4 to Watch: Phonograph

Rock that cracks and pops.

Hometown: New York, N.Y.
Fun fact: This band scours pawnshops and antique stores looking for unusual instruments or “found objects” that can produce new sounds in their music.
Why they’re worth watching: Phonograph is already generating some major buzz—and, ’til now, hadn’t even released an album. The group was discovered by Mekon Jon Langford, and Wilco bassist John Stirratt loved them so much he invited them to open for Wilco.
For fans of: Spoon, Wilco, Tom Petty

"We’re not another band trying to be another band,” says Matt Welsh, lead singer and primary songwriter for Phonograph. The band, which has had hard-to-live-up-to labels like “the next Wilco” slapped on it, is eager to let the music speak for itself. And with their new eponymous debut they’re confident it will.

“I write the way I write,” says Welsh, “and I’m not trying to be anything other than what comes out.” What comes out is a sound that is the product of five distinct musicians coming together from disparate personal and musical backgrounds. Despite their differences, what brought these five together, Welsh believes, is a common approach, which consists of crafting a solid, traditional song structure in the vein of ’50s-era country crooners—and then tearing it apart.

The band members provide each other with “checks and balances”—bouncing ideas off each other, each contributing their own expertise and musical voice to the mix. The result is a sound that appeals to a wide variety of tastes with its mix of old and new, familiar and innovative. On songs like “T.V. Screens,” “Have I Told You” and “You’re a Giraffe,” the band gives traditional Americana songwriting “a bed of soundscapes to lie on.” Incorporating elements of electronic music, jazz and British shoegaze, and using improvisation and samples of “found” noises, the members of Phonograph create a unique, complex sonic landscape.