Deep musical connections are often hard to come by, but when they happen, they can elevate music into a true artform. Austin’s Beth Puorro and Darvin Jones are proof of this: fast friends, the duo formed the band Boy + Kite in 2009 and decided to share vocal, guitar, and songwriting duties. With Giuseppe Ponti and Marc Henry, the duo took off as a quartet, releasing their critically-acclaimed debut Go Fly in 2011.
Even if these kinds of musical connections are rare, they’re not impossible to find. Sonic Youth and the Pixies are some of the biggest influences for Boy + Kite, both in sound and in spirit. At times, Puorro and Jones recall the push-pull dynamic of Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon or the Pixies’ Frank Black and Kim Deal. “We aren’t trying to tell just one story,” says Jones. “We combine our writing, then we cut it up and put it back together to make a new story altogether.” Their guitar dynamic follows a similar path. “We create structures that mesh,” explains Puorro, “but we are coming from different places.”
Last month saw the release of Boy + Kite’s follow-up, the EP We Can Go Anywhere We Want. Jones wrote the EP’s lead-off track, “Right Above Me,” while on a plane from Seattle to Austin. “I started having this dream of a girl and boy who just couldn’t connect and the boy flying right above her, just out of reach,” says Jones. The rest of the band perfectly captures that feeling: guitars weave in and out, the rhythm section takes off, and the twin vocals circle around one another. Though the song is about missed connections, it’s obvious Boy + Kite operates on another wavelength all together.
