About

After years of grinding the local Minneapolis music scene, Austin Durry was back at square one. He had been touring and making music with his act at the time, but that all shut down with the rest of the world when COVID happened. Temporarily, he and his wife decided to move back home and joined his parents and younger sister Taryn to figure out their next move. However, instead of giving up on his dream, Austin and Taryn started Durry, a band that would change the trajectory of their lives forever. “Durry formed really naturally in the early pandemic days and then we had a song pop off in 2021 and all of the sudden we’re a legit band and trying to do it,” he explains.

Austin is referring to the song “Who’s Laughing Now” and its accompanying video, which sees Austin and Taryn—along with bassist (and Austin’s wife) Ashley Durry and drummer Dane Hoppe—rocking out in the basement of the Durry’s childhood home as they sing about following their dream against the odds. In a meta sense the premise of the song is exactly what it accomplished for the emerging act. (The video for the song currently has 1.5 million views on YouTube and over two million likes on TikTok.) “The whole thing was so unexpected,” Austin says of the viral smash, which propelled the band’s 2023 debut Suburban Legend into the mainstream consciousness. “I had been toying around with the song and Taryn hadn’t even heard [the final mix] yet; I just made a little video and posted it and suddenly we went from having 20 followers to having 6,000. We have this horrible habit of having songs go viral unexpectedly and then being totally unprepared for it.”

In that spirit Durry hasn't released any new music in a year, a fact that’s all about to change with the release of the band’s sophomore album This Movie Sucks. “Our first record was really pieced together whenever we could afford to pay for time in the studio, but for this record we sat down and wrote songs for six months and just whittled it down to the best ones,” Austin explains. “It was really refreshing just being totally intentional about the entire vision right from the start and then going into a really legit studio and having a producer with all the songs finished when we got there,” he continues. “When we made the last album, I had never been in a studio before, so I feel like I’ve gained a lot more confidence and skills over time,” Taryn adds.

The embargo on new music may not have been easy for the group, but their heightened levels of confidence and production are evident on each song on This Movie Sucks. From the fuzzed-out wake-up call of the opener “Bully” to the jangly powerful pop of “More Dumb” and the intricately arranged ballad “IDK I Just Work Here,” the new album continually showcases Durry’s musical versatility. “I think that people are going to cling to different songs because the genre of the album is very wide,” Austin says. “There are acoustic songs, there are folk songs and punk songs and listeners will latch onto different parts of it and everyone can find their slice.” Taryn agrees adding, “Everyone who has listened to the album seems to have a different favorite song and I think that’s really unique. We do touch on a lot of different genres and styles but somehow we’ve been able to still make it cohesive and I think that’s a big win.”

Lyrically, This Movie Sucks touches on universal themes such as prolonged grief, the toxic nature of Internet culture and remembering loved ones. One especially poignant song is “The Long Goodbye,” an acoustic ballad that sees Austin and Tayrn dueting about the people in their lives that they have lost over a stripped-down arrangement.“I think with this album we’ve really been able to figure out where our two voices sit with each other and we had a lot more time with my harmonies this time around as far as what could help add to the song,” Taryn explains. These relatable themes—augmented by Durry’s idiosyncratic sense of humor—and the way these two siblings are able to come together musically adds a level of poignancy to the songs on This Movie Sucks that is present through both its most jubilant and vulnerable moments.

But ultimately This Movie Sucks is a celebration, not just of the current moment but of the way Durry has transformed a negative situation into a creative outlet that has connected them with other people all over the globe. “If we weren’t forced to slow down [due to the pandemic], I don’t think any of this would have happened,” Austin admits. “Moving back home was a really humbling experience but it was really good.” This sentiment is captured on the Suburban Legend song “Losers Club,” a synth-heavy ode to finding joy when life doesn’t turn out the way you thought it would. “That song is about accepting your place and being OK with it—and that ended up being a tent pole song for us and our fans refer to themselves as the ‘Losers Club.’”

Durry may have started out as an internet sensation championed by unlikely advocates like Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst, but after spending the past few years touring the country and honing their craft, they want to show the world that they are a seasoned act, who remain involved in every aspect of their career—from the merch to the songs to the videos. “We’ve been able to have more resources with this album and get help when we need it but we’re still trying to maintain the whole DIY nature of the band while also keeping the quality as high as we can,” Austin explains. “Our hands are in every part of this band and meeting our own quality standards are really important to us,” he adds. “We have a super unified vision and feel like everything goes together—and that’s why things can take so long, but that’s so important to us.”