Werewolves

For Wyatt Strother, place is the space that matters most. For starters, his band's new album is named for his home state, that final addition to the original 13 colonies. Locations spill out wildly in Strother's verbose string of verbiage: Venezuela, Augusta, Oklahoma—if you're following along with the stories of political injustice and personal peace that Werewolves invoke on Georgia, you are immediately zapped into the settings and can approach the material from there.

Georgia is a well rendered DIY recording. One person who found it particularly gripping was 40 Watt general manager and longtime Georgian David Basham. "He got really into the album," says Strother, Werewolves' songwriter, lead singer and banjo strummer. "We first put it up on Bandcamp in May and started making CDs of it. Then, we got the idea to put it on vinyl with a Kickstarter [project]. He actually helped pay the very last bit of money we needed. He was really into us having a proper release show for it. We did our first CD release at the 40 Watt, too, and that's a really good-sounding place to play."

One might reckon that Werewolves would probably be most comfortable, both musically and aesthetically, unleashing their soaring sturm und drang in a stuffy punk house (like the one that Strother currently shares with drummer Patrick Goral and bassist Brandon Page). But to listen to Georgia is to hear a studied history of Elephant 6 bedroom psychedelia, eye-contact-intense folk-punk confessionals and, perhaps most boldly, the kind of ambitious post-rock arrangements commonly heard on the best screamo. With that in mind, the 40 Watt, and all the sonic broadness that comes along with it, makes a lot more sense for a vinyl release show for Georgia. A sense of place, after all, is important.