After many lineup, name and style changes, powdr, aka the band formerly known as several other things, is ready to make its debut.
Released through Oklahoma label Mystery Class Records, Settle Pain will be available on cassette and through streaming services on Friday, July 25. The following day, the band will celebrate the release with a house party show also featuring Money, Lust Online and Brainwasher, starting at 7 p.m. Saturday, July 26, at Chateau Casa. Admission is $5. Message the band at @powdr.band on Instagram for the address.
Three-fourths of the band that would eventually become known as powdr formed when guitarist Joshua Peck, bassist Kilyn Massey and drummer Brent Hodge met in high school. The name they’ve used to collectively refer to themselves has changed several times, but this lineup has remained stubbornly consistent.
“We’ve been in, like, 10 bands together,” Peck said.
Massey added, “We get bored very easily, hence changing names and stopping and starting. We can’t give each other up, though.”
Peck said Massey may be the reason he continues to play live music at all.
“If it wasn’t for him, I probably wouldn’t get on stage or do any of that, but he kind of forces me to,” Peck said.
Massey said Peck doesn’t take much convincing.
“I just ask him to do it,” Massey said.
Peck added, “He asks me nicely, too.”
The classic Ship of Theseus thought experiment asks whether an object is the same if its components have all been replaced. From powdr’s perspective, the current band is different from its first iteration, even if 75 percent of its members are the same.
“In our eyes, it’s evolved a lot, but I don’t think it’s gone too crazy,” Peck said. “It’s always been a little indie rock, shoegaze, post-punk. We used to do instrumental music back in high school ’cause we were all too scared to sing. But now all three of us sing.”
One new key ingredient is obviously powdr’s fourth member, keyboardist Peyton Wilson, who also sings. And plays guitar. The press release from Mystery Class describes powdr “switching instruments mid-song” while maintaining an “incredibly tight unity in their playing.” Peck said the new album represents a shift between guitar rock subgenres.
“We’re trying to focus more on adding keyboards and making vocal melodies and strong guitar lines part of it instead of being, like, a jangle-pop band or something,” Peck said. “We’re kind of a little more post-punky this time.”
As the newest addition to the lineup by several years, Peck and Massey said Wilson is not having trouble making his voice heard.
“Peyton, he seems to take it in stride,” Peck said. “He kind of came in and started bossing us around.”
The four-piece settled on the name powdr after Peck made a minor mistake on the job at Old Blood Noise Endeavors, a guitar pedal manufacturer where he works with Massey.
“I do powder coating,” Peck explained. “And every day when it’s on the list “guitar pedal to powder,” I write the word ‘powder.’ I was just seeing it over and over. Then one day, I misspelled it, and I said, ‘That looks like a band name right there.’”
Single “Marie’s Cart,” the album’s “most abrasive” track, features lyrics based on a dream Hodge had about a wreck and opens with the unrestrained squeal of pedal meeting metal.
“The first sound you hear,” Peck said, “is from a pedal called the Chase Bliss MOOD, and it’s really complicated, and I really don’t know how to rein it in or use it really. So I just kind of turn it on, and it makes a crazy sound.”
Austin animator James Roo, a former bandmate, created the video for the single.
Like an amorphous dream cart, the band is already careening around the next corner, casting a side-eye at the rearview mirror.
“I think I’m already sick of the album, like playing that stuff,” Massey said. “I’m ready to do all new stuff. … We’re around seven songs deep for the next album.”
The band that used to switch names almost every time they played a show continues to speed toward the next checkpoint, but the race team roster remains rather familiar.
“We want to get back to writing and recording just,” Peck started.
Massey concluded, “so we can finish up another album.”
Visit mysteryclassrecords.com.
This article appears in City crowned.