 by Steve McPherson
Voxtrot make it look easy. The Austin quintet have generated the kind of word-of-mouth hype and buzz over the last year that most bands would kill for, and songwriter Ramesh Srivastava crafts nonchalant pop gems that have an effect similar to the work of that other up-from-the-underground success story, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Soundwise, there’s not much common ground, but the feeling you get the first time you hear “The Start of Something” from their debut EP Raised by Wolves is a familiar one: this band is something special.
 When
Srivastava decided to move to Glasgow at the tender age of 19, he also decided
that he wanted to get some of the songs he’d been writing down on acetate
before he went, and thus was Voxtrot
born, with Mitch Calvert on guitar, Matt Simon on drums and Jason Chronis on
bass. The band expanded to incorporate keyboardist Jared Van Fleet later, but
it has remained, to a large extent, Srivastava’s project. “The songwriting
process is pretty strict,” says guitarist Mitch Calvert via phone from
Austin, where the band is just getting ready to embark on tour, “and it’s
always Ramesh. [He] brings in a song and we usually have to have a good week
or two to work around it before we bring it to a show and there’s always
a full arrangement. Once you hear the new EP, you’ll hear the full arrangement
with strings and horns in the studio, but we like to bring new songs to the
audience live at our shows.”
Their new EP, Mothers, Sisters, Daughters & Wives, will be available
April 4, but curious souls should be more than happy with their first. Eschewing
the whiny vocals and overly dramatic gestures that plague a lot of indie rock,
the band wears their twee-rock influences on their sleeve: the Smiths on “The
Start of Something” and Belle and Sebastian on the title track. What keeps
it all from sounding like a rehash is the charm and simplicity with which the
band delivers the songs, and it’s nigh impossible to stop dialing up the
mix tape-ready “Long Haul” on your iPod over and over again. The
slightly muffled and lo-fi vocals on “The Start of Something” rub
up just a little roughly against its careful and crystalline structure while
the Gang of Four-eque verses of “Missing Pieces” will prick the
ears of Bloc Party fans even if its chorus swoons are more in line with the
Lucksmiths. Don’t look for them to repeat themselves with their upcoming
EP, though.
“The new record is different,” says Calvert, “in that all
of the songs were recorded within a closer period of time together, whereas
the record before had ‘The Start of Something’—which was two
or three years old by the time the record came out—and the other songs
were recorded within six months of each other. And also on the new record we
have fuller arrangements, which was a lot of fun. It was a little bit harder
and a lot more expensive, but a lot more fulfilling for all of us and hopefully—once
it sees the release date—we’ll get a good response.”
 Austin
has a vibrant and thriving musical community, which makes it a little easier
to get some horns and strings onto your record. “It’s nice because
you can always go out and see one of your friend’s bands play downtown,”
Calvert says. “Or if you’ve got a new side project, you’ll
always have an audience there to support you on your opening night. And you
can throw things back at each other. One thing that was really great was that
we had horn players and string players on the new album and they were all friends
or friends of friends. It’s just a neverending list of positive things
that you get out of a music community like Austin.”
Of course, you can’t just stay in your hometown when there’s a whole
wild world waiting for you. Voxtrot has been on the road four times now, each
time stretching it out a bit more, and the experience hasn’t soured them
so far, despite an extended and unexpected stay in Masschusetts when their van
broke down. “For me, it’s always really exciting,” says Calvert
when I ask about his personal feelings about touring. “I don’t really
think about the bad things that can happen. If something like [the van breaking
down] happens, it’s sort of like hitting a wall; you deal with it when
it happens. So like when we were stranded in Massachusetts—I think we
were there for four days—it was just horrible for the first few hours.
We had to call around; we had to figure out where to take it; what to do with
it; where to get the money. After that, once it was in the shop, we made the
most of it. Ramesh actually wrote a song about it that’s on the new record
[‘Four Long Days’]. If you look on the insert, there’s a girl
that was nice enough to help us out at the bar that was across the street from
the hotel, and we gave her a thank you in the liner notes. So, even if it’s
bad at the time, it makes for a great story afterwards.”
 They’re
already an indie success story who’ve started their own record label (Cult
Hero) and garnered raves from critics and people like David Barker (editor of
the album-oriented books series 33 1/3), who introduced me to the band when
I interviewed him in the fall of ’05. “Post-tour,” explains
Calvert, “we have some hopes to sign to a decent-sized indie label, but
we’re sort of waiting around on that. We haven’t really even discussed
which names or which labels we’d like to go with, but there’s been
some interest and I think we’re going to make our move this year.”
Until the time when they put out their first full-length, we’ve got two
EPs of sparklingly sentimental pop that’ll easily fill out your playlists
in the coming months with sharp hooks and hopeful romantic lyrics like opening
volley of “The Start of Something”: “This time of night I
could call you up/ I get angry with athletic ease/ break common laws in twos
and threes/ If I die clutching your photograph/ Don’t call me boring/
It’s just ‘cause I like you.” It’s the kind of plain-hearted
sentiment that makes “The Start of Something” the start of something
big for Voxtrot. ||
Voxtrot perform Mon., Feb. 27 at the Seventh St. Entry with Tapes ‘n’
Tapes. 8 p.m. $6. 21+.
For more information on Voxtrot, check out their website at Voxtrot.net.
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