*SOLD OUT* Shakey Graves

About Shakey Graves: “The first album was me wanting to burn down my life, cut my hair off, and run screaming into the woods,” says Alejandro Rose-Garcia. “This album is the trials and tribulations of becoming domesticated, letting people into your world and letting go of selfishness—the story of becoming a pair, losing that, and reconciling with the loss and gain of love.”

Rose-Garcia is professionally known as Shakey Graves, and with his new record, And the War Came, he extends the ground—emotionally and sonically—broken by his 2011 self-released debut album, Roll the Bones, which brought him national acclaim and, three years later, still ranks near the top of Bandcamp’s digital best-seller charts.

Roll the Bones established the powerful, mesmerizing Shakey Graves sound of Rose-Garcia accompanying himself on guitar and a handmade kick drum built out of an old suitcase. NPR Music named him one of 10 artists music fans “should’ve known in 2012,” describing him as “astonishing…unclassifiably original. And frighteningly good.” Paste included him in a “Best of What’s Next” feature, praising his “gnarly composite of blues and folk,” while The New York Times observed that Shakey Graves “makes the one-man band approach look effortless.”

But while this distinctive arrangement continued to earn him an ever-expanding fan base on the road, Rose-Garcia knew that he wanted the follow-up to achieve something different. “With the first album, I didn’t have any expectations except my own,” he says. “This time, I was making something people were going to listen to out of the gate. I tried to maintain everything I enjoy about recording, the weird homemade aspect, but I was seeking a new, shining sound quality. The concepts for the songs are a little bigger. This is not the ‘Mr, Folk, Hobo Mountain’ album—it’s more of the Cyborg Shakey Graves. It’s definitely the next step in the staircase.”

An experienced actor who had a recurring role on Friday Night Lights and appeared in several of Robert Rodriguez films, Rose-Garcia started making music as part of New York City’s “anti-folk” scene. While knocking around the underground music community in Los Angeles, he saw a performance by one-man band Bob Log III that pointed his work in a new direction. Since returning to Austin, Rose-Garcia has become so closely associated with his hometown that for the last three years, Austin has celebrated “Shakey Graves Day” by mayoral proclamation.

To record And the War Came, co-producer/collaborator Chris Boosahda brought all of his gear to Rose-Garcia’s house and converted the space into a big, open studio. Though the signature Shakey Graves set-up remained the starting point, other instrumentalists came in and multiple, wildly different arrangements of the songs were attempted for what was initially planned as a double album.

Most notably, Rose-Garcia wrote and sings three of the album’s songs with Esme Patterson, a solo artist and member of the Denver-based band Paper Bird. “We started out just having fun and writing, and then that turned into some of my favorite songs on the album,” he says. “We actually wrote ‘Dearly Departed’ on Halloween as a tongue-in-cheek, haunted house sex joke, and then we played it that night and people went bonkers. Esme and I write so similarly it kinda freaked us out, and I really learned the power of writing music with someone you get along with.”

Soon enough, Rose-Garcia found that the experience of making the record was being mirrored in the songs themselves. “I was letting go of that one-man everything,” he says. “I did need people’s help, and my control freak nature had to subside a bit. It meant learning collaboration, but also knowing when to stick to my guns—all of that was the experience of this year, and the songs were some of the more genuine experiences; some of them even became sort of prophetic.”

“Only Son,” a meditation on solitude (“I used to be an only son/My heart was like a stranger”), became the opening track and “thesis statement” for And the War Came. “Hard Wired” is not, as it may first appear, about a relationship falling apart, but “about having friends with problems—watching a friend struggling and not doing anything about it.”

The themes of these ten songs, explains Rose-Garcia, return over and over to the idea of the “other.” “It’s not about any single person, it’s about being that second, other person. Even the title—I never thought about whether I was able to handle that aspect of things, of having these relationships. And the War Came is a little bit of, be careful what you wish for.”

Songs like “The Perfect Parts” and “Family and Genus,” meanwhile, represent a very different sound for Shakey Graves. “Those have a lot more aggression, they’re heavy and big,” he says. “I’m a little worried because it is a new step out, and people have gotten really precious about the stuff I’ve done—which is a huge compliment, and a dream come true—but I’m interested in what a Shakey Graves song is to people.”

Another crucial influence on the direction of And the War Came has been Rose-Garcia’s lengthy and far-flung touring schedule (which has recently included stops at the Winnipeg and Newport Folk Festivals, prior to a headlining run this fall). “I’m constantly flying places and moving at a fast rate,” he says. “Imagining what it was like a year ago is almost incomprehensible to me now. I feel like I’ve almost seen too much this year—bands, music, places. And if that doesn’t affect you in certain ways, then you’re doing it wrong.”

While his remarkable success story continues to unfold, Alejandro Rose-Garcia sees And the War Came as a pivotal step in the evolution of Shakey Graves. “This is a doorframe album, as we’re going into a new building,” he says. “It’s taste of everything—what might come in future, which might include just guitar or the one-man band thing, but not pigeonholed to any one sound. I wanted to open some stuff up and get people ready for wherever it’s going.”

About Wild Child:

Wild Child doesn’t want a place to hide. Song after song, town after town, they’ll wear their hearts on their sleeves, addicted to the rush that only comes when thousands of strangers know all your secrets and sing them back to you, because they’re their secrets, too.

“It's not necessarily the performing that's addictive, but being able to connect with that many people at once,” says Kelsey Wilson, who shares lead vocal and songwriting responsibilities for the Austin-based seven-piece band with Alexander Beggins. “You feel like you're together in something––like you experience the whole thing together. It’s family therapy with a lot of dancing.”

