Saharan Gazelle Boy is still evolving

Awkwardly carving up a white paper napkin with a table knife at the Westport Café and Bar, Darin Seal attempts to explain the difference between his two zoologically named music projects.

“Saharan Gazelle Boy is more of a personal project, something I’ve been doing by myself since I was 16,” he says. “Capybara was always meant to be a much more serious, collaborative thing: four of us working together writing songs. It’s more of a full-time project.”

First, some back story: In 2009, a quartet of quirked-out high school friends from Liberty generated some buzz around town playing a sunny, tribal style of rock music. They called the band Capybara, and they exuded a contagious, childlike zeal for the songs and instruments. Along the way, they recorded at least one excellent song: “The Wimp” (which The Pitch this year named Best Song). In an interview on Pitchfork, one of the most influential music sites in the world, Will Wiesenfeld of electronic act Baths called Capybara his new favorite band.

Despite this momentum, Capybara abruptly stopped playing shows sometime last spring. Rumors swirled that the band was no more. In the band’s place, a solo project emerged. Under the moniker Saharan Gazelle Boy, Seal released two EPs on local label the Record Machine. The sound was synthy and melodramatic, like something from an ’80s movie starring a brooding Judd Nelson.

On Saharan Gazelle Boy’s most recent EP, Strange Teen Heart, Seal enlisted the help of his friend Sarah Handelman, who assisted with the production of the album and handled some keyboard and vocal duties. “I think of Saharan Gazelle Boy as this place where Darin is allowed to do things the other guys in Capybara won’t let him do,” Handelman says, grinning for a moment.

“There’s a little bit of truth to that,” Seal says.

Handelman performed with Seal at Saharan Gazelle Boy’s first gig earlier this year, but she moved to London in August to enroll in a master’s degree program in design criticism. (She’s back in town on winter break.) Shortly after, Seal started assembling a band to bring his bedroom pop to life. In addition to recruiting Rob Mitchell, John Paul Giago and Bryce Olson, he enlisted Mark Harrison and Jared Horne — two of his three Capybara bandmates. Onstage, Seal’s new band began to look quite a bit like his old band.

To add more confusion, Capybara announced last week that it would make new music in 2011. Joel Wrolstad, the other member of Capybara, is moving back to Kansas City from Portland, Oregon, and the four men plan to hole up in a house, scale back their day jobs and reinvigorate the group. They’ve opened a Kickstarter account, seeking $3,000 in pledges from fans to fund the recording of new music. (At press time, Capybara was halfway to its goal.)

How does this affect Saharan Gazelle Boy and the momentum it has accumulated the past several months? Not so much, according to Seal. In addition to a New Year’s Eve show at the Beaumont Club with the Republic Tigers and Roman Numerals, the band has a tentative date scheduled in the spring, opening for Toro Y Moi, and other assorted local shows are in the pipeline.

Seal is also readying another Saharan Gazelle Boy EP, which he expects to release in the next few months. He says it will be less a solo project, with more input from his bandmates. The sound is shifting, too. “My car doesn’t have a CD player, and then the tape player broke, so I ended up driving around listening to rap music on the radio all year,” Seal says. “So with a lot of my new stuff, I’m trying to combine the sound I’ve done so far with Saharan Gazelle Boy with radio rap.”

Seal not only draws inspiration from songs such as “Fall for Your Type” by Jamie Foxx (featuring Drake) and “BedRock” by Young Money but also from the jerkin’ scene, a relatively new West Coast culture that fuses hip-hop, street dance and fashion. “I just think these jerkin’ kids are so cool,” he says. “They’re, like, 15, wearing tight pants, rejecting gangs and drugs, out dancing in the streets in L.A.”

Seal is quick to note that he won’t rap on any of his new songs. The influence is confined to the beats, which he puts together using samples and a drum machine. To a lesser extent, the influence extends to Seals’ lyrics, which he says are similar to hip-hop in that they’re more upfront about romantic and materialistic themes. Handelman, who has heard the demos, says, “I was surprised at how sincere and unironic the songs sound, given what it is: this white kid with glasses trying to make mainstream rap songs.” She adds, “It still sounds like Darin, just with a very different beat backing him up. They feel very genuine to me.”

With two separate projects lined up, Seal is eager to get 2011 under way. “To have a situation where everyone’s totally committed to making music here in Kansas City is very exciting,” he says. “We’re reducing work in favor of art.”

“Well, it’s still work,” Handelman says. “You should probably clarify that, considering you’re asking people to fund the record.”

“Right,” Seal says. “It’s just a different kind of work.”