Feral Children

The moniker Feral Children draws from the notion of children reared by wolves amid untamed terrain, yet the group's origins trace to Maple Valley, Washington, a compact five-and-a-half-square-mile woodland enclave. There, during junior high, bassist/vocalist Jim Cotton first crossed paths with guitarist/vocalist/percussionist Jeff Keenan; their initial collaboration unfolded one afternoon as they strummed grunge numbers on acoustic guitars before an audience of a single horse at a neighboring farm. Seeking relief from local monotony through music, the pair later recruited guitarist Josh Gamble and keyboardist Sergey Posrednikov, forming Blood Alley Accident. That quartet, whose sound echoed Northwestern contemporaries Built to Spill and Modest Mouse, endured high school together while practicing inside a remote trailer before dispersing after graduation. Posrednikov remained behind for classical piano instruction, Keenan headed to Washington, and Gamble settled in Ohio. Cotton ventured farthest, first sampling Alaska before choosing Seattle as home, partly to reside near his idols the Fastbacks, 764-HERO, and Murder City Devils. Two years afterward the others converged on the city as well; drummer Bill Cole then joined, and the ensemble, now called Feral Children, began chasing recognition within a saturated music capital. Their reputation grew via unpredictable performances that routinely featured dual-drummer passages and smashed instruments. In 2008, after witnessing one such set at S.S. Marie Antoinette, producer Scott Colburn—known for work with Animal Collective, Arcade Fire, Mudhoney, and Modest Mouse—captured the band's debut full-length over six days at his Gravel Voice studio. Once the album was mastered, its most eccentric track, "Jaundice Giraffe," unexpectedly entered regular rotation on KCRW, prompting a July 2008 release for Second to the Last Frontier.