Although the name "Nagel" may conjure up images of softcore 1980s airbrushed portraits of women in Playboy and Duran Duran album covers, Austin band Nagel plays with the new wave sound of Blondie, The Go-Gos and Squeeze and takes it to new places with ironic lyrics, intricate melodies, and surf-esque guitar hooks. Pop Culture Press describes the band as "perfectly-pickled power pop" and wrote of their debut cd Barely Nagel produced by Grand Champeen's Michael Crow, that "Nagel wishes it were still 1982, but not inthe presently-oeverdone doom-n-gloom Joy Division sense. Nagel loves the happy hook." Paisley Umbrella magazine said Barely Nagel is "a collection of smart, bright sounding pop songs that celebrate heartbreak anddissapointment in appealing terms." If The Magnetic Fields were fronted by Josie Cotton, you'd have a close approximation of Nagel's sound--bittersweet pop.
From The Encyclopedia of The New Wave:
Sometimes the most beautiful music is made by the angriest people,
as the members of Nagel can personally attest. The band's story is long and
unusually incestuous, even by rock-n-roll standards: Everyone in the
band has been married to each other at one point or another, and they
are all related, which is why they only work under pseudonyms--to
protect the guilty. Their family tree is so complicated that the band
once unwittingly gave away their royalties to an imposter claiming to
be a Nagel; his deception was only uncovered after a team of attorneys
realized there was one too many members present for their historic
signing to Royal Cherry Cavendish Records on the roof of the Empire
State Building in 1994.
Diva and Rio, the tempestuous and stunningly beautiful ladies of Nagel, were legally married in the state of Massachusetts once same-sex unions were ratified by the
State Supreme Court, but had their marriage dissolved upon the
discovery by Diva that Rio's divorce from Thunder, the band's elaborately-mustachioed charismatic charlatan bass-player, had had not yet been finalized. Diva, too, had once been married to Thunder, for sixteen hours in the late 1980s.
In the mean time, the longstanding feud over family oil holdings
between siblings Taskmaster, Mr. Kyte, and Rio threatened the band's
co-existence with first cousins Diva and Thunder. The handsome and reclusive drummer, Mr. Kyte, whose
sexuality is as changeable as a rainbow-colored chameleon, has an
adopted child with his on-again/off-again domestic partner, Thunder.
That child, who wishes to remain anonymous, then went on to marry Rio.
After a long, tumultuous court battle, Diva's restraining order against
her Svengali-esque guitar-playing taskmaster, Taskmaster, has been lifted, and they
can finally return to the studio without armed guards being present.
Although none of the members of Nagel are speaking to one another at the present time,
as a group they are hopeful that they can put their sordid past behind
them and find some measure of peace on their remote wind-powered
recording complex/compound in the outer reaches of the Utah desert,
which is the only place in the United States they are legally able to
inhabit. (And where the drinking age was recently lowered to 17, which
was what initially drew the attention of Taskmaster and his young
ward, whose name and gender is unknown, to the area.) BARELY NAGEL, the first release from the band since entering the womb-like seclusion of their underground bunker, is a concept album inspired by their new desert surroundings; a musical exploration of their visionary, and highly litigious, embrace of polyamory, it is available now on .
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