Austin Sound

Throw another one on the pyre of 2010 band breakups. The Always Already, after 2 EPs, the latest of which was last year’s The Science is New, is calling it quits this weekend with one final show at the Beauty Bar. If you dig your synthy rhythms and Cure-esque crooning, you’ll probably want to be there. The local quartet offered some parting words to us when we inquired what was up, frontman Dustin Withers declaring: “Well after 5 years of playing shows, an east coast tour and west coast tour we have just grown a little tired of all the energy it takes to sustain the band. We still love each other, but when you start to grow apart it seems to take even more energy to make it work. We are also very poor and the band is a money hole, not the good kind.” True! But let’s not dwell too much on the past, as the quartet has other projects they’re working on - Louis Lemuz is playing bass with some fellow former Clap! Clap! folks in Love at Twenty, and Travis Austin is working on his next album as Mediums. As for Withers, he’s “working on my karaoke persona, PARTY DIP! and I have also begain my recoding a solo record.” Word. Get your last heady philosophical fix of the Always Already this Saturday, February 27, along with DJ Mel and Zorch.

Our friends over at Austin Town Hall (who, by the way, have a nice SXSX dayshow this year) caught this last week: the Wooden Birds, Andrew Kenny’s new outfit that released their debut, Magnolia, last year, are offering a new EP for free download called Montague Street. The songs are different versions of four tunes from the LP (”Believe in Love”; “Bad”; “The Other One”; “Choke”) that were actually laid down back when Kenny was living in New York, on Montague Street, natch. So we suppose these are not so much re-recordings as pre-recordings! But you can download the EP here, from Insound. In perhaps even more intriguing Wooden Birds news, however, Kenny is also apparently suffering from writer’s block, or something, because he wants you to send him your stories so that he might possibly write a song based on it. It doesn’t look like you necessarily win anything if he chooses your story, except having a song written about you, of course. But this is Austin - everybody in this town has had a song written about them! You have until March 30 to email your stories, so get a-scribin’!

Deadman don’t as much riff off their influences as revel in them, unloading songs saturated in the Seventies folk rock of the Band and the Flying Burrito Brothers. Yet few artists can deliver that sound with as much authenticity and their own songwriting prowess as Steven Collins, who has built Deadman into a formidable outfit over the past couple of years. Though Collins’ songs often wrangle with heavy themes like faith and doubt, loss and redemption, they’re always set within a familiar, easy flowing sound lifts well beyond their subjects. Following up 2008’s excellent Severe Mercy, the band has a new extended single of “Take Your Mat Up and Walk” available to set the stage for the upcoming album by the same name. You can download one of the versions of the single below, and also catch Deadman this Thursday, February 25, as they take a turn at the Sessions showcase at the Hideout Theatre. They also hold down a residency at the Saxon Pub every Tuesday night, so you have plenty of chances to check them out.

In the final addition to the trilogy of albums spanning Palo Santo, Rook and now, The Golden Archipelago, Jonathan Meiburg’s Shearwater continues to refine the delicately explosive sound that placed Rook at the top of many-a Year End List in 2008. Here again, with nature (and human interaction with it) as the muse, Meiburg steps into the life of island nature as it intertwines with memories of the War in the Pacific. Naturally, it’s a great album (though if you didn’t like Rook, this new one certainly won’t change your opinion). But more naturally it seems, in the year to come, The Golden Archipelago will be put under the critical microscope time and again, until you won’t really need to have heard the album to talk about “the album.” But it would be a shame, a damn shame in fact, to miss out on such an emotionally charged album, if you don’t think about it too hard. So, as I hope was the inspiration of the album itself, let’s see if we can observe it in its element, without pinning it down and suffocating it with a boring rubbing-alcohol analysis.

And by crazy, we mean crazy awesome! Maybe. We’ve read through this damned email that the Octopus Project sent out, and we’re still not exactly sure what the hell they’re doing. So we’ll just let them explain below. But the gist of it is that it’s been a while since we’ve really heard anything from the O-Pro, but they’re coming back out in a big way at SXSW this year with some kind of Flaming Lips-ian show stunt on the roof of Whole Foods downtown. They’ll be giving two performances on Friday, March 19, (at 7:30 and 9:00pm) and, egalitarians that they are, no wristbands or badges will help you - it’s free, and on a first come, first serve basis. The roof only holds about 600 people, so if you miss the old days of camping out for hours and standing in line at Waterloo Records to get your SXSW wristband, this will surely make up for it! So what is the crazy “Hexadecagon” show? Check out the details below:

We thought Shearwater’s whole “dossier” idea was a little odd and extravagant, but they continue to mine the bizarre with the new video for “Hidden Lakes” off of next week’s release, The Golden Archipelago. Really, what the hell is going on here? Is this some post-apocalyptic desolation? If so, then why are we dressed like the 1800’s? And wearing mascara? And what’s with the puppies? Our theory: these are two designated heathens from the “After the Rapture Pet Care” service! The video was directed by Alma Har’el, with Eduard Grau doing the amazing cinematography. How can Shearwater be so beautiful and so damned depressing? The band is currently over in Europe, but they’ll be back in Austin on March 13 for a show at Red 7 with Noveller and Xiu Xiu. Check out the video below, as well an Mp3 of “Black Eyes” in case you missed it earlier:

On 2009’s debut, …And Girls Club, the Strange Boys grape-vined through sixteen songs of unabashed, uninhibited, youthful garage rock. Their tunes wavered between alt-country, blues and R&B, and sultry lo-fi noodling — all maintaining the indiscernible trademark of front man Ryan Sambol’s cerebral, tongue-in-cheek whimsy. Critics applauded it and (a few) disliked it — all for the same reasons. The Strange Boys just didn’t seem to be playing by the rules.

For their latest offering, Be Brave acts like more of a mantra than a title track or album name for the Austin foursome. Where …And Girls Club had edge and swagger — perhaps even a decided indifference to perfection and professionalism — Be Brave has a more mellow and tame persona. This departure in sound and album aesthetic will definitely divide the room on whether the sophomore album was a step up or not.

Quick, get that computer booted up. You have the grid, and now it’s time to get your wristbands. Like last year, SXSW will be selling their wristbands online this morning starting at 10am at http://wristband.sxsw.com. The first allotment is 4,000 will sell for $129 a pop and last until they’re gone, and you’ll need to prove Austin residency with a local zip code for your credit card billing address. That means all you students can’t use dad’s credit card, so better find a friend. As always, you can only purchase two, and you have to provide the second person’s name when you buy them.

http://wristband.sxsw.com.

With all the continued hubbub over the University idiotically shutting down the Cactus Cafe in August, now is probably a good time to show your appreciation for the student radioheads at KVRX 91.7. Otherwise the administration might just decide kids don’t need to be spinning that crazy devil music, and where else will you ever find a station that goes so far out of its way to avoid any commercialization within its playlists? KVRX is running their pledge drive right now, and it’s always a helpful reminder of just how many local stalwarts in the music scene (producers, bookers, musicians, and yes, even critics!) that the station has spawned over the years. You can’t throw a stick in our music scene without hitting a KVRX alum, so give them a call when they’re on the air tonight, or better yet, donate whatever you can on their website now. It may not be on par with, say, Haiti relief, but we still contend that KVRX is one of our favorite disaster zones!

Oh yeah, we almost forgot about this little party. Yesterday, SXSW put its full showcase schedule online, which you can have at here. This is all of the official stuff, as it stands now, and there are of course day shows being announced every second. We recommend you try to keep up through our atxmusic twitter list! Anyway, we’re busy trolling through the list, and suggest you should be too, so get moving: