music. Releasing on the 12th of July via Acrophase.
As for their tour dates, keep your eyes peeled on dates across the U.K and Europe, presently the only announced shows being the Pitchfork Music Festival in London on the 9th of November and in Paris on the 6th of November.
Words by Jay Cohen
