Sourpatch

Living in Athens, you risk being spoiled by all the solid pop acts passing through. Even for the committed, it can be overwhelming—like buying a boxset of your favorite band with hours of bonus material. Take the time, though, and the you'll be rewarded: a few nights spent at venues downtown—like a few hours in front of the stereo—will turn up unexpected treasure.

San Jose's Sourpatch is one of these gems, stopping in without fanfare, like a brilliant B-side, offering a haunting mix of the familiar and the unknown. A new album, Stagger & Fade, is out on local label Happy Happy Birthday to Me. It offers tender vocals against a fuzzy backdrop and a slinky guitar winding slyly through the mix like Stephen Malkmus on a Pavement reissue. With a few PopFest appearances under their belt, the members of Sourpatch aren't exactly strangers to Athens. Not that the link doesn't still seem a bit strange.

“How did that happen?” muses member Rich Gutierrez. “We met a friend on one of our first tours in Seattle who was on Happy Birthday with his old band, Patience Please. I guess they really liked us and mentioned us to Mike [Turner, of HHBTM],” Gutierrez says over the phone, from on top of “a big hill.” The conversation is interrupted occasionally by planes flying overhead.

The coincidence doesn't seem too far-fetched, given the bandmembers' concerns. “Most of us are pretty active in our local scene: we all play in other bands; we all book shows. We've always been really interested in going on tour.” The stop in Athens comes a quarter of the way through a six-week trip, the band's longest yet. Other towns are on the roster, each with its own odd connections. But those who catch the band this time around can forge their own.