Making a good pop song is like building a house. The rhythm section’s the frame, the guitars and keyboards are outside skin, and the words are all the little things that make a house a home. Even though a lot of pop tends to be more McMansion than hand-built, once in awhile you get band or an artist that can take the raw materials and build something special. We are pretty blessed with a lot of the latter here in Austin, and one of them is The Preservation.
The Preservation look to modern pop’s golden years of the 60s and 70s for inspiration, but the band has its roots in something a little grittier. Those roots go back to the mid-aughts when frontman Mario Matteoli left the raucous cow-punk act The Weary Boys to go solo. While out on his own, Matteoli met his future wife Cayce, and the pair teamed up. Then in 2009, the duo blossomed into a full-on band, and released their debut, self-titled LP. In 2011, The Preservation recorded their Kickstarter-funded sophomore record Two Sisters at Jim Eno’s Public Hi-Fi studio. Earlier this spring, they released a new single, and this Friday they’ll be celebrating another single release with a show at the Continental Club.
There seems to be theme to the two new tunes, “Fair Weather Friends” and “Still Be Your Friend.” The latter is a driving pop song with a heavy layer of yearning. And a sharp, hooky chorus in “All of my everything, plus half of yours, it should be enough to put our record in stores. Pull it together, play ’til the end. If you wanna give up, I’ll still be your friend” should ring familiar to anyone that’s ever been in a band (or anyone that’s ever been in a relationship with someone in a band). The song builds like a construction crane, and that’s not a surprising thing from pop craftsmen as gifted as The Preservation.
