Attic Ted

Attic Ted

(Pecan Crazy) San Marcos fourpiece Attic Ted (get it?) seems entirely based on the Violent Femmes' "Country Death Song," or the notion that every Southern family tree has a few branches that don't fork. Their 12-song, self-titled debut brings to mind what might happen if some of William Faulkner's characters got loose and started a band, which may in fact be what happened. To a one, the songs are eerie and foreboding, like being lost in the woods with a flashlight low on batteries and only an escapee from the state mental hospital for company. Built from woozy guitar, skeletal drums, and various spook-house noise effects and overlaid by singer Grady Roper's rural-Goth baritone, some songs sound disconcerting and vaguely catchy at the same time, particularly "Yiddish Delite" and "Sparrow Camaro." On the other hand, "Important Man" and "6 Feet Under" are so pervasively strange they make 16 Horsepower (the only other band mining remotely similar territory) sound positively angelic by comparison. Factor in the twisted sleeve art (Roper is the man behind fringe zine Proper Gander) and their penchant for wearing Where the Wild Things Are masks onstage, and Attic Ted (get it yet?) amounts to one of the creepiest, most original bands Central Texas has seen in a while.