The Axe Sharpens Their Swing

From Interview with Ms. Commish for Cafe Magazine - Dated 2/24/2010

The Axe and the Oak

When it comes to music Miami has always been the kind of city you either love or you love to hate. There has always been something lacking when it came to the city's musical landscape. Now the city that was founded on swampland and marshes, industrialized by drug lords and extorted by countless politicians is contending with other major cities in art, cuisine fashion, performance and music.

There is something very interesting bubbling under the streets in Miami and it's not glitter and spandex. There are a slew of exceedingly gifted musicians paving the road less traveled, taking performance art and fine art to unexpected places and creating a renaissance in Miami never experienced before.

In comes, The Axe and the Oak. A band made up of three members; guitar and vocalist Sander Galt, bassist Myles Kaplan and drummer Fernando Subirats, serving up music reminiscent of rockabilly and psycho-billy and adulterated by Surf, Punk Rock, Death Rock and even Gothic influences.

These Miami natives met early in life. Galt and Kaplan played in a punk band together as teens and Subirats began playing with Galt in the mid-nineties for a band called Sift, where they experimented with performance art music. Then in 2007, drawn together by forces unknown, they joined and their interest in 1950's Rock and Roll led them to a distinctive sound within Miami's already eclectic music scene.  

They wouldn't call themselves a Rockabilly band although their sound draws on memories of when Elvis reigned king. They fall more along the lines of bands such as the Stray Cats and the Cramps on account of their "spooky twang" and dark psychedelic tone.

With songs like "Darkside," "Vampire" and "B-Side," one can see they are inspired by much more than pompadour haircuts and rumbles in the alley. Maybe their collective backgrounds in Punk, New Wave, 80's and Goth has something to do with it.

Thankfully this unassuming, musically gifted trio is not pretending to be something they're not. Galt seems like a throwback to a nineties Goth Punk but when you hear him sing its like Jim Morrison and Nick Cave had a love child (if those breakthroughs in science and time travel were available) and doesn't make any apologies for it. Subirats' broad interest in music led him on a self imposed journey to India to study the Tabla, while Galt and Myles interests expanded with Punk, New Wave, Goth and early Rock and Roll.

This band's brand of psychedelic rockabilly conjures up "Dark Southern Americana," while staying true to its Miami roots. They are currently working on their first album.

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