Earlier this year, the Boxing Lesson released their debut LP, Wild Streaks & Windy Days, which fulfills the promise hinted at on their previous string of EP’s with waves of dark, atmospheric rock and driving indie rhythms. Paul Waclawsky’s golden guitar tones dance close against Jaylinn Davidson’s synths, erupting in swooning moments with an experimental flair. Songs like “Hopscotch and Sodapop” bop with indie-pop bent, “Hanging With the Wrong Crowd” bleeps avant electronics into swaggering guitar, while “Muerta” and the epic 7:30 minute “Lower” floats like Pink Floyd. The trio manages to sweep elusively grand and powerfully direct throughout the album, moments of hypnotic shoegaze such as “The Art of Pushing Me Away” balanced by the infectious punch of “Dance With Meow” or “Dark Side of the Moog.” You can catch the trio live this Thursday, June 12 at the Beauty Bar with Zechs Marquise as part of the Suicide Girls Party.
Profile: The Boxing Lesson
Year Formed:
2002
Members/Instruments played:
Paul Waclawsky – Vocals/Guitar
Jaylinn Davidson – Synthesizers/Vocals
Jake Mitchell – Drums/Samples/Bus Driver
Former Bands/Side Projects:
Paul: Jake has a side project called Fecal Shock. He plays these awesome beats on his Elektron MachineDrum, fires blacksploitation movie samples, and sings about poop. I wouldn’t suggest going to a show though because he makes brownies with corn in them, smears them all over his face and flings them at the audience. He says that they are delicious but no one I know has the guts to taste them.
Albums:
The Boxing Lesson (2003 - Send Me Your Head)
Radiation (2004 - Send Me Your Head)
Songs in the Key of C (2006 - 7Diamonds)
Wild Streaks & Windy Days (2008 - Big Bigness)
Influences:
Drugs, Deep Space, Soft Effects, Moog Filters, Rings of Saturn, Lucid Dreams, Laws of Attraction, Cats, Parallel Universes, Space Echoes, Classic Rock, Indie Rock and Austin, TX.
Strangest comment or comparison ever made about your music:
Recently an Irish blog said that The Boxing Lesson “was made for the rock music orientated station as seen in the films Airheads and Wayne ’s World.”
Party on Austin !
Favorite local bands:
{{{SUNSET}}}, The Story Of, Spoon, Explosions in the Sky, White Denim, Zykos
Favorite local venue:
The Parish
Upcoming shows scheduled:
6/12 – Beauty Bar – Suicide Girls Party w/ Zechs Marquise ( Austin , TX )
6/21 – Guero’s Oak Garden – First Day of Summer Fest ( Austin , TX )
6/23 – Viper Room – Presented by Indie 103 ( Los Angeles , CA )
6/24 – Prospector ( Long Beach , CA )
6/26 – Tokyo Garden ( Fresno , CA )
6/27 – Blackwater Café ( Stockton , CA )
6/28 – Club Infinite ( Merced , CA )
6/29 – Make-Out Room ( San Francisco , CA )
6/30 – Spaceland ( Silverlake , CA )
7/1 – Beatles Revolution Room at the Mirage ( Las Vegas , NV )
7/2 – Atomic Cantina ( Albuquerque , NM )
7/5 – Exit Music Fest at Waterloo Park ( Austin , TX )
Shows over the next month that you’re excited to see:
Jaylinn: I’ve been listening to Belaire. I’m curious to see what they sound like live. I’m going to see them on Tuesday night.
Paul: I’m excited for the First Day of Summer Fest on June 21 that we organized with our manager, Ryan Cano (The Loyalty Firm). It will be held outside at Guero’s Oak Garden on South Congress. I’ve organized day shows like this over the last two SXSWs and they were nothing short of amazing. Playing in addition to The Boxing Lesson is a killer lineup of some of our other favorite bands in Austin: The Mercers, The Calm Blue Sea, Nic Armstrong, Benko, mrandmrsmays, Peel, Built By Snow and HMS Foolhardy. Laurie Gallardo from KUT will host the show all day. The event is free, sponsored by NORML and will run from noon to 9:30p.
