Stream: Oliver Future, ‘Phases of the Moon’

Kevin Bronson on December 10th, 2021

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Oliver Future were one of Texas’ finest imports to the West Coast for the five or so years they called Los Angeles home. Makers of indie-rock with glam and prog flourishes, Oliver Future offset the challenging nature of their music with sheer showmanship and musicianship. For instance, they could clap their heels and in a flash turn into their alter-ego cover band, Pudge Zeppelin.

Regulars at venues such as Spaceland, the Viper Room and the Echo — and veterans of festivals such as Sunset Junction, Austin City Limits and SXSW — the band made two albums, 2007’s “Pax Futura” and 2010’s “In Event of Moon Disaster,” with producer Adam Lasus. The second came after the band — originally, brothers Noah and Josh Lit, Sam Raver, Jesse Ingalls and Jordan Richardson — splintered, with Ingalls and Richardson joining Ben Harper’s band. Noah Lit released some music as Noah and the MegaFauna before the Lit brothers and Raver moved back to Austin.

Fast-forward to 2019: The Lits, owners of a taproom/eatery, scratched an itch by getting Raver and Ingalls (the latter still based in L.A.) to do a reunion show in Austin. Then, in the throes of the pandemic, the Lits and Raver started jamming … and a new album was born. Two never-finished songs were dusted off, more were conceived via email and texts, recordings were made and the whole thing was shipped to Lasus for a mix.

The album, “A Year at Home,” will be out Feb. 18.

“Phases of the Moon,” one of the aforementioned old songs, is the first single, a two-headed beast of Pink Floydian sprawl with its blanket of vocals and prickly guitar. “We started this one with the big vocal harmonies, and [it] was a completely different song in 2007,” Noah Lit says. “It was going to be our next single back then, and we debuted it when we played Sunset Junction that year. When we started this new record, we all tried to remember it, and luckily Jesse remembered the main hook. The rest was rewritten with the vocal line ‘A Year at Home’ repeated like a torturous mantra.”

As for the winkingly scary video, Sandra Powers directs and Darija Varnas stars. “Sandra is a brilliant filmmaker whose glamorous goth was the complete antithesis to the year we’d all just mucked about in,” Noah Lit says. “So I thought it would be funny for her to make a video about a pair of sweatpants that comes to life and tries to eat Darija. Sandra, Darija and our amazing puppeteers took that and ran to a beautiful, creepy place.”

||| Watch: The video for “Phases of the Moon”