Wild Child’s third album Fools (out via Dualtone Records) is an ambitious collection of lush pop that takes sad stories and transforms them into an ebullient love letter to the power of music and the art of living with yourself.

Made up of Kelsey on violin and vocals, Alexander on ukulele and vocals, Evan Magers on keyboards, Sadie Wolfe on cello, Chris D'Annunzio on bass, Drew Brunetti on drums, and Matt Bradshaw on trumpet, Wild Child has built a sprawling grassroots following on the strength of high-spirited live shows that feel like self-contained joy benders, along with two precocious albums.

2011’s Pillow Talk notched four no. 1 singles on indie pulse monitor Hype Machine, spurred on by music bloggers who fell early and hard for the quirky group. 2013’s The Runaround upped the ante, making best-of lists and garnering glowing reviews and write-ups from NPR, Paste, Pop Matters, and many others. Then Wild Child hit TV, performing on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson and serving as the featured artists on CBS Saturday Morning. Since forming five years ago after Kelsey and Alexander met during a stint as members of a backup band for a Danish artist’s U.S. tour, Wild Child has gone from playing shows for nine people to selling out venues across North America and Europe.

Not bad for an indie outfit who, up until now, has been thriving without radio spins or record label muscle. And it all started when two Texas kids too scared to sing for crowds discovered they wrote hauntingly good songs together.

Wild Child recorded Fools at Doll House Studios in Savannah, Georgia. Produced by Peter Mavrogeorgis and David Plakon with additional tracks helmed by red-letter guest producers Max Frost (“Break Bones”) and Chris "Frenchie" Smith (“Trillo Talk”), Fools reveals that while Austin’s favorite gang of lost boys and girls have grown up to become fiercely skilled musicians who have charmed the world, their faces remain grinning and often painted, spirits stubborn and free, barbs sharp and cathartic.

While writing for the album, Kelsey split from her fiancé of five years, then watched as her parents divorced. “It was the first time that I'd ever had writer’s block,” she remembers. “Then Bobby and I separated. Within a week, all of the lyrics just came out.”

“She used this album as a platform to say a lot of things she wanted to say,” Alexander says. “It's a story that's not exactly linear, but you hear someone going through something.”

Kelsey and Alexander co-wrote all of the record’s songs, while the title track was penned by the entire band––a first for the group. A complexly layered, funky gem, “Fools” saunters as Kelsey and Alexander sigh, “If you have to go / I’ll play the fool,” a sly acknowledgement that no matter what else is going on in the relationship, it’d be easier to hold on than to let it fall apart.

The act of consciously playing the fool shows up repeatedly throughout the record, and Wild Child flaunts a postmodern comfort with perspective’s slippery grip on truth. “The Cracks” pulses with uncertainty as Kelsey delicately cries, “You went too far, went way too far / We went too far, went way too far,” while in “Bullets,” she croons, “I know you think I took a lot from you.” “Meadows” asks a lover how much they’re willing to sacrifice, while “Take It” and “Reno” tackle separation and trust.

The sole purely exuberant note on the album, “Bad Girl” is a Motown-inspired celebration of the birth of Kelsey’s first niece. “Oklahoma,” a harmony-soaked strings showcase that kicks off with an electro-pop tease, was slated for The Runaround but didn’t quite fit until Fools. Originally intended for Pillow Talk, “Stones” was mined from lyrics Kelsey penned when she was 15 years old. Now, it’s part bubbly piano-man ramble, part sweeping string-led drama, capped off by a brassy New Orleans breakdown––a perfect example of the band’s increasingly virtuosic ability to stretch and crisply fold genres into their ever-expanding repertoire.

“Break Bones” is a stunner––a big, bold, beautiful pop song praying a fight continues indefinitely, because that’s all that’s left. “Trillo Talk,” a last minute addition to the record and an ideal closer, winks to fan favorites “Pillow Talk” and “RilloTalk” and soars triumphantly. “It’s the last thought––everything is going to be okay…but it's not. But, it feels alright,” Alexander says.

Vocally, Alexander strolls, steady and wry, as Kelsey skips, runs, and hops, all whirly energy and instinctive phrasing. “I think my voice just sits nice underneath hers,” Alexander says, simply and accurately. “The two of us never really intended to be singers and still don't really consider ourselves singers,” says Kelsey, without a hint of irony. NPR’s Ann Powers likened her voice to that of a “Jazz Age Broadway baby,” but bring up that and other praise, and Kelsey just laughs and emphasizes, “I don't think of myself as a singer. I think of it just like talking. We're just having a conversation.”

In their musical repartee, Wild Child doesn’t pull punches. Their songs sting as they groove, cutting lyrics massaged by cooing vocals and bouncy ukulele. So we’re dancing and laughing before we realize we’ve got tears in our eyes, entranced by Wild Child’s dizzying contradiction: sour truths that sound so sweet.

“The instruments may belong in a granola commercial, but what we're saying is often dark and angry and bitter,” says Kelsey. “It wasn't until Alexander and I started writing music together that we were like, ‘Damn. Are we sad?’”

“There is a beauty in lyric writing that is almost too honest,” Alexander says. “We've always tried to poke holes in that terrible thing that nobody really wants to think about.”

Fools is an unashamed breakup album, but it’s more than last rites for lovers. The record also bids farewell to the traditional lives Kelsey and Alexander had thought lie in store.

“We're about to live day to day for a long time, and our relationships are going to fall apart,” Kelsey says. “Our home lives are going to fall apart. And there's nothing we can do about it. So, the record is also about letting go of expectations, just playing the fool. Fools is a release––a blind step out.”