Molecular Steve

One Liner:  Super catchy rock with a little slice of psych in there from a collective of Austin folks

Wikipedia Genre:  No Wikipedia, but this is rock and psych rock

Home: Austin, Texas

Poster Position: Late Addition
Weekend Two Only.
Sunday at 12:10.

BMI Stage.

Thoughts:  Fun band name.  Made me think of the Sincere Engineer band that was here last year.  But this is a band with very few streamer winners, but a nice shambling jammy sound.  The actual sound sort of reminds me of that awesome Leon the III band who came through last year.  At the end of their tunes, Spotify played me a track by that amazing Good Looks band who was either here last year or the year before, and that was a perfect matchup.  Loved that group.  Another random aside, I was listening to a podcast this morning that included mention of Sunny Day Real Estate, a rad band that I found much later than their cool phase, and the first song from these guys sort of reminds me of that.  I sort of hear They Might Be Giants at times too.  I'm all over the place on this one.

Anyway, this is apparently a massive 9-person collective that features former members of Prescott Curlywolf, The Damnations, The Meat Puppets, Gleeson, Black Drum Set, and Grand Champeen. The interview I read with "them" or "him" is odd, because the answers are attributed to Molecular Steve as though he is one dude, and he is talking about how he started working with his son on some old riffs and songs that had been stuck in his head for years, which led to this project.  

One album, 2024's Molecular Steve.  Most of the songs have no registered streams on Spotify, which is a tragedy.  This is good enough to be heard by lots of people.  The current top track on Spotify is "Wolfman," with 3,034 streams.

Is that an AI-generated video?  It feels like it.  Pretty freaking cool anyway though.  I feel like the players are all freaking really good - like I'm listening to the drums in "NDA" right now and these are high quality drum fills and tempo.  Even if I don't know most of those bands listed up there, I have to think the players in this band are legit.  This one is listed on YouTube as having something to do with Bob Schneider, not sure what, maybe just that he digs them and their freaky AI videos.

I mean, if you like jangly rock and roll stuff, then what else can you desire?  Got a beat I can bop along to, loose guitar jangle and smeary solos, and odd lyrics that may mean nothing?  Dig it.  I don't expect to be at the Festival for Second Weekend, and even if I was I doubt I'd be there yet by noon, but this is surprisingly solid stuff.