Good Looks

Keeled Scales is pleased to introduce their latest signing, Good Looks, the Austin-based project led by Tyler Jordan (rhythm guitar, lead vocals) alongside Jake Ames (guitar), Robert Cherry (bass), and Phillip Dunne (drums). In conjunction, they announce their debut album, Bummer Year, out April 8th, a North American tour, and present their lead single and video “Almost Automatic.” Bummer Year, recorded and produced by Dan Duszynski, is a record about learning to take care of yourself and tending to relationships that nourish you while wrestling the weak ones away. The songs reflect on what it is to gut your way through your twenties, learning when to apologize and when you’ve got to live with what you said, because you meant it. At heart it’s a folk record with genuine Texas twang, built out with the engine of a rock band churning hot, willing to be delicate. The lyrics are nuanced and layered, political and playful. It’s a vulnerable album that earnestly and unabashedly reaches for your attention, then offers up a relationship.

Tyler grew up in a South Texas coastal town dominated by the petrochemical industry, his childhood steeped in the tension between nature and industry, exploitation abundantly present and the wealth gap in eyeshot if you just crossed the street. His father’s church, described by Tyler as “cult-like in its intensity,” was homebase and where he learned to sing. He snuck in harmonies where there was room, and where there wasn’t, and internalized melodies and structures. He bought into the content until he looked elsewhere and discovered a new obsession of studying lyrics for detail and intention.

Tyler moved to Austin at 19 and spent his first few months busking on the loud and crowded drunken sidewalks downtown. A short time later Tyler met and befriended his primary collaborator Jake Ames whose own relationship with music began in a Kerrville country radio station where his dad was a D.J. They met in the late-night song-swap circles of the Kerrville Folk Festival campground (where they would also befriend Buck Meek and Adrianne Lenker pre-Big Thief). Between volunteer shifts and string jams, Tyler and Jake shared their mutual love of the Texas hill country canon (Blaze Foley, Townes Van Zandt, and Willie Nelson) and discovered their parallel small Texas town musical trajectories. They shared a love of cheap diner food, thrift store baseball caps, and a healthy dose of harmless shit-talking, and began playing in bands together, backing up other songwriters and taking turns in the spotlight.

Tyler is equally unafraid to sing about relationships and break-ups. Anthemic album opener “Almost Automatic” is a simple break-up song that amplifies those early days of a new relationship. “This is about two intelligent, decent human beings who haven’t put it all together just yet,” says Tyler. “Oblivious trauma bond lil cuties, caught up in playing out their pasts in the present moment. Wanting to be wanted, wanting someone that’s committed to someone else, wanting someone that you can’t have.” The song’s inter-played guitars and build create something much bigger than the sum of its parts. They’re not afraid to record guitar solos and this is very much a rock record fronted by a songwriter honing his craft. The “Almost Automatic” video was filmed at a ranch near Nacogdoches, TX in the middle of August, with the final scene filmed after dark in an old chicken house, lit up by the headlights of vehicles.

The empathy in the everyday is what lies at the heart of these protest songs, ultimately more Randy Newman than Bob Dylan. Good Looks is a bar band searching for common ground and yearning for a better system.