Austin Sound

Man, remember 2009? Those were crazy days. All the drugs. All the music. All the PSYCH, man! And the Radio Room, remember that place? Austin has changed, man. It’s all condos and yuppies now. A place like the Radio Room could never exist downtown today, you know man? Back then, Sky Saxon could be a crazy shaman dude and it was cool. He’d be so disappointed with what this city has become today. If only we go back to when Austin was exciting. Now the lawyers are trying to kill the scene, and stuff, man. We don’t even want to go out anymore. Thankfully we don’t have to because we can stay at home and relive those halcyon days back in 2009 when psych ruled the city, with the new DVD release of Austin Psych Fest 2. For the release party tomorrow night at the Mohawk, a stunning reunion has been assembled of some of Austin’s best Psych bands from that golden era of the ’00s. The legendary Black Angels have curated the event themselves, and it will include that obscure BA side project that has been all but lost to history, the Viet Minh, along with period local mainstays Horse + Donkey, Shapes Have Fangs, and the Ghost Songs. They’re going to be screening the film at 8:00pm, so prepare for some crippling nostalgia with footage from that legendary era and Psych Fest, as well as an additional 20 minute documentary on Sky Saxon. We might cry tomorrow night for those lost glorious days of ‘09. Check out the trailer below:

Sure, we know you’re a Grinch, that you’re already sick of the holidays, and that the new Bob Dylan Christmas album has killed the season with a weird mix of sad and horrifying. Still, it’s the holidays and we are all obligated to do one nice deed to atone for our debouched lifestyles the rest of the year. Luckily, the folks from Couch Professor Entertainment are making it easy on all of us by throwing their second annual Saggi Ball benefiting Toys For Tots. How easy? Bring $5 (and a toy!) to the Beauty Bar tonight and they’re going to provide some good tunes, and, ahem, complimentary Dripping Springs Vodka from 8pm - 10. Also, there will be a photo booth, charity black jack table, and a costume contest with prizes for Mister and Misses Ridiculous Santa and the Ugly Sweater Contest. Oh, and the music ain’t bad either. Locals Ripe and the Pons will be in on the action, along with the new Dallas group The Boom Boom Box, and triangulated-Denton act OK Sweatheart. If you haven’t heard OK Sweatheart, it’s the project of Erin Austin and features members from Midlake, Elizabeth and the Catapult, Via Audio, and The Polyphonic Spree (of course what band doesn’t have members of the Polyphonic Spree in it?). OK Sweatheart made it to the finals of this year’s Sound and Jury competition, and they’re pretty damn good. Check out the video for “You Let Me Down,” which won the Lennon Award in 2008. Where not exactly sure what kind of award that is, but we’re sure you can imagine. RSVP for tonight’s Saggi Ball here, and don’t forget your toy for a tot.

Matador Records’ Gerard Cosloy doesn’t give a shit who you think are the most noteworthy bands in Austin. You can take that Spoon and shove it up your ass! Cosloy’s much anticipated Austin comp, called Casual Victim Pile (”Casual Victim Pile” = “Live Music Capital”, get it? Good one there Rose Clad Orgy!), will be officially released on January 26. It features 17 local artists, and two from Denton, that occasionally stumble out of Beerland’s cave to blink at the daylight - let’s just hope they sound better on the record than they do in Red River’s hallowed cinderblock fortress. We do have to give Cosloy credit for his awesome comments on naming the album in the press release today, though: “I was also advised that while ‘Please Kill Bob Schneider’ rolls off the tongue rather nicely, Matador’s legal fees might skyrocket if someone did indeed, harm a hair on the multi-talented singer-songwriter’s head.” Ouch. Watch out Cosloy - there’s a rabid pack of sorority girls coming for you! As we prepare for the album to school us on the proper Austin Sound, we get a taste of two of the tracks from the upcoming comp. First off, Follow That Bird! delivers “The Ghosts That Wake You”, which kicks off the album, and then Love Collectors (who for some reason changed their name from the Modern Fuckers) deliver their punky little tirade “First 48.” Awesome. Full previously announced tracklist below, and more info on the Matador blog.

We’re not sure if this new video from Eric Power is adorable or creepy! These little one eyed monsters are cute, but man, claymation still freaks us out. We blame Gumby, obvs. Still, little monsters this sad aren’t very threatening, even to our innately horrified hearts, and we’d in fact like to pet them on the head and let them know it will be alright, but we’d probably just smush them. This is why we don’t have nice things, according to mom. But the key takeaway here is that little one-eyed claymation monsters are just like us, yearning and lonely and just trying to get by a cruel non-claymated world. And they apparently try find commiseration through the music of the Lovely Sparrows. Misery and company and all that. This is the Sparrows’ take on Big Star’s “Take Care,” which follows Yo La Tengo’s version of the song. So this is like third generation, or something. Shawn Jones and company are currently recording their followup to last year’s debut LP, Bury the Cynics, expected sometime next year. We just hope he can hang in there that long. Buck up there, cowboy.

