Long in works, Shortwave Dahlia's latest digital opus gets release

Shortwave Dahlia is Woody Wall (from left), Mark Simmonds, Jack Alberson and Ethan Grim.

In keeping with its sci-fi name and spacey post-punk sound, the Memphis electronic rock outfit Shortwave Dahlia, in its short five-year existence, has always been on the cutting edge of recording, even if that position was born more out of necessity than vision.

Originally conceived by multi-instrumentalist/singer/songwriter Jack Alberson, the group’s early recordings were one-man-band apartment recordings that Alberson released on the Internet back when “digital distribution” was more a buzzword than a business model.

Shortwave Dahlia is Woody Wall (from left), Mark Simmonds, Jack Alberson and Ethan Grim.

“I still pride myself on being the first person I know to do this,” Alberson says over a plate of Indian food in Midtown. “I made digital singles. I put them up for everybody to download. You’d have album art. You’d have three songs. It was 2005. Nobody was doing that yet.”

Shortwave Dahlia — now a full-fledged band — will trumpet its latest digital-only album, The Wilderness, with a show Saturday at Nocturnal. The event is an unusual dual record release with local experimental folk-rock band Grupo Jobu, which is releasing its new album, mytheme. Admission to the show is $5, but for $10 patrons receive a download code for each album.

If Alberson approaches the band business a little differently than most Memphis artists, it may be because he’s not from here. He originally hails from Biscoe, Ark., a blip on I-40 on the way to Little Rock. Relocating to Little Rock, he played in and worked in a record store. Alberson says he and bandmate Patrick Glass, now a member of the band Noise Choir, moved here in 1999 after he was chased out of the Natural State by a stalker ex-girlfriend.

In Memphis, Alberson played briefly with the group Johnny Romania with J.D. Reager and Justin Jordan of the Original Cyndi and other groups. But he soon left the group in frustration.

“We’ve remained friends ever since, and I’ve helped out on things here and there,” says Alberson. “But for a few years I was just like, I don’t play well with others. I’m just going to write songs.”

Thus began Shortwave Dahlia in Alberson’s apartment studio. He released several singles and a full-length album working on his own but eventually tired of the isolation and began recruiting band members, including bassist Mark Simmonds and guitarist Ethan Grim. (Keyboardist Woody Wall, a Memphis music veteran going back more than 20 years, is the most recent addition on keyboards.) Adopting a sound heavily rooted in British art rock of the ’80s with lots of keyboards, textural guitars and a drum machine, the band began playing out and released an EP in 2007.

But the band’s magnum opus to date is The Wilderness, a record more than three years in the making. The delay was partly born out of Alberson’s personal travails over the period, including a divorce, an ill-fated relationship with a female band member, and a new marriage.

“In about the middle of 2009, I needed to stop and take a break from these songs," says Alberson of the tumult of emotions he felt was coming out in the music. “I’m freaking about because this is a heavy record. I don’t mean heavy in a Black Sabbath way, more in Joy Division way because I was stepping on the other side of it and realizing that, whoa, this is way more personal than any of us really knew.”

After not listening to it for several months, in January the band revisited the material and recommitted to finishing the project.

“It’s really good now that I’ve got some distance and perspective,” says Alberson. “It’s like nothing else that’s been put out around here in the past 10 years, at least since I’ve been here. It finally needs to come out.”

Shortwave Dahlia/Grupo Jobu Dual Album Release

10 p.m. Saturday at Nocturnal, 1588 Madison

Admission: $5, $10 for admission and downloads of both albums.

© 2010 Go Memphis. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.