The Swayback Raises the Bar

Their shared drive paid off with Lads. But as good as the album sounds, and as happy as they are with how it turned out, you get the sense that they really view it as more of an entry point — as though Lads were merely a record they made while holding down day jobs (in Murphy's case, that's in the Westword classified department) and maintaining other obligations.

"I don't want to say it's a perfect record," Murphy stresses. "I think it's perfectly reflective of that time frame in our life, of us coming from different angles, coming from electronic versus organic, and introducing us into a studio that met our needs."

"We're not like, 'Oh, we did it,'" Halborg adds. "We're like, 'All right — finally! What's next?"

The Swayback drives this point home on Lads' opening track, "Concrete Blocks," which contains these lines: "Music puts concrete blocks on feet/Even when victorious, let there be no joy/And if we succeed, we are just doing our job/With these concrete blocks on feet."