The Austin, Texas, rockers have been on the road for about a week and a half, and last night’s show in Evansville marked the first of three stops the band will make in Indiana.
Tonight, Otis the Destroyer plays at the Bishop with local opening acts Bikespeed Champion and Wet Heave.
Singer and guitarist Taylor Wilkins said everyone coming to the show should expect a “rowdy, fast-paced rock show.”
When the tour is finished, Wilkins said he hopes to get a few days in the studio before the band heads out again to play at the South by Southwest ?festival.
Since October, the band has worked on its debut album, occasionally taking time to get away for a tour. Wilkins said playing shows is an important part of the band’s writing process.
Although most of the songs are born jamming in their practice space, he said, they like to test them out in shows and see the crowd’s reaction. He said some songs sound awesome when it’s just the band playing alone, but playing them live for a crowd just doesn’t work.
“We just try to find what works through and through from an audience perspective, from a band ?perspective and just kind of what sticks,” Wilkins said.
The band plans to release its untitled debut album either at the end of 2015 or the beginning of 2016. With about 50 percent of the album recorded, Wilkins said the band is deliberately taking its time with making the album to ensure everything is exactly right.
“We’ve been in a couple of bands before, and we put out albums pretty fast, once or twice a year even, but it just seemed like it was getting lost in the mix,” he said.
Recording engineer Stuart Sikes, who has ?previously worked on ?albums such as Modest Mouse’s “Good News for People Who Love Bad News,” has been working with Otis the Destroyer through the recording process. Wilkins said the band has also been in communication with producer Tim Palmer about mixing some of the album.
Working with Sikes has been a great experience for the band, Wilkins said. He said Sikes acts as a sort of moderator, both pushing them farther and holding them back at the right ?moments.
“He’s the kind of person who’s there when you need him and is invisible when you need to figure stuff out,” Wilkins said. “He’s really attentive for what’s right for the song, what’s right for the profession and what’s right for the part.”
Wilkins said a lot of the songs the band has already recorded deal with the topic of growing up and realizing they’re not 21 anymore. He said the album does a lot of reminiscing about younger days, but its core is a “realistic take on growing up and being a middle-aged guy.”
In regards to sound, Wilkins said the band has moved away from the psychedelic rock sound on their EP “Dark Arts” toward faster, heavier rock. He said he thinks the album will have shades of “dark arts” along with a new sound the band has been working on.
Wilkins has a very specific idea in mind about what this new sound is.
He said he would like to create a “beautiful but nasty-sounding record” that lies somewhere between the music made by Ty Segall and Radiohead’s 2007 ?album, “In Rainbows.”
The band is made up of very different musicians with varying musical tastes, Wilkins said, so they’re constantly in search of a sound they can all agree upon.
“The diversity comes from our personalities and our personal tastes in music, but what holds us together is pretty much rock n’ roll,” ?he said.
