With bands constantly forming, regrouping, burning out or fading away, it takes moxie to stick around on the Austin club scene long enough to get noticed. Case in point: Elliott Frazier and his jangly noise-pop trio Ringo Deathstarr. Frazier originally formed Deathstarr two years ago with confederates fom his hometown of Beaumont; following a seemingly endless period of lineup changes, the band is currently making waves on fancy music blogs and radio playlists worldwide. We sat down with Frazier and bassist Sarah Starke last week to talk about revolving doors, rock-star toilets, and the (literally) paint-peeling atmosphere of Beaumont, TX.

P.S. Ringo Deathstarr are playing tonight at Plush. Details below.

Good afternoon, Ringo Deathstarr.

Elliott Frazier: (holds up Chronicle with Curt and Cris Kirkwood of Meat Puppets on cover) You’d think they would’ve got a better photo of these guys.

Yeah, but they’re so old anyway…

EF: They’re all sweaty—he looks like one of those people with no teeth who does the Popeye face.

So how’d you get together?

EF: We basically started 2 1/2 years ago, it’s just been a revolving door of people. For one reason or another, they all leave.

Why’s that?

EF: The first people in the band moved. We were all originally from Beaumont, and we all moved here, and, like most people from Beaumont, they gave up and moved back. So then I had to get somebody else from Beaumont. This girl named Jamie, who drums for La Snacks, Steven from For Those Who Know, who had just broken up at the time, joined on bass. And then we got another Beaumont guy on bass and Steven moved to guitar, and blah blah blah, here I am.

Were you in any other bands before?

EF: I was in a million bands. Bands such as Mayday—there’s a million bands called Mayday, but that was my first one—then I was in Very Ultra, Preserve The Sound, which is still going on.

So what’s Beaumont like these days? My dad grew up there and he’d tell us about how the sky would turn weird colors at night from all the pollution coming out of the refinery.

EF: Yeah, the university [Lamar] is right across from one of the largest refineries in the country, and it actually can take the paint off your car, which is what happened to my mom. She’d wash the car and the paint would come off in the rag. Sarah actually died while we were there, but we resuscitated her with fresh air.

Sarah Starke: (laughs) They had to revive me.

EF: We ate at Casa Ole, which is a chain down there, and it was really horrible. As a kid, you’d think going there was cool, but after living here for so long, eating at a place like that…(shakes head)

Well when you’re a kid you think eating glue is cool; a lot of things change growing up.

EF: One thing though is they had $1.75 margaritas.

SS: It was all fake food though—no vegetarian options, we kept giving the waiter a hard time. “Can I get a corn tortilla and no cheese?”

So y’all have a record coming out?

EF: Yeah, we’re waiting on having it mastered, but it’s gonna be done next week, I think.

EP or LP?

EF: EP. It’s gonna be self-titled. All of our records will be self-titled, I think. I don’t really like any of the names that are left over—all the good names have been taken. I hate the names of albums I see in the papers these days, trying to be so clever. I just don’t want to have any part of that.

Peter Gabriel put out 4 self-titled records in the '80s.

EF: I thought Let’s Play "Kill" would be a good title. I had a 7-year-old kid say that to me one time when I worked at an after-school place. This kid’s favorite word was “sexy,” but one day he said “let’s play KILL” and it stuck in my brain.

It’s stuck in my brain now. So where’d you record it?

EF: At The Bubble over on 45th and Red River. The Meat Puppets just recorded their thing there. It was recorded in the same building. I used the same toilet the Meat Puppets used.

So are you guys sick of all these Psychocandy references? It seems like every blurb you get mentions The Jesus and Mary Chain, and it’s just so lazy—I mean, you guys are working in a sort of pre-defined genre, but one record isn’t the be-all end-all.

EF: [to Sarah] Maybe you should answer that question.

SS: I don’t know, I think people can say whatever they want, actually-

EF: -whatever gets people out to shows. I mean, we all don’t listen to that. I mean, we have one song that kind of sounds like that, all our other songs are ripoffs of My Bloody Valentine, really. [laughs]

You shouldn’t sell yourself short, though. ‘Sweet Girl’ sounds almost like a quieter Smashing Pumpkins song.

