Neckbolt’s new music video is trash. According to singer James Roo, the set pieces for the video for their latest single “Sort of” were made from “Old pieces of cardboard that have been moldering in my garage, piles of spray foam from abandoned projects, shitty old paint rag t-shirts, even the paint is paint I have had for years that was tucked under a desk.” This speaks to the band's unique ability to cobble together disparate musical elements to create something that is both novel and unnerving.

Their debut album, Midwestern Drawl, introduced the Austin, TX based duo of James Roo and Benjamin Krause with a sound that combined caustic noise rock with vivid psychedelic pop. The group now returns as a quintet including longtime friends and collaborators Bill Indelicato (Exhalants), Brent Hodge, and Kilyn Massey. The latter two live in Oklahoma City, which has caused the group to write and record in bits and pieces from afar. The composite mixes include the scraps and placeholders generated in the writing process; DI’ed guitars, rhythms tapped out by a pencil.

This refreshingly unpretentious approach to audio is just one of many ways the band attempts to subvert their genre and betray expectation. In particular, the band is hell bent on disassembling the “dudes rock” machismo that is so endemic in Austin's rock scene. Roo says of the song, “This one was recorded as an attempt to REALLY challenge the masculine stereotypes found in the noise-rock genre by being chuggy, but also building and deflating into a dancing sigh rather than a belligerent breakdown.” The song showcases the band's freaky vibe and vibrant sound. With hypnotic and fluid beats, processed vocals, and disjointed grooves, Neckbolt creates an energetic and dance-floor-ready atmosphere. The band's atonal bliss transposes dread into possibility, making anything feel like it could happen.

While the band's music is often swarming and amorphous, it's also grounded in thoughtful songwriting. “Sort of is lyrically about identifying with a discarded toilet, and an unhealthy urge I sometimes have to hide or be unbothered. I was driving to and from work at this open air shop during the Texas summer, so it was brutally hot and sort of a desperate feeling and I am seeing the same trash over and over, it was moved and stacked differently from day to day, but it never seemed to actually go away. No one really noticed it except to get it out of their immediate path, and eventually it was moved back into some tall dry weeds where it was not in anyone's way and it stayed there for a long time completely untouched. I can be a really solitary person, so in some way I was almost jealous of these objects with no responsibility for themselves or anyone else, and towards whom no one felt any responsibility to deal with in any meaningful way.”

“Sort of '', an exciting peek at what is to come from Neckbolt, will be out May 11th via Born Yesterday Records.