Austin Sound

Hard rock duos have always had it rough – filling up a room with sound can be damn difficult with only two men. Nonetheless, Austin angerfiends Damage Pants manage to do more than fill a garage with their rough-at-the-edges thrash rock. Combining post-hardcore vocals with more upbeat garage rock rhythms, this group’s self-titled vinyl debut release is abrasive enough to wear down senses and styluses alike.

Uh-oh, we’ve seen this story before - Okkervil River members have a creative surplus, start a side project to start stretching out some of their own tunes, and turns out that side project is damn good! Watch your back, Sheff - looks like keyboardist Scott Brackett is pulling a quick Meiburg on you, and he’s mutinying with fellow Okkervil-ians Brian Cassidy and Travis Nelson. What’s more, they wrangled Jeff Johnston from Li’l Cap’n Travis and every other band in town into the fold as well. Packing that much talent, it’s no surprise that even though the quartet will be only be playing its first show this Friday, November 27, at the Mohawk (inside after J. Tillman), their songs are pretty impressive. What is surprising, though, is that it’s not very Okkervil-ish at all! (of course, we’re sure Meiburg will tell you that that Okkervil side-project label is a bitch to peel off). Bracket & Co. - and we assume that they’ll eventually come up with a better name, because no one wants to be confused with a “Home Accents” company - have several demos up on their Myspace page that you can check out, or you can download one our favorites - “Dark Fire” - below.

Monument to No One’s self-titled debut features, at first glance, an interestingly out-of-place thank you: “The Pittsburgh Steelers”. That thank you screamed “Danger – or at least nu-metal – ahead!” After all, other than Kid Rock and other meat-rock of a similar ilk, what musician thanks a sports team? Maybe a baseball team, if you’re Yo La Tengo. But a football team? Seems like a fair warning for an upcoming 311 rip off album, right? Even all those guys and girls in all those hip Canadian rock collectives never thanked the Montreal Canadiens! Yet somehow, Monument to No One avoided driving headfirst into huge jock jam craters in the road and came up with nine surprisingly good first-try tracks.

As their name might suggest, local quartet Legs Against Arms languishes in a constant and irreconcilable state of anxiety and struggle. It’s an angst that they manage to sublimate into their rich, orchestral-tinged sound, however, smoothly unraveling anthems on par with Snow Patrol or Stars. Keeping the textures and emotions harnessed and understated even as they climax into guitar jangle and pop-fuzz, the tandem of songwriters Daniel Dillon and Bruce Ewing push the group’s direction in a careful balance that coheres impressively into a whole. Legs Against Arms will finally be releasing their debut EP, Come On Let’s Disappear, this Saturday, November 28 at Club DeVille, with a bill that also features the Bubbles and the Baker Family.

We don’t think you’d know it to look at him, but John Gross of local label Artifact Workshop loves to dance. Seriously, the Party Ender keeps putting out albums that seem determined, against all odds, to make Austin a veritable beat happening. Now we’ve never actually seen John Gross dance, but we like to imagine his moves to this particular song looksomething like this kid in the orange (wait for it). Artifact Workshop’s latest attempt to liven up Austin’s dancefloors is with the release of Custodian’s official debut, 7-song album. Custodian is Adreon Henry (of Single Frame fame) and Jay Bradley, and their album, Ultra-Fresh will be released this Saturday, November 21st, at Bird’s Barbershop on East 6th (of course). The party will run from 5-9, and, most importantly, FREE BEER. We don’t care how sweet your DJing is - if you want to start a dance party, throw in some free beer. Get a taste of what you’re in for below with the song “Pop-a-Lock” from Custodian, and you can pick up the limited edition special packaging there (apparently a special janitorial sponge box complete with wool scouring pads “impregnated” with soap, whatever the hell that means). And did we mention FREE BEER?

By year’s end, Austin will have boasted an impressive number of singles. Credit the the downturn of the economy, the upturn of vinyl, or the changing culture of Mp3s and singles, the result has been a boon for short-stack lovers. No doubt, however, that these four recent vinyl releases serve as a nice capstone for local one-offs this year, with Follow That Bird and the Sour Notes both offering up excellent follow ups to debuts that appeared in the past year, and the much anticipated new project of Sound Team’s Matt Oliver, TV Torso, delivering a double shot of 7″ vinyl as a debut. As indicators of what might be around the bend with bigger releases for each band, all of the efforts suggest next 2010 will be a good year for local music.