EF: Who in turn ripped off…

Well yeah, but there’s all kinds of influences to your sound. Not just the Jesus and Mary Chain.

EF: We try to have a certain sound that definitely comes from Psychocandy, but Sarah doesn’t listen to that, Dustin doesn’t listen to that. You can’t go very far with Psychocandy.

JAMC didn’t.

EF: Yeah, their very next record was the complete opposite of Psychocandy. Also, I try to have people in the band that don’t usually—like, Sarah had never played this kind of music before.

SS: I played blues. That’s basically all I listen to, like low-down, Magic Sam, swampy shit.

EF: I’d like to think some of that can come out in our sound.

SS: Some Beaumont dirt. [laughs]

EF: Dustin also, he’s our drummer but he hasn’t played drums in five years. I don’t like to have people in this band who are too skilled at their instruments in this band, because we’re kind of minimalist. It may not sound that way, but everybody basically just plays two chords.

I think it sounds that way. Not in a bad way, but it is pretty minimalist.

EF: Sometimes it could sound more complicated than it is. The Ramones are a big influence in that respect.

How’d you hook up with the Spoiled Victorian Child label?

EF: They just emailed me. It’s the first time I haven’t hounded somebody about [the band]. I got an email from me, and they said they wanted to release an album or an EP and put that song, “Some Kind Of Sad,” up for free download. And they got it all over the internet, and thanks to them it’s been played on radio stations all over the world, whether internet radio or college radio or whatever. New Zealand, Japan, Belgium, all kinds of places.

So what’s come out of that?

EF: Pitchfork gave us a good review on their “Forkcast.” It was only one song, so they didn’t have much to review, and I think that’s why we get all the Psychocandy references.

SS: That’s the one that sounds most like that.

It’s weird because “shoegaze” is the new big, revival genre the same way “dance-punk” was earlier in the decade.

EF: Yeah. Everyone who’s in a “shoegaze” band says this, but I try to have more of an energetic live show.

SS: Like our Mohawk show. [laughs]

EF: Yeah, sometimes I get a little too drunk and I do stupid things. I come from more of a punk background and try to be more energetic.

And that word doesn't have much connection to the scene it was birthed out of anymore anyway.

EF: Some people may read “shoegaze” and think, “Eh, it’s probably gonna be boring.” I like the whole dance-punk stuff where people dance around. I’d like to think you could dance to our music, the same way you could dance to The Clash or something.

SS: Especially because of the simple beats—it’s not all unclear what’s going on, it’s something you can physically move to.

So is SVC going to do something distribution-wise for you guys?

EF: In England they will. In the US we’re still up for grabs. We actually have a song on a compilation from Planting Seeds records, which is the label [JAMC singer] Jim Reid is on. But it’ll be a song that’s not on our EP, so we’re about to record that as well.

Are you gonna go to the UK?

EF: If they’ll have us there, yeah. We can’t really afford to fly over there. We don’t have the mommies and daddies who’ll afford us that luxury like [coughs] some bands.

Are you talking about anyone in Austin?

A lot of the success of some indie rock bands—they come from upper-middle class and whatnot. We’re working class.

Yeah, some bands’ success these days definitely seems predicated on their having some huge start-up capital coming from somewhere. And their music always sucks.

EF: You know, sure, it’d be great for us to go out on the road for a few months out of the year, but we’re stuck here. We don’t even have a car that could take us. Like, for instance, when we play in Beaumont—luckily, I’m from there—we have to use my friends’ gear that’s there, because we all go in one car. A two-door car.

SS: Last time we had to make two trips.

EF: Yeah, we went and picked up my parents’ Suburban and rounded it up. If we play in San Antonio or Dallas, we’ll have to take two cars.

SS: My sister went on tour and they have a van. But when they came back, they were totally broke, and they’d given up their house. [laughs]

EF: But you know, it happens. That’s why I’m not gonna get all bent out of shape from my experiences with people in this band. If they wanna play, fine. I think that hopefully when our album comes out, they won’t shit on us. Right now, we’re just trying to play a bunch of shows around here, but we’d like to tour and we really want to go to England. So that would be the goal.

Ringo Deathstarr at Plush
617 Red River [map]
tonight at 9
no ticket info available

Ringo Deathstarr on MySpace