Formed during the first years of the 2000s in the college town of Ames, Iowa, the angular indie-rock outfit the Poison Control Center assembled around the core of Patrick R. Tape Fleming, Devin W. Frank, Joseph P. Terry, and Donald Ephraim Curtis III. The quartet quickly built a devoted regional audience by blending sharp, distortion-tinged garage-rock textures that echoed Archers of Loaf and Guided by Voices while drawing parallels to fellow emerging acts Tapes ’n Tapes and the Subjects. Between 2001 and 2007 the band self-issued multiple EPs and singles, crisscrossed the country on tour, performed twice at the CMJ Music Marathon, received airplay on NPR, and ultimately signed with Minneapolis’s Afternoon Records. Their first long-player, A Collage of Impressions, arrived in autumn 2007; shortly afterward they shared a split single with veteran indie-pop band the Apples in Stereo. Following promotional dates for that album, all members except Fleming relocated from Ames, scattering to separate cities. Far from causing a breakup, the geographic shift sharpened the group’s focus and output. In preparation for their follow-up they composed more than forty songs across three months and captured the material in a single intensive week of recording. The finished effort, Sad Sour Future, surfaced in May 2010.
