The living room of Drew Gabbert’s house in North Richland Hills was dark despite the kitchen ceiling’s LEDs and the lights from a bedroom down the hall and the patio outside, where his wife, Lisa, drank beers with some friends. I was sitting on the couch drinking a beer, trying to figure what this TBS show Angie Tribeca was about. Lisa and her friends were dressed casually, but the five members of Gabbert’s noise-pop band Missing Sibling were dressed as if they were professors.
“We’re dressed as therapists, actually,” said drummer Josh Hoover.
He, along with keyboardist Kevin Buchanan and singer-guitarist Gabbert, were all wearing earth-toned, wool-and-poly blended suit coats –– the general impression was “corduroy,” though it was hard to tell in the dim lighting.
In a bedroom caddy corner to the living room, Buchanan moved a camera on a tripod, looking for the right angle. He was shooting footage of Lisa’s friend, Megan Trammel, dressed for bed and under the covers. Apparently, she has to chase a bunch of shrinks out of her life.
“Make yourself at home,” Gabbert told me. “We’re shooting a video, but I can multi-task.”
Not many local bands make videos or at least the kind that have a narrative thrust. This video, for a song called “Always,” will be the second for the band’s new album, an eponymous full-length on Dallas’ Idol Records. They’d already made one for the first single, a punchy blast of indie pop reminiscent of an up-tempo Yo La Tengo jam.
Bassist Todd Walker sounded a little wiped out, but he still had enthusiasm for the process.
“We’ve been at it all day, but it’s still really fun to make a video,” he said.
“It’s kind of the way bands promote themselves now,” Hoover joked.
He’s kind of right, though. YouTube is a bonafide streaming service as much as it is a video channel. If someone is going to listen to your song on YouTube, why not have a story to go with it rather than just a slideshow or a static image?
So Missing Sibling makes videos for its music, a catalog that includes two EPs (2014’s Commiserate and 2012’s Pick a Family).
Missing Sibling started as a trio following the dissolution of Gabbert’s and Walker’s previous band, Fate Lions. Gabbert had recorded some demos, and the songs were fleshed out. Telegraph Canyon’s Austin Green initially filled in on drums in 2012, recording them at Spaceway Productions with Will Hunt. Green departed due to other commitments, and Hoover, who also plays in Calhoun, has been in the band since 2013. Missing Sibling’s lineup and sound solidified after Buchanan and his wife, Stephanie, dissolved their own band (the Diabolical Machines) and joined Missing Sibling.
Gabbert is the principal songwriter.
“I come up with the lyrics and melody and the chords, but everyone else fills in the rest,” he said.
“He’ll send me a voice memo of him humming or singing something over some chords,” said Stephanie. “Then I’m like, ‘Welp, better think of something cool!’ ”
In Missing Sibling she sings backup vocals and a lead duet with Walker on “I Insist.” You can hear this role in her guitar playing, too –– not so much hot lixx as playing the right part to set the song’s mood. Combined with Kevin’s energetic synthesizer accents, her guitar texture gives Gabbert’s tunes a parallel story of sorts, with the tonal inking done by the jangling grind of Walker’s bass, powered by Hoover’s clockwork precision.
Gabbert said he doesn’t really have any other bands or genres to compare Missing Sibling to. Per its recorded output, the band is loud without being overdriven, necessarily. “College Rock” sort of works as a descriptor, but some of the tracks on Missing Sibling veer into territory explored by pop punks that either outgrew pop punk or got way into Jawbreaker, or both.
“I don’t really feel like any one particular artist or sound gets into my songwriting,” Gabbert said. “I just want to write music that’s relatable.”
One thing everyone can relate to is thinking about one’s self, Gabbert said. Introspection is a predominant theme on Missing Sibling.
“I wanted to write about diving down into your own problems,” he said. “Finding ways to dig yourself out of a hole when you fall in one.”
Songs like “Never Alone” and “Mary’s Rashers” sell this with gutsy guitar crunch and impassioned vocals. Gabbert might not claim any genres, but there’s a lot of mid-’90s emo in this band’s DNA. Yet while a lot of that music uses introspection to explore your own can-you-even-imagine intensely felt feelings, the impetus between the tracks on Missing Sibling was Gabbert’s dismay at just how self-obsessed pop music has become.
“So much of it is ‘me, me, me,’ ” he said.
He wants people to empower themselves, ultimately.
“These songs, they’re about using mental toughness to overcome anxieties,” he said.
Not surprisingly, a band writing music about pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps does pretty much everything in house. Though they had recorded in professional studios with professional engineers before, the band learned to track its songs in Gabbert’s house, making its production costs significantly lower. Buchanan handles photography and video editing, while Stephanie handles the band’s PR. Gabbert books the shows and handles other managerial duties concomitant with running a band.
The group doesn’t tour in the traditional get-in-the-van sense, but it plays often and regionally –– its current schedule boasts April shows in Tulsa, Okla., and Columbia, Mo. (at shoegaze celebration Starflyer Fest), as well as one in Los Angeles on May 15.
In his opinion, a “fly-in” show is more valuable than a string of tour dates in smaller cities.
“One show in New York is better than 10 shows in Kansas,” Gabbert said.
In the fall, the band plans to play in Europe using family connections in Ireland for a place to stay. Though the video shoot might be dark and DIY, Missing Sibling’s future looks bright, moreso because they’re
making it happen on their own.