Why so blue Dana Falconberry? Yesterday was your birthday! You have a new album coming out next year! Your clothes inexplicably never go out of style! Yet still you sing sad, oh so sad. “Nobody loves me?”; “Nobody cares?”; “Nobody wants me?” Dana, get off livejournal and take stock of your blessings. It’s Christmastime! Hopefully the other songs on the upcoming Halletts won’t be so devastating, because there is only so much we can take with our Seasonal Depression Disorder. We’ll find out come January 14 when Falconberry releases her sophomore full-length at the Mohawk. In the meantime, we’ll make due with the beautifully dire little ditty “Nightingale” which you can download below. Falconberry has also added a new harmony into her mix alongside Gina Dvorak in the form of Lauren McMurray. Also, if anyone has a clue what the hell a Hallett is, please let us know.

One day, archeologists (read Space Aliens) are going to dig up life on Earth in the early 21st century and wonder why love affairs seem to only happen in grainy Super 8 vision. Seriously, can our nostalgic and whimsical relationships be presented in HD for once? The ‘naughts are almost over people - let’s find a new way to visualize this thing called love. And yeah, we’re looking at you, too, Bill Baird! Also, whistling. We thought there was an international ban on whistling after all those young folks ruined it for everyone (according to the Geneva Convention treaty clause #983.7, section F, Andrew Bird is the only artist that gets clemency here). Plus it makes you look like this during shows. But here we have Austin’s beloved Black and White Years, with the help of director Matthew Hoffman, throwing caution to the wind with their new video “Two Reservoirs.” We’ll see if Kanye likes this one enough to post on his blog as well. The song is off of their latest EP, Nursery Myths. Check it out below:

Amy Cook’s new album Let the Light In has already gotten all kinds of crazy attention, and won’t even be release until next year. But hey, it was produced by Alejandro Escovedo, and features Patty Griffin, Ben Kweller, the Tosca Strings. Your album doesn’t. She offered up the first mp3 taste of the release today with “Hotel Lights,” which is actually really gorgeous and we assume about Hotel St. Cecilia, or something. Cook doesn’t have any dates set up at the moment, but we’ll for sure be seeing plenty of her next year. Let the Light is officially scheduled for release on March 2, 2010. If you haven’t yet seen the documentary Amy Cook: The Spaces In Between, you can check out the trailer here. And you can download “Hotel Lights” below:

We can probably slow down the morphine drip, we’re feeling much better now. Thanks. So this exists, thanks to Moth Fight! and James Ravelle. It’s kinda like Dr. Seuss directed the final scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark for Adult Swim, or maybe that’s just how our mind works. Thank god it only lasts a little over a minute. On the one hand, it’s awesome. On the other hand, our unborn kids just shat themselves. Moth Fight! has apparently been working on a new album (for something like the last seventeen years), so we’re happy to get any taste of their anachro-gadgetry fantasticness that we can. The next opportunity you have to see them will be for Free Week (woah, Free Week already!?) on January 7 with Yellow Fever. In the meantime, you can freak out to the quick video for “Long Way From Home” below.

So last week Matador gave the world a taste of what they’ve been cooking up with Harlem, releasing an mp3 into the wild from their new album, Hippies. It’s good, but you knew this already. Our question is, exactly what is Harlem trying to say with this title? First there was Free Drugs, which we’re pretty sure just about anyone can get behind. But now their new album is called Hippies? That’s ironic, right? They put the title in quotation marks, so that means they’re not serious, according to our meta dictionary. But supposedly even Free Drugs wasn’t “about drugs drugs” (What?). Between the winking emoticons and quotation marks, Harlem (not from Harlem!) has more misdirection than Snoop’s GPS. Also, another song about Casper. Because that’s what the world needed. “Hippies” hits on April 6, so plenty of time to stock up on patulli. Harlem will also be playing the Mohawk this Thursday, Dec. 17, with Crystal Antlers. Hopefully nobody gets punched.

Live Forever, The Deaf Ears debut album, is proof positive that sometimes when things fall apart, things can actually come together. Case in point, when Joel Mullins’ previous band Tammany Hall Machine – a band that garnered a decent amount of Austin buzz and a slew of nice slots with some great bands – began to disintegrate, Joel decided not to force his new batch of songs into the old format. Instead, he regrouped with producer Scott Oliphant on drums and decided to form a two-piece. Sure enough, with the addition of former THM bandmates Mick Southerland and Geoff Dupree, that two-piece morphed into The Deaf Ears quartet and a whole new way to create Mullins’ vision was realized.