Austin, Texas’s Wild Child are playing an all ages show at Gabe’s this Sunday at 7 p.m. They’ll be joined by Walker Lukens and The Side Arms, also from Austin, and Iowa City’s Teen Daad.
Wild Child was formed during a tour with the Danish band The Migrant, when two members of the touring band, Kelsey Wilson and Alex Beggins, began writing songs in the van while driving from show to show. Their songwriting chemistry was palpable, and almost exactly a year later, the group finished their first record, Pillow Talk.
With a sound somewhere between the Avett Brothers and Sufjan Stevens, Wild Child have got the sweet and cutesy folk-pop sound in spades on their records, but their live show is a different story altogether. With six members on stage, playing a whole menagerie of instruments, they can make some amazing, shaggy indie rock songs out of their twee-ish tracks.
Though they’re based out of Austin, the argument could easily be made that Wild Child’s home is on the internet. Their first record gained recognition almost entirely through positive blog posts, with three of their songs reaching the front page of Hype Machine. Their second record, The Runaround, produced by singer-songwriter Ben Kweller, was funded via a $40,000 Kickstarter campaign. Indeed, the songs on the second record were even written over email between Wilson and Beggins, making for an interesting juxtaposition with their lyrical content about family and togetherness.
