Quarters bring their tour to Scoot Inn in Austin, TX with special guests Charlie Burg and Telescreens.
Starting with the New York four-piece Telescreens: Jackson Hamm on vocals and guitar, Austin Brenner on bass and synth, Josiah Valerius on keys, Oliver Graf on drums. They come out and play like it’s a Friday night at a packed underground show. Hamm is jumping on speakers within the first few songs.
Between songs, Hamm gives little inspirational speeches about how much the band loves rock and Austin and how they’ll be back in the fall for their first headline show in the city. Then he breaks a guitar string. He fixes it mid-song. Then he breaks another one. He’s swapping and restringing while still playing, like some kind of live Guitar Hero repair mode. Nothing can stop Telescreens from hyping up this crowd.
Charlie Burg follows with a change in pace before the headlining act. It’s just him and his guitar. He opens with a music box, its tiny melody cutting through the crowd noise before he starts singing. Burg is a Detroit-born singer-songwriter now based in Brooklyn, and his voice is the kind of high and clear that makes people stop talking. He moves through his own material before landing on an angelic cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” He closes the set with a quick run through Nirvana’s “About a Girl.” Two very different covers, both stripped to just his voice and an acoustic guitar, both great.
Then Quarters take the stage. Vocalist and guitarist Ben Roter, guitarist Jasper Harris, and drummer Attila Anrather, released their third album, I Hope This Isn’t the End of the World, less than a month ago. Roter’s vocals are the first thing you notice: there’s a Radiohead quality to them, airy and high, floating over the guitar work instead of competing with it. Harris and Roter trade solos throughout the set, and they don’t hold back.
This tour is the album’s victory lap: 26 shows across 25 cities, building toward a two-night homecoming at Irving Plaza in New York later this month. The album is their first under the shortened name (they used to be Quarters of Change) and their first on Warner, and the songs sound like they were written to be played loud and in person.
I am an Austin, TX-based photographer and filmmaker. I moved from Houston to attend the University of Texas at Austin, where I graduated in 2022. I'm a lifelong music lover and spend tons of time attending shows and making music. Some current favorites are Sophie May, Farmer’s Wife, and K. Flay.
