Ground Control Touring

It’s tempting to intellectualize Font, the Austin-based quintet whose driving music of sampled stabs, dance beats, and euphoric choruses could be labeled with all manner of hyphenated pseudo-genres (“art-rock,” “dance-punk,” “noise-pop”). However, their music quickly makes clear the inadequacy of those kinds of labels. As drummer Jack Owens locks into a constructed groove, Roman Parnell’s bass bridges the kinetic back line to multi-instrumentalist and environment-shaper Anthony Laurence. From this density emerge frontman Thom Waddill’s associative lyrics and electric-shock dance. They chose their name because it’s the archaic word for “fountain”; it implies both an abundance and the receptacle that holds it. To watch the band is to experience a tension of excess and containment as each member pulls the music into something that transcends its starting terms. Discordant, sinister minimalism transforms into an anthemic chorus of pulsing synths; wall-of-sound guitars give way to a clubby 808 beat against which the drummers push and tug.

They officially released only one song, the razor-sharp “Sentence I,” over the course of the first two years of their existence (besides a set of Bandcamp demos the members posted simply to practice with which were, unbeknownst to them, passed around the Austin underground scene like samizdat). The mystery surrounding them seemed only to increase their allure. They built a reputation on the pure creativity and force of their live performances, and they rode this excitement to shows across the U.S.; bills with bar italia, Water From Your Eyes, Horsegirl, and CHAI; and a slot on the main stage at Austin City Limits.

Font’s debut album Strange Burden shows the band both translating the intensity of their live shows into the studio and polishing the surfaces of their music to juxtapose and dislocate genres with a quick-footed, nearly pop-art sensibility. Patchworked over years of improvising, playing, recording and re-recording both in studios and at home, Strange Burden is the fever-dream document of Font’s nascent stage. It careens from precipice to precipice, revelation to revelation; over the course of a lean 28 minutes, the record covers a dizzying amount of ground. It draws from the past – New Wave, No Wave, rock, punk, pop – but rejects nostalgia, relentlessly pushing their influences into the future.

“On their debut album, Strange Burden, Font fuse grimy post-punk guitar, combustive percussion, and blazing synth riffs, committing roughly three years of evolving live sets to tape. They lose nothing in the process. Strange Burden is meticulous and crackling—a concise, gripping record that sparks and sizzles like a kinked spike of lightning.” -Pitchfork 2024

The response to Font’s debut has been overwhelming landing them on the list of best releases of 2024 for publications like Pitchfork, Austin Chronicle, Stereogum, Paste, and Post Trash. The release saw them tour extensively across the US and EU in the months following. Now, in 2025, Font has a new blueprint forming around their music. This push forward as a four-piece is even more exciting than the work they did with Strange Burden.