The Tourniquets fully intended to release their new album a year ago, vocalist and guitarist Wes Cook said.
“We were all set to release it, but a bottle of wine got dumped on a computer,” Cook said.
The lo-fi psych pop band recorded the album at Echo Park Studios in 2015 but will play a release show Saturday at the Blockhouse. Showgoers can pay an extra $2 on top of the $5 ticket price to purchase the album, titled “Hales Corner.”
Cook and bassist Zack Worcel started the Tourniquets when they were both attending IU a few years ago. Cook said he had seen Worcel playing bass at a house show and asked him to jam.
“We had totally different styles, ‘cause he’s really wonky and loved like Les Claypool and shit, and I was more into Radiohead and like, chill stuff,” he said.
After going through a handful of drummers, the band landed on Kate Haldrup. Guitarist Jack Andrews, who plays in Brownies in Cinema and Daguerreotype among others, joined shortly after.
Worcel said Andrews’ ethereal shoegazey guitar style filled the space between his bass parts and Cook’s guitar parts.
“We really felt like a band after that,” Cook said.
Haldrup had the nearly-finalized the songs for the new album on her computer when the wine was spilled and it was destroyed, Cook said. Although she had the raw tracks backed up, she lost all the mixing and mastering.
Cook said the “domino affect of bullshit” that followed caused the long delay between recording and releasing.
Worcel said he had started to turn his focus more towards his other band, the Cowboys, and Andrews had his other projects to focus on as well.
Haldrup had just moved to Nashville, Tennessee, and was playing in a band. Also, she couldn’t re-mix the songs with a broken computer.
“I’m sure she probably just wanted a break,” Worcel said.
When Haldrup finally finished the recordings early this year, Cook said the band had basically been broken up for a while.
“We worked really hard on the album, and it was just like hard to muster the enthusiasm to release it,” he said.
Cook has another project for his songwriting. Ironically, the name of his other band is also Hales Corner.
He said he used his band name for the Tourniquets’ album title in order to publicize it and link it to his current work, since the Tourniquets won’t be playing any additional shows in the immediate future.
“Since I wrote the songs for Tourniquets with the help of Zack, I didn’t feel bad about name sharing a little bit,” he said.
Though bandmembers are all still heavily involved with music, the band itself is nearing its end, he said.
“I think this is more of like a last hurrah thing honestly,” he said.
