Son of the Velvet Rat was founded in 2003 by Austrian songwriter Georg Altziebler and organist and accordionist Heike Binder. Their style is described as folk noir,
folk rock,
garage rock and
Americana, and they cite musical inspiration from
Townes Van Zandt,
Georges Brassens and
Dead Moon. Son of the Velvet Rat have also drawn comparisons to
Bob Dylan,
Leonhard Cohen,
Tom Waits,
Nick Cave and
Radiohead. The band started out with the sparsely instrumented releases,
Spare Some Sugar [For the Rat] and
By My Side, by the California indie label Starfish Records. In 2006, they were signed by Vienna indie label Monkey, and released the album
Playground, which focuses on love, loneliness and pain. The album
Loss & Love was released in 2007, and the song "Fall With Me" reached No. 3 on the
FM4 charts, and No. 47 on their 2007 chart. In 2008, Son of the Velvet Rat was nominated for the
Amadeus Austrian Music Award in the Alternative category, and they performed on BalconyTV. The album
Animals was released in 2009. Both
Loss & Love and
Animals were produced by
Ken Coomer.
Wiener Zeitung named
Red Chamber Music the Best Austrian Album of the Year in 2011, and it reached No. 52 on the
Austria Top 40. The album features a collaboration with
Lucinda Williams, and liner notes by
Peter Jesperson. Altziebler was named Best Austrian Singer/Songwriter ever in 2012, by
Kurier. That year, he also published a collection of song lyrics in his book
Songs. Their following release,
Firedancer, also received the title Best Austrian Album of the Year, and reached No. 61 on the [Austria Top 40. It was released in the
US on 21 March 2014. In addition, two compilation albums have been released by Monkey, beginning with Monkey Years in 2010 and followed in 2020 by Monkey Years 2. Son of the Velvet Rat toured throughout the United States and Europe. Some of their records have been released by the South Korean label, Polyphone.
Fluff and Gravy / Mint 400 Records In 2016, Altziebler and Binder moved to California, and signed with the New Jersey label Mint 400 Records and the Portland-based label Fluff & Gravy. A second collection of song lyrics was published by Altziebler in 2016, in the book entitled
Songs #2. The album
Dorado was released on 17 February 2017, and was produced by
Joe Henry. A positive review in
Dagger says "you could call this stuff desert noir and probably get away with it[;] this is the kind of Grade A music that doesn't come along very often so soak it all in when it does. This record is a keeper."
The Late Show was released in 2017. It is a live album that was recorded from three shows in Vienna, Austria, Wredenhagen, Germany and Burbank, California for their 2017 tour supporting
Dorado. Peter Jesperson named it one of his "Best of 2018." Following the 2020 release of Monkey Years 2 by Son of the Velvet Rat's former Austrian label Monkey, their new album Solitary Company, which was co-produced by Altziebler and Gar Robertson, was released on 19 March 2021. While highly evocative of the Mojave Desert landscape referenced in the lyrics (also the album's recording location), the songs of Solitary Company have a way of taking listeners “to so many places with subtle tones and gestures” through “ten song-shaped stories that appear to tell themselves without effort,” as is described in the end-notes written by Robert Rotifer. “We might be in a film noir...or in the middle of a climate change-induced apocalypse...For all of its local references, this is far too surreal to be a folk record. Rather, it inhabits ‘a secret parallel world behind the clouds’ [from the lyrics of ‘Beautiful Disarray’],” writes Rotifer. ==Members==