New York City-based quartet Skorts will perform at Kirby’s Beer Store Sunday, March 22, on a bill that also includes yae and Couchlock.
The group released its debut album, “Incompletement,” in late 2025, a record which moves between danceable, anthemic moments to deep, dark passages of introspection that remain quietly triumphant, in some ways calling to mind the soundtrack of a post-punk dance party with enough room to welcome the inward-gazing but pop-minded elements of proto-goth. Never mind the hyphenates, though, as Skorts has carved out its own diverse, rewarding place in the ever-crowded independent music landscape.
The stop at Kirby’s comes as the band makes its way to the Treefort Music Fest in Boise, Idaho, before launching a tour with Chicago’s Brigitte Calls Me Baby.
Bandmembers Char Smith (lead guitar), Ali Wills (vocals, guitar), Emma Welch (bass, vocals) and Max Berdick (drums) recently chatted about their music and their upcoming tours.
The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.
I understand that the songs on the album were well-tested live before you recorded them.
Char Smith: I’d say that’s accurate. We just wrapped up some recordings this weekend of songs that were from sort of the same era, but songs that we weren’t really pulling out live as much. The songs that we were playing live got pushed to the top. That’s always a good barometer of a song, I suppose, performing it in a live setting. That did help dictate what took priority in recording.
I love the way that the album is sequenced.
I think we played the album in its entirety at our record release show in that order for the first time after a pretty long European tour of playing our normal live set. It was really refreshing and reassuring. It lent itself very well to a live set. Some of the things are similar to the live set in terms of the order but there are definitely some songs that are in a totally different spot.
Emma Welch: It was definitely something that we agonized over. It was kind of fun. When do you let go a little bit or when do you do the sixth revision until you just to have to send something in to be mastered?
Most people I talk to say it’s an involved process and that there’s always that one thing they haven’t considered. “Oh, wait, no. We haven’t listened to it underwater yet.”
CS: Half of the people say it doesn’t matter. It’s one of those things you can really band your head against the wall about forever. Does it really matter? It must.
Alli Walls: It’s like a movie. You’re taking people on a rollercoaster but it’s better to go with your first thoughts about. Your intuition. I think we got it right. It was really fun playing it front to back at our release show. Maybe we’ll do it on tour some nights.
There are a number of different moods on the record. There are times where the music is very exuberant, then it gets dark but with these interesting nuances.
CS: I think we have a lot of diverse songs that range from gentle to quiet to straight-up rock riffs. We’re not any one thing. It seems like a harder task to stay within one genre than to let the songs dictate the energy. The range isn’t intentional. It’s just how we write.
AW: There’s no stopping us. That’s just the way that the songs want to sound. They just kind of come out that way. We like having the fans not know exactly where to place us.
It’s interesting because when you’re on tour, people might wander into wherever you’re playing, and maybe the first thing they hear isn’t exactly what they were expecting, but then maybe the next song is the one that really grabs them and makes them stick around.
AW: We like to throw in some songs that we know grab a specific audience. It seems like there’s always one where you see that guy in the corner who might be on the edge and suddenly you’ve got him with that one song. I think we’re aware of that. It’s fun to go, “Oh yeah! He’s into it!” I’m looking out into the audience a lot of times, facing them, and I know they’re activated by different things.
At what point did you know that getting out on the road was probably going to be the best way to get your music out to new audiences?
CS: I think we realized that the band’s bread and butter was on stage. That was always the most fun think about it, playing live. We’re a good live band and it’s the easiest way to get someone’s attention, to go play right in front of them. The litmus test is pretty immediate. We like playing a lot, honing it in, getting better and better. From day one, we were always focused on playing live a lot and letting that be the calling card.
AW: We played the city so much that we were kind of forced to get out there and start sharing the music in a broader way. It shook out that we felt the need to start infecting other cities with the sound.
CS: It was never through artificial computer stuff.
AW: Computer stuff!
CS: We’re more interested in pressing the flesh and sweating with other people.
EW: I feel like it took a second to get to touring. It was nice that we didn’t really tour until it was inevitable and we really played New York a lot. We got to play these songs and hone them, we got to hone ourselves as a band. Financially we also focused on what was immediately accessible until we had some means to get a van and go out on tour. That’s where our focus is now. We were playing the city once a week, and now we’re going out on the road a lot this year. It’s really exciting to feel ready for it.
CS: We definitely weren’t in a hurry to tour because it’s hard to do that. But when the time came it felt natural. It didn’t feel like, “Why are we doing this? Why are we going out of town to play for 10 people when we could play in New York to 150 people.”
It looks like you’re already doing a lot of stuff this year. You have this run that brings you to Wichita, then there’s a pause and you start up again in what I would broadly call the northern part of the Midwest.
CS: We wanted to go play Treefort, which had been on our to-do list for a while. We were lucky enough to be asked to come play, and then we routed our way out there to have it make sense, hit some places we haven’t hit before. Then we booked the support tour that begins in the beginning of April. We’ve got some time off in between the two tours. The strategy was that if we’re going to go to Boise, we may as well make some stops along the way. The support tour will take us around the whole U.S.
Max, do you have anything you want to add?
Max Berdick: [Laughs.]
You came all this way.
All: [Laughs.]
MB: I’m newer to the band so I don’t have too much to say about the album. But I did have this thought: You can’t go a day without thinking about death that’s why this is so important to do what we’re doing as a band and living as much as possible in that and through our connection with people when we play live.
