Skip to main content

New Music Monday: PHOX

PHOX
Image used with permission by copyright holder

PHOX is a bunch of friends from the Midwestern circus hamlet, Baraboo, WI, a place where kids often drink poisoned groundwater and become endowed mutants. They make music that straddles Feist and Monty Python.

Recommended Videos

It was in Baraboo that the six unlikely musicians attended high school together, some playing on the soccer field, others on video production sets. But in a town with a drive-your-tractor-to-school day, they didn’t last.

They did the thing that most people do when they are 18: they fled the coop, each going their separate ways (to film school, cosmetology school, a job with Homeland Security…). But promises were made that couldn’t be kept, and as they fell in unrequited love and lost their respective jobs, in spite of themselves, each simultaneously pulled the ripcord and came home.

The sextet promptly (-ish) got a house together in the Portland of the heartland, Madison, WI. As prolifically documented in their online video series, PHOX rekindled their onetime A/V production house while discovering how to live as a family (i.e. how not to berate each other about the hair in the sink).

After two years of cohabiting, PHOX beheld a demo reel of bedroom-recorded music (and home movies) that made Bon Iver and The Fray recording engineer Brian Joseph blush. Donning his producer’s cape (and occasional lab coat), Joseph cheer-led the band through its debut album at April Base Studios in Eau Claire, WI.

Joseph’s enthusiasm propelled the band through the production of more than a dozen songs that have been swimming in the think tank for two years.

Mixed by Michael Brauer at Electric Lady in NYC, their debut album is a school of simple folk-pop songs swimming amidst a chaotic eddy of rock, psychedelia, and soul.

If the goal here is friendship, PHOX is doing quite well. If the chosen path is blue collar pixel-pushing and church camp trust falls, they’re on the way. And if their only coping mechanism is to lay down their arms and, for 30 or 45 minutes a day, shut up and listen to each other, you can’t be too upset.

Order PHOX’s self-titled debut album on iTunes, Amazon, or their official site!

http://phoxband.com/

Dave Sanford
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Get 20% off a Serta mattress with this exclusive coupon code
The Serta Perfect Sleeper Innerspring Mattress in the bedroom.

Are you having trouble sleeping at night? The solution could be upgrading to the Serta Perfect Sleeper Innerspring Mattress. From its original price of $499 for the twin size, you can get it with a 20% discount so it's down to $399, for total savings of $100. To access the savings, just enter this exclusive coupon code upon checkout: DT20. You're going to have to be quick if you want to take advantage of this offer though, as we're not sure when stocks will run out for this amazing mattress.

Why you should buy the Serta Perfect Sleeper Innerspring Mattress

Read more
Here’s everything we know about Yellowjackets season 4
The series still has plenty of questions that need answers.
Sophie Nélisse in Yellowjackets season 3

After three seasons, Yellowjackets has come closer to answering many of the core questions viewers have been dying to know. The third season finale brings the girls stranded in the wilderness closer to a rescue, and there are naturally plenty of questions about what a fourth season might focus on.

The show has fallen off of the awards radar, but it's still one of my favorites because of its combination of old-fashioned teen drama and heady sci-fi.

Read more
The Pitt season 2: Everything we know so far
The second season is coming just a year after the first one debuted
Noah Wyle in the Pitt

Over the course of its remarkable first season, few shows have done more to earn a fanbase than The Pitt. The Max Original, which is set in a Pittsburgh emergency room and told over the course of a single shift, hour by hour, is both an old-fashioned medical drama and a modern look at all the ways that American systems are crumbling.

After the first season wrapped up on April 10, many are eager to learn more about a second season. After all, The Pitt is the kind of show that seems like it could run forever. Here's what we know about the show's second season so far:

Read more