I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: October 11, 2023] Font

Before this show I looked up Font on bandcamp and they had …  one song.

And it was great.

But who are they?

Font is an Austin-based band made up of Thom Waddill, Jack Owens, Anthony Lawrence, Roman Parnell, and Logan Wagner. Font began playing shows regularly in the beginning of 2022.

The Austin Chronicle has described their music as “relentless post-punk with New Wave keyboards and arty, personality-driven singing.”

I don’t know what “personality-driven singing” means, but the rest is pretty accurate.  They make noisy, unexpected songs with catchy parts and decided uncatchy parts.  The songs tend to have something–a piano note, a guitar riff–that recurs enough to call it a hook.

The bass wanders all over the place–in a great New Wave sorta way.  And, as it turns out the percussionist is a major component of the band.  From where I was I couldn’t really see the drummer (there was so much STUFF on stage), but I could clearly see the percussionist who had cowbells, blocks, cymbals (which he moved around to make different sound) and some bongos.  He must have been exhausted.

There were two guys up front.  One was the singer.  He played guitar and all kinds of gear that he had around him.  The other guy also played guitar although he seemed to play more of the electronic gear that was around him.  At one point the guy in front of me also play the gear in front of the other guy–there was a lot of gear.

It’s impossible to know what they played because they only have one song out.  But I enjoyed their entire set (which went on for 40 minutes).

They have weird, interesting songs that people don’t make anymore.  The laziest comparison I can make is Parquet Courts, for the diversity of style and sometimes angular and harsh melodies, but they don’t sound anything like Parquet Courts, not really.

I can’t wait to hear what else they do.  They were terrific.

Oh, exciting news, there’s a second song now up on Spotify!

Here’s a setlist I was able to cobble together after the 2024 show