Beth Israel – Referred by Mannequin Pussy

America’s Most Underrated features local bands from across the country that deserve widespread recognition. Each band is handpicked by the previous column’s highlighted artist to create a collective of underrated bands chosen by underrated bands.

Austin, buy TX is a hot bed of influence in the music industry today. While everyone might know of industry game changers like SXSW and Austin City Limits, remedy there seems to be a disconnect between the musicians touring the major festivals in the city and the actual music coming out of Austin. Not only are countless bands there underrated, try but the city itself deserves recognition as the base for great bands like The Black Angels, The Octopus Project and this week’s Most Underrated – Beth Israel.

So who are Beth Israel and why is their music so satisfying? Well, that’s hard to find out on the Internet. Beth Israel go head to head with Google. Type their name in and you get hospitals and medical information instead of fresh punk rock.

We knew they are from Austin, though some sources list the band as being based in New York City. We knew the group is signed to Dull Tools, which is the creation of Parquet Court’s Andrew Savage. We knew the band has been a media darling over the past year, receiving attention from Pitchfork, Stereogum, and beyond. But by golly, that’s just about all we could muster from the World Wide Web before going into this interview.

Philly-based Mannequin Pussy first introduced us to Beth Israel after they toured with the band last fall. Beth Israel play their own unique potpourri of every great indie rock genre you can list fusing experimental, punk, drone, and psychedelic based melodies to create something of mysterious indulgence.

The duo (that’s sometimes a trio) takes on their craft with an audacious and spontaneous approach, entering the studio without any written material. They go in blind and somehow the result is one of daring intrigue that deserves its current place in America’s web of risk-taking bands.

Allston Pudding: How did Beth Israel form?

Ramsey Eddins: Well, me and Zach Claxon have been friends and working on music since we were in our early teens. We’ve known each other about over a decade. So, we’ve been friends for a long time, but he moved to New York in 2009 or so for a year. When he moved back, we started writing a lot and started taking it seriously. That’s kind of when we started.

AP: The last band featured on America’s Most Underrated, Mannequin Pussy, referred us to you. Have you ever heard of that band?

RE: Yeah, actually they’re friends of ours. We met them on our last tour in late October or early November of 2014. We played about 4 or 5 dates with them on the last leg of our tour and just hit it off. They’re great.

AP: What do you think of Mannequin Pussy?

RE: They’re awesome. Yeah, we were immediately blown away by them. Our first show with them was in New Orleans at this place called Circle Bar. They’re just great people and we’re really into what they’re doing. It’s really aggressive. They have great taste.

AP: You guys started gaining quite a bit of traction as a band last year after the release of Dental Denial. So what are your plans for this year to follow that up?

RE: Well, Dull Tools is putting out an EP called The Loner that should drop in a couple weeks or a month that will coincide with our tour in late May. That’s our immediate plan right now. We just want to tour as much as we can.

We do have an album recorded, so hopefully we’ll put that out as well in 2015. That’s about it right now.

AP: What can fans expect from your The Loner?

RE: I don’t know. You’ll just have to listen to it. I don’t know how to compare it. If you were into the other releases, then you’ll definitely like it, but it’s going in a different direction. There are some songs on there that kind of show what we’ve been doing lately. It’s a good mash up of where we’re at and where we’re going.

We kind of have two different sounds right now – the stuff that you hear on our records and our live set is definitely kind of the next step to where we’re going – faster and more aggressive than our first few albums.

AP: Cool, well I’m looking forward to hearing that. So as a band you’ve kept a noticeably elusive Internet presence since the beginning. Was that intentional?

RE: I wouldn’t say so, no. We’re not the type of people that would get press photos done. We do just enough so that we can keep in touch with people. If people want us to play a show, they can get in touch with us. We don’t want to be hard to get ahold of.

I think our name makes it hard to Google us, or at first it did. You know?

AP: Is that something that you thought about when you came up with the name?

RE: No, we didn’t really think of that. We just liked the name.

AP: Where did it come from?

RE: Zach was in New York and there were a lot of hospitals named Beth Israel. He cut his hand open really bad with a can of tuna and he had to go to one, so I think the name was in his mind. Yeah, he thought of it and we just ran with it.

AP: Name from tuna injury – I like it. What inspires the lyrics in your music? Even that has an air of mystery to it.

RE: Well I can’t speak for Zach. On my end, I don’t know. There’s no real motivation or anything in particular that I’m trying to say. Sometimes they come out and they mean something. Sometimes they’re just sounds. They’re not important to me. They’re the least important part of what we’re doing, speaking for me.

AP: So what would you say you focus on then in your songwriting process?

RE: We both try to record as we write. It’s kind of why we record ourselves. Usually when you’re hearing a song, we recorded it while we were writing it at the same moment. There’s not a lot of planning or thought that goes into it. It’s just kind of one movement, one sitting. We’re trying to keep the immediacy of recording it. It’s not a well-thought out attack.

AP: Yeah, that’s a really interesting approach. How did you start working with Dull Tools?

RE: Me and Zach both grew up in the Dallas/Fort Worth area and we’ve known Chris Pickering, one half of Dull Tools, for a long time. We played music with him in our late teens. We recorded the self-titled, our first release, and Chris heard those online and jumped on them. They put the tape out a year later or so, and that started our relationship with Dull Tools.

AP: How would you describe the music scene in Austin, TX?

RE: It used to suck really bad. A lot of bullshit garage rock, like party time bullshit, for a long time. Lately it’s getting really interesting. It’s gotten a lot better.

AP: Why would you say that?

RE: Just more interesting bands. More difficult sounding, more aggressive things happening right now.

AP: What are some of your favorite Austin bands?

RE: Ghetto Ghouls, Popper Burns, New China, Burnt Skull. They’re pretty much what I’m talking about – being good.

AP: I’m excited to check those out. What do you think are the benefits and downfalls of starting your career in a music hub like Austin is?

RE: Benefits – we live in a place where you can definitely play a lot. There are a lot of venues. You can always be playing.

Downfalls – most crowds are usually pretty passive because there is always music happening. You can play all the time, but it’s not always fun or good. It’s whatever.

AP: Yeah, that’s interesting. If someone were to visit Austin, what’s the one thing you’d recommend they do?

RE: Go to Pinballz.

AP: What’s that?

RE: I mean it’s one of the biggest pinball arcades in the US. It’s just really good.

There’s also a really good McDonald’s. The best McDonald’s. It’s designed beautifully and has a lot of good local flavor. The best homeless people are there and they make the best Big Macs.

AP: I’ve never heard someone describe a McDonald’s as beautiful. That’s definitely intriguing.

RE: Yeah, we have the best one.

AP: Alright, last question for you. What are some of your favorite underrated local bands from outside of the Austin area?

RE: Number one underrated band, I think I speak for all three of us, is HSY from Toronto. They are our favorite band and our favorite people. Yeah, number one favorite band.

[HSY] came down with Crosss. They’re from the same area. I think they were from Montreal. I don’t know if they live in Toronto now. They’re also amazing and underrated in my opinion.

Who else? Unmanned Ship, they’re from Chicago. Sex Snobs from Oklahoma City.