We’re four months away from SXSW (damn, where the hell did 2009 go?), so that means let the teasing begin. SXSW last night announced six bands from around the globe that will be making the trek to Austin come March 17-21. What can we say about this initial drop? Well, it’s a list. Guess we all have to start somewhere. Seriously though, we know our beat is Austin and Texas a bit more generally, so we don’t pretend to be as tuned in to all the hot young things as, say, vegans and cage fighting wild animals, but this list is really some kind of international coalition of meh. Who knows, maybe a couple here will surprise us, and you - we can guarantee that their Myspace pages probably had a huge bounce as folks like us scrambled to answer the collective question of “Who?” Anyway, your first round selections of SXSW applicants offers up the following:

* Giulia y los Tellarini; Barcelona, Spain
* The Hong Kong Blood Opera; Hermosillo, Mexico
* Archie Bronson Outfit; London, England
* The Temper Trap; Melbourne, Australia
* Japandroids; Vancouver, Canada
* CHEW LiPS; London, England

Yeah, you read that right - The Hong Kong Blood Opera from Mexico. That’s pretty sweet. Expect to see more of these dribblings from SXSW for the rest of the year, and we also suppose this means that local bands can now officially start whining about SXSW not paying them enough attention.

What do you do when you’re so damn retro that even the vintage-infatuated hipsters of Austin are scratching their heads at your sound? Release a series of 45 singles, duh! T Bird and the Breaks, the funkiest bunch of white kids since Roy Head and the Traits, don’t shy away from their influences, but they sure as hell give them a good kick in the ass, as evidenced with by this year’s debut LP, Learn About It. But CD is so…turn of the century - and let’s not even get started on that digital stuff! No, T Bird is all about the old school, so it’s not really surprising Tim Crane and Co. decided to reissue their album on vinyl this fall, and are now dropping this run of 45s at a rate of one per month for the next six months. (They’re no fools, though, the singles are available for digital download too). The crew kicked it off this month with two new cuts, “Monkeywrench” b/w “Nightshade Mary,” and next month’s will apparently be led by a tune called “Juju Baby.” Esmerelda, Nightshade Mary, Juju Baby? We don’t know what kinda women ol’ T Bird’s been hanging around, but we recommend that boy gets himself checked out asap. And buy a 45 from him - those STD tests ain’t free!

Raised on steady diet of pre-Ghost Is Born Wilco and pretty much anything Ryan Adams has recorded, Wiretree’s sophomore LP, Luck, is a collage of turn-of-the-millennium alt-country rock and pop. Kevin Peroni, who plays the majority of the instrumentation on Luck, sings with hushed urgency to a tuneful track list full of pop idiom and refined rock and roll.

Luck, in many ways, defines the ideal pop sound. Each song, carefully crafted by Peroni, begins in verses that build into choruses while he delicately intones over piano and guitar rock. And you know when the chorus has arrived because the voice takes on a sort metallic tone as it tries to reach those elevated, repeat-worthy melodies, the cymbals come crashing in, and a distorted guitar rings out over the acoustic rhythm. Peroni’s equation-like approach to his songwriting and instrumentation might seem a bit elementary on paper, but for the most part it makes for a quite enjoyable record.

Apparently White Denim thinks that “I Start to Run” is such a damn good song, it needed two videos! Or maybe they felt their original one too “British”? Either way, as the trio (finally) embarks on their quest to win over their home country with the US release of Fits, they decided to make another video for “I Start to Run,” this time taking over the ACL studios to make some kind of late night infomercial for the paranoid. Instead of selling tin foil hats though, looks like they’d do better to be passing out some Ritalin. Or some complexion cream for poor bassist Steve Terebecki - looking a little wane there, dude! The new video was directed by locals Andy Cope and Eric Hueber and features some local scene kids jumping for their moment in the spotlight. We’re actually surprised they didn’t get a bigger turnout of dancers - we thought these guys were the shit about town! Guess nobody wants to be an extra these days. Hopefully the turnout for their current US tour is going a bit better, and we’re especially interested to hear how that show in Philly at some place called the Kung Fu Necktie went down. Are we really running that low on club names, guys?