Shapes Have Fangs Interview: SXSW 2010

Listening to Shapes Have Fangs might bring back flashbacks of the British invasion of the early '60s. Yet this Austin-based quartet -- brothers Skyler and Evan McGlothlin, Dustin Coffey and Josh Willis -- doesn't appear to have any DNA in common with the Queen Mother. Spinner recently caught up with the band, who talked about their music and their upcoming SXSW appearance.

Describe your sound.

Skyler: We're a garage R&B band.

Dustin: It's been changing over the past few years. Bare-bones rock 'n' roll stuff. It's an ever-progressing thing for all of us. It's our own ideas and songs. We started writing a lot more together and that's been shaping the sound. It's all over the place.

How did you form the band?

Skyler: We grew up together and all went to high school together. We come from a small town southeast of Dallas. We gravitated towards Austin as we got older, and we were all playing in different bands since we were 16 years old.

Dustin: This band has been together for three years. When we moved here, Skylar and I began working on the music and recording stuff on tape recorders and computers. Then Evan and I had a R&B instrumental band in Denton. Shapes came out of all that, just our experimentation together.

Skyler: In 2005, Dustin and I were both really into digging for records, and we'd find records for samples for B-production. And in the process of that, we found music we wanted to reproduce in our own sort of way.

How did you pick your band name?

Skyler: The band name was sort of a cut-and-paste thing. I was watching movies, and I just got the idea of a loose plot, and each word was descriptive and had more of a tone and feel than any actual concrete meaning there. There's a long description of what those words mean, but it's suppose to create more of a picture than anything.

Evan: I like ambiguity.

Who are your musical influences?

Skyler: All over the board. Lately it's been mid '80s to late '70s punk rock bands from all over the world. Iggy Pop and the Stooges.

Dustin: Velvet Underground bass sounds. Bo Diddley, Erik Satie -- classical music.

Beatles or Stones?

[Unanimously] Beatles.

Skyler: We all like both bands, but I have Beatles in my bones.

Josh: As a bass player, I would have to go with [Paul] McCartney.

What's in your festival survival kit?

Skyler: Seven-layer burritos from Taco Bell. We're all vegetarians, so it's hard for us to eat on the road.

Evan: Clean socks. Dirty everything else, but clean socks.

Who's your musical guilty pleasure?

Skyler: Electronic music.

Evan: For Skylar, I think it's Wham. He tries to cover it up. He tries to turn it down when you walk into the room.

Dustin: Weird Al Yankovic.

Skyler: And Evan's been into Yanni for a long time. He meditates to Yanni in the nude.

Craziest thing you've seen while performing?

Skyler: We were in Memphis and didn't have a show set up, so we called all of the venues in town and talked to the people at the Buccaneer. They said we could probably play if there was time at the end of the night. There were four other bands playing, but the bars in Memphis stay open until 3 am. We got there at 8 pm and started waiting through four really odd bands. As the night went on we were getting really drunk, pounding one-dollar beers from 8 to 3 in the morning. Around 1AM the bartender said he didn't know if we could play because they have a dinner crowd that comes in at 2AM, and they don't like live music. Finally, at 2AM, he said we could play for 15 minutes. By this time we were all out of control and wasted. We dropped the first song and the bartender came out with his arms full of booze and told us to play as long as we wanted. Then he brought more shots and beers, and by the time we finished playing everyone was begging for more songs, and we were seeing cross-eyed. Anybody that tours knows that a renegade show can be the most fun, especially in Memphis, Tennessee. We love Memphis and the Buccaneer!

What's up next?

Skyler: We're about to finish an album. We also run a music studio, and April's getting booked up with bands coming in to record. So it's a combination of finishing our debut album and a video we just shot in West Texas, getting a label and getting it all released.


Kelly Rose is a contributor from Seed.com. Learn how you can contribute here.