#145, “Slow Town,” Frenzi (2017)

#145, “Slow Town,” Frenzi (2017)

Five or so years ago, we put out a music issue of Texas Monthly, which the magazine had done several times before I worked there. This was the first one I was a part of, though, and the writer/editor who conceived the package had a really specific idea for it: We would go all over the state, find out what was happening in the music scene in each community right the fuck now, and tell our readers about it. This wasn’t an overview or a look at historical trends or context about the rich musical tapestry that makes up the sound of West Texas, etc, etc—this was urgent, a snapshot in time, a quick capture of the scene. I loved the idea, and asked for El Paso.

I’ve always loved El Paso. I lived in the Rio Grande Valley—if you picture Texas in your mind, that’s the part at the very bottom—for several years after high school, and El Paso reminds me of the Valley in some ways, but it’s also a place I only ever see as a visitor, and I like that perspective on things. I had the idea to build it around whatever Jim Ward was listening to that month. Jim is a local hero in the city because of his time in At The Drive-In, and later Sparta and other projects. He agreed to meet with me, and we sat at a booth in a restaurant he owns in the city and talked about music. He’s a fascinating guy with great taste and a lot of smart ideas—but, he admitted, he was not immediately plugged into the local scene at that point the way that he may have been in the past. Not to worry, though, he knew just the guy, and put me in touch with a friend of his.

What followed is an example of why I love El Paso, and the Valley, and a few other cities that remind me of those places. Jim’s friend answered as soon as I texted, but he was in the middle of a family reunion barbecue. Could we talk on Monday? I had a flight booked for Monday morning, and he said that was fine, actually—how about I just stop by the barbecue? So I did, and we ate and talked about music while his nieces and nephews and aunts and uncles and grandparents and everyone else enjoyed the afternoon, and he told me more fascinating and thoughtful things; I learned that there was a collective operating on both sides of the border (El Paso and Juarez are essentially one big city spread over two countries) that kept instruments for musicians who were crossing over, since doing that with your equipment—especially in the thick of the Trump years—could be difficult. That sounded promising, but there weren’t any shows planned in the short term, before my deadline. But not to worry! He had a friend, too, and that friend was even more in touch with the local scene. So I met with Manuel from The Chamanas downtown in El Paso after the barbecue, and I finally started to piece together that whatever was happening in El Paso was discordant and hard to fit into your hand and ephemeral, which took some pressure off—there wasn’t just one El Paso scene to capture, I just needed to see what I could see and write about it.

Before the end of the conversation, though, I asked him what his favorite local band was, and he told me about Frenzi. They were just kids, he explained, but he’d heard them and loved their sound, and wanted to produce them. I looked Frenzi up as soon as I left, and they were these tiny punk rock teens who had just put out a song produced by Manuel called “Slow Town.” And “Slow Town” was, it turns out, perfect.

The song is just a jolt of energy—I listened to it in a rental car with the windows down for the next 36 hours, just thinking about how good rock music sounds when it’s being played by teenagers, who aren’t worried about reinventing anything and aren’t self-conscious about their influences. It’s all swagger and joyful noise, the sort of song you’d listen to while planning a bank heist with your best friends. The guitar sounds like a buzzsaw waiting for the drums to come in, and the singer spits lyrics like she’s trying to hurt you with them, and then the bridge sounds like a failed attempt at reconciliation before everything just gets bigger and bigger, and whatever feelings they have about their slow town get swallowed up by rock and roll. It’s been five or six years since that trip to El Paso, and I still listen to this to feel that rush of energy that you get when you listen to music teenagers made because everything is still fresh to you when you’re young, and you can just play. The kids from Frenzi are young adults now, I suppose, off at college or whatever it is they’re doing, and I wonder if they know that they made something perfect.