Voxtrot rides out the bumps in the buzz

Voxtrot's Ramesh Srivastava won't even read this, if he's true to his word. "I'm sick of reading about it on the Internet already," the singer-songwriter says of his quintet's debut album, released last week. "People blog and things like that, but ..."

But it's a double-edged sword. Those same writers who heaped praise on Voxtrot's three EPs and its merry Anglophilic sensibilities — accelerating the buzz that made the Austin, Texas, group a national phenomenon — have reacted quizzically, or critically, to the more thoughtful and textured "Voxtrot." Yes, the nods to Britpop and the likes of the Smiths, and Belle and Sebastian are still there, but what happened to the party?

"I don't know what the album would have had to sound like to live up to the buzz," Srivastava says. "I do feel like there's too much emphasis on the concept that a band is not a band until they put out an album."

Voxtrot has been a band since 2002, when the frontman got together with boyhood friends Mitch Calvert (guitar), Jason Chronis (bass), Jared Van Fleet (keyboards) and Matt Simon (drums). The band's infancy was interrupted by Srivastava's studies, first in Boston, then in Glasgow, Scotland. The three EPs were recorded when he was home on holiday — that's where the party was.

"I finally came back to do the band full force ... and I kind of went insane for a while," Srivastava says of that period, during which he dealt with the death of a grandmother. In the end, though, he is proud of the range displayed on the final product. "Nothing really encapsulated us up until now."

And what's in the capsule? "Voxtrot" roots itself in the heart-on-sleeve territory of Britpop bands big and small; the album's swoon-worthiness will depend entirely on your threshold for sincerity. Voxtrot's fans, rest assured, have already checked their cynicism at the door.

||| See Voxtrot perform tonight (with Sound Team and Au Revoir Simone) at the El Rey Theatre.

||| Download Voxtrot's "Kid Gloves."

||| Download a spacey Sound Team remix: "Born to Please" (Bill Mix).

||| Download Au Revoir Simone's "Through the Backyards."

||| Aw, heck, for old time's sake, download the Field Mice's "Five Moments."

Photo of Voxtrot, from left, Jared Van Fleet, Jason Chronis, Matt Simon, Ramesh Srivastava and Mitch Calvert, by Rebecca Miller.