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Formed in 1998 in the small college town of San Marcos, located just south of Austin, Texas, The Wailing Walls play their own unique brand of unclassifiable pop music without regard for established musical molds. While still embracing their small town Texas roots, they draw from influences ranging from the Dead Kennedys to Don Williams, the Pixies to Richard Rodgers, Sonic Youth to Chopin; creating a unique and eclectic experience. Of their first album, Sirens Disco the Austin Chronicle’s Christopher Gray remarked, “Their music works because it sounds like nothing else out there right now, and it still rocks. ‘Beautiful Mess’ is right,” referring to a track off of the 2002-released album.
Bandleader Bryan Crowell’s unique voice soars and scratches like a classically trained folk singer two packs into the day, as he hammers out rich piano melodies and succinct guitar phrases. Cody Richardson’s twangy telecaster mixes Buck Owens with Frank Zappa while Derek Starkey’s steady rhythm and Collin Downs’s ever energizing bass presence lay on top of Spenser Swietek’s powerful drumming. The well-constructed, lyrically smart epics take listeners on a roller coaster ride, equipped with the smooth stretches, the climbs, the jerks to the head and the feeling of wanting to do it again, all mixed up with the sadness of watching it happen without you while you wait in line for your turn.
Through thoroughly planned melodies, mathematical time changes, and witty turns of phrase, Crowell illustrates what it means to be heading in several directions at the same time, yet always ending up in the same place. What could be chaotic or angular is held together and smoothed out by the arrangements, which are as elegant as they are jarring, as dynamic as they are poetic, and as intelligent as they are irreverent, making The Wailing Walls cohesive against all odds, by sheer will and determination along with the help of a cement mixer load of musical talent.
The band followed their promising debut album with a 2004 EP release titled Segway, which features four eclectic full-length songs interspersed with a potato sack’s worth of short commercials that Crowell wrote for local Austin ad studio Tequila Mockingbird.
The Wailing Walls continue to tour, frequently visiting avid fan bases on the indie circuit, sharing the stage with national acts such as Jay Bennett (ex of Uncle Tupelo and Wilco) & Edward Burch, Jason Loewenstein of Sebadoh fame, Texas favorites and Misra Records recording artists Centro-matic, Mike Watt (formally of the Minutemen and fireHose), and a plethora of local and touring bands such as The High Strung, The Spiders and Bishop Allen.
Currently the band is gearing up to record their newest a CD, a musical concept album of sorts, invoking the not yet established genre of the un-performed indie rock musical. The album will be released in early 2007.
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