Some of your favorite albums from the past year:
Radiohead – In Rainbows
Gliss – Love the Virgins
Frankel – Lullaby for the Passerby
Liars - Liars
MGMT - Oracular Spectacular
Ideal band (past or present) to open for on a national tour:
Jake: My Morning Jacket, Radiohead
Paul: The Cure, Mercury Rev, Fleetwood Mac, M83
Jaylinn: Wings, Raconteurs, Pink Floyd
Austin Sound questions:
Paul, what brought you to Austin from California, and how is the new version of the band different from the old?
Paul: Basically, Spoon’s “Soft Effects EP” brought me to Austin. I was so hooked on it…like a crackhead who needed to get a fix every 15 minutes. When I got here I was disappointed to find there was no more Electric Lounge. I was waiting for the kid to come out! When The Boxing Lesson TKO’d itself a couple of months after releasing Radiation, I had a dream in which I moved from LA to Austin. I was kinda out of my mind at the time and I took the dream at face value. So, Jaylinn and I just packed up and left for a fresh start and rented a house on Enfield Rd. We experimented with synths and demoed songs for several months until we met up with Jake. Moving to Austin was a form of musical self-preservation for us.
The Austin band is way more streamlined in comparison to the LA one, which was a five-piece with three guitarists and a lot of restraint. I have always loved the power of the three-piece. It’s opens up space for me to really explore my own guitar playing instead of trying to piece several guitars together like a puzzle. Jaylinn’s ability to do a million things at once gives us a huge sound for just three people. There are no limits to what she is willing to do to achieve a certain sound in a live setting. She is playing the bass lines, doing psychedelic synth sounds, choirs, strings, organs, horns and piano-sounds pretty much all at once on four synthesizers, fading them in and out with volume pedals. None of our stuff is sequenced so she definitely has her hands, feet and mouth full at all times! Jake plays drums like a lead singer and watching him play is an intense experience. I’ve never played with people who are having so much fun before. It’s infectious. Jaylinn and Jake have inspired me to channel better songs and truly have fun playing. What more can you ask for out of a band?! I think I had lost that “fun” part along the way in Los Angeles. It’s pretty easy to do out there.
So what would y’all say is the most important lesson of boxing?
Jaylinn: Depends on who you ask - the winner, or the loser.
Paul: Realizing that if you don’t get up after getting knocked down, you lose.
Jake: Wash your ass everyday, brush your breaf at least two times a day with you teefs, and you know…wash that face.
Song Introduction:
Dark Side of the Moog – This is the first song off of Wild Streaks & Windy Days and is one of our favorite songs to play live. The choir of synth voices in the background gives it a huge neo-psychedelic feel. The main bass part of the song is this awesome dark Moog Voyager setting that Jaylinn meticulously dialed-in and named Dark Side of the Moog. We think it really sets the pace for the rest of the album.
Wild Streaks & Windy Days – This is the last song off the record and was written for the most part in Los Angeles and finished up in Austin . It’s a slow melancholy 6/8 journey through the ether.
Sound Off:
We feel that this poem written by a dear friend really sums up “the boxing lesson”:
that hungry death
watches while i walk
pads all around, a pack of wolves
waiting
we are flares
illuminated,
shot wide of one another
up in sky
bright red lights glowing
we are seen for miles
still you are too far
i was someone i don’t remember
living a life i can’t forget
and still some nights, alone
it stalks me
inhaling the passion of our
peculiar crucifixion
into my empty frame
flooding the transfiguration
smoke behind my eyes,
a memory
of a former incarnation.
we found new life.
we got reborn.
we walked away, but
i know
these things follow us.
when you are
an artist
you bet your life
on almost
dying
- Lucinda Michele Knapp
Mp3s from Wild Streaks & Windy Days:
Dark Side of the Moog
Wild Streaks & Windy Days
Website:
Myspace
This album will rock, thanks!