Written by Mio Santana | 24 February 2010

When it comes to music, Miami has always been the kind of city you either love to love or you love to hate. There has always been something lacking when it came to the city’s musical landscape. But the city that was founded on swampland and marshes, industrialized by drug lords and extorted by countless politicians, is now contending with other major cities when it comes to distinct art, music, fashion, performance and cuisine.

There is something very interesting bubbling under the streets and it’s not glitter and spandex. There are a slew of exceedingly gifted musicians paving a road less travelled, taking performance art and fine art to unexpected places and creating a renaissance in Miami never experienced before.
In comes, The Axe and the Oak, a band made up of three members: guitar and vocalist Sander Galt, bassist Myles Kaplan and drummer Fernando Subirats, who are serving up music reminiscent of rockabilly and psychobilly, adulterated with Surf Music, Punk Rock, Death Rock and even Gothic influences.

These Miami natives met early in life. Galt and Kaplan played in a punk band together as teenagers and Subirats began playing with Galt in the mid-nineties in a band called Sift, where they experimented with performance art music. Then in 2007, as though drawn together by forces unknown, they joined and their interests in 1950’s rock and roll led them to create a distinctive sound within Miami’s music scene.

They wouldn’t call themselves a rockabilly band although their sound draws on memories of when Elvis reigned king. They fall more along the lines of bands such as The Stray Cats and The Cramps on account of their “spooky twang” and dark, psychedelic tones.

With songs like “Darkside,” “Vampire” and “B-Side,” one can see they are inspired by much more than pompadour haircuts and rumbles in the alley. Maybe their collective backgrounds in punk, new wave, eighties and goth has something to do with it.

Thankfully this unassuming, musically gifted trio is not pretending to be something they’re not. Galt seems like a throwback to a nineties Goth Punk but when you hear him sing it’s like Jim Morrison and Nick Cave had a lovechild (if those breakthroughs in medicine and time-travel would have been available back then) and doesn’t make any apologies for it. Subirats’ broad interest in music led him on a self imposed journey to India to study tabla, while like Galt, Myles’ interests began with punk, new wave, goth and early rock & roll.

This band’s brand of psychedelic rockabilly conjures up Dark Southern Americana while staying true to their Miami roots. They are currently working on their first album and live dates are posted on www.myspace.com/axeandtheoak

IF YOU GO
When: Feb. 25
Where: The Electric Pickle, 2826 N. Miami Ave., Miami
Info: (305) 456-5613

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