Chicago trio Austaras aren’t an easy band to have heard of. This weekend’s CD-release show for their recent Prisoner of Sunlight is their first live gig since September 2012, and the new album is the first music they’ve put out since an EP in June 2011 (at which time they were a four-piece, with a bassist-vocalist who’s since departed). To make matters worse, that EP is their only other release.
Becker, Hansen, and Hill have been the core of Austaras since 2010. Stancato and Eberhard (who’s also in Vaskula) join the band onstage, and Becker says he plans to incorporate Eberhard as more than a “session” member. They’ve known each other for decades—Becker began his career as a musician playing violin with Eberhard at the Betty Haag Academy in Buffalo Grove, and in the 90s they both participated in the school’s annual Symphony Center concerts, wearing what Becker calls “quite funny outfits.”
Austaras’s release party is at Reggie’s Rock Club on Sunday, January 10, beginning at 7 PM with openers Sioum and Polyptych. And the long wait for this show notwithstanding, it isn’t a one-off—the band will continue performing live in 2016.
