Additional Details

Additional details

Been Together Since: 2005

Sounds Like: We sound like a head-on collision between the Pixies, Minor Threat and the Muffs.

Members

Andrew Keith -- drums
Steven Garcia -- guitar, vocals
Niki Sevven -- bass, vocals

MP3S

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Come for the Bastards

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Better Off Without You

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10 Ft. Demon

Audio Interview

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Track #1

Discography

Come For The Bastards, 2006
There Are No Answers, 2008

Elsewhere

• The Roadshow: a video tour diary

Review

"Hey Houston, I'm on a mission," declare the kids from Something Fierce on Hey Houston, from the punk/rock/garage trio's second full-length album, There Are No Answers.

Something Fierce has always been on a mission: say it fast, say it loud, make it fun and make it mean something. It's that final ingredient that puts the band 10 steps above less mature locals: injecting an honest, relatable vulnerability into songs about solitude and bad attitudes.

Standouts on the album include Teenage Ruins, a bouncy punk anthem that could so easily become the soundtrack to the 15th sad sequel to the Bring It On film franchise that the band should probably keep the song under lock and key. Modern Girl is a snappy tune about heartbreak at the hands of a self-involved girlfriend, while On Your Own is a hand-clap-heavy ode to the power of true rock 'n' roll.

The disc's darker moments are its most powerful, found on the somber addiction tale of Where You Goin' Man and the wrenching title track that admits helplessness in the face of evil: "Shattered columns forming graves / Erase the history / Fire sweeps away their names / One by one, repeat."

Slick production, down-and-dirty guitar riffs and Andrew Keith's lithe-but-powerful drumming are the album's hallmarks. Steven Garcia and Niki Sevven's unison voices are made for each other, both a little punk-deadpan without crossing over into disinterested, and Sevven's riotous squeal is always the icing on the cake. Something Fierce takes musicianship seriously, and, really, what's more punk than not caring about how you sound? Caring about how you sound. With There Are No Answers, Something Fierce continues to be refreshing in its sincerity.

-- Sara Cress | January 2009

Your 20s: a time of freedom, making grand mistakes, staying up too late and living in dreadful apartments. You wouldn't move back in with your parents unless you absolutely had to. Something Fierce had to.

"It was a sacrifice. We had to give up the freedom of our own places if we wanted to take this seriously," singer/guitarist Steven Garcia says.

The plan was to save money and move to San Francisco, where the band's unadulterated, unpretentious punk might be better suited. They wised up, of course, realizing that the cost of living in Houston is far too cheap to abandon.

"It hit me that we didn't have the money to live out there and tour," Garcia says. "It all fell together right then: We're living with our parents, we're saving money, we can spend all the money we make on buying a van and touring."

Home is where the music started anyway for singer/bassist Niki Sevven. Her father, a Houston punk veteran known as Bic Crater, raised his little girl on a steady diet of David Bowie, Elvis and punk shows, where she was the only kid in the room.

"I was sitting inside guitar cases when I was 5," Sevven says. "I started playing guitar when I was 14, then moved to bass. Everyone around me was like 'whoa, your dad is really cool.' They thought he was cooler than me."

Together, father and daughter started a band called the Neckbreakers. Garcia, then a member of Gun Crazy, was at one of their shows and talked to the band. He later met up with Sevven on the internet, which Garcia believes is the saving grace of Houston's music scene.

"The problem in the past has been band motivation and band connection. You would meet someone in a band and you would forget about them. With Myspace, you meet some guy, he's in a band and you get on their Myspace, you listen to their music, you see an update about what they're doing and you stay in touch. It's like we're all at a convention and every band has a booth."

It shouldn't be, but it's fairly rare to find a young woman in a punk band around here. Sevven doesn't have many complaints, though.

"I like music, I'm going to play music," she says. "I do get other girls asking me who I'm there to see or if one of these guys is my boyfriend. I'm in the band. Is that so hard to believe?"

"I like seeing people's eyes open up when I'm talking about who's in the band," Garcia adds. "One of the bands we talked about when we formed was X. (Exene Cervenka and John Doe) do vocals back and forth, and that makes them amazing, they're constantly pushing each other."

Something Fierce, which also includes drummer Andrew Keith, released "Come For the Bastards", its debut full-length album, earlier this month. One listen and you're bound to think any sacrifices have been worth it. The title track is a rollicking defense of living in Montrose. "Better Off Without You "is a down-and-dirty pop tune featuring Sevven's terrific, rebellious snarl. Garcia deftly touches on losing one's religion on "Repent". And those are just the first three songs.

Self-recorded at first, a friend persuaded Garcia that "you'll get a better crowd if you record for real," so the band headed to Austin's Bubble Studios.

"I wanted something that sounded like a big rock album, that had the huge chorus and had effects on the vocals," Garcia says. "I was looking at albums by the Buzzcocks and the Ramones; it didn't take a whole lot to make them sound good. It's just good music."

Now that the album is out, the goal is to become the breakout punk band that Houston hasn't yet birthed.

"We're young and we have time," Garcia says. "We just have to tour and promote. That's all we have control over, anything else that happens is pure luck."

-- Sara Cress | June 22, 2006