Austin Sound

So this is what happens when you mix Free Drugs and Hippies? Yikes, this is some slummin’ Harlem afterparty action here, and apparently the local trio takes the line “Someday soon you’ll be on fire, And you’ll ask me for a glass of water. I’ll say ‘no, You can just let that shit burn’” quite seriously. These firecracker shenanigans should get everyone in the mood for the 4th of July, but remember it’s all fun and games until Coomers takes a bottle rocket to the crotch. “Someday Soon” is of course off of Harlem’s recently released debut for Matador, Hippies. Unlike the previous video for “Gay Human Bones,” this one is a little more, um, grainy? It was “directed” by Aaron Brown and Ben Chappell, and we put that in quotation marks, because really, how much direction was there on this? We love imagining one of these guys sitting in a director’s chair yelling, “Cut Cut Cut!!! This is all wrong - I’m just not feeling the level of hipster jackass-ery that we’re going for here!” Harlem is currently on the road touring all across the states, and also have a slew of dates lined up with the Dead Weather in July. Not a bad gig, boys. Try not to kill yourselves. Video below:

The Black Angels will be dropping their third LP, Phosphene Dream, on September 14th. We’re going to go out on a limb and say that it’s going to be a platter of heavy droning psych rock. The Angels are actually the first band signed to relaunch Seymour Stein’s Blue Horizon label, so that’s kind of a big deal. “Bad Vibrations” was officially released into the wild yesterday to give us a taste of what the Austin quintet is cooking on Phosphene Dream, and you can check it out below. Wait for the freakout at the end! This comes on the heals of the group’s primo placement of their collaborative tune UNKLE, “With You in My Head,” on the new Twilight soundtrack - we bet the wolf kids in San Antonio will be totally stoked about this! (You can download their previously released track with UNKLE, “Natural Selection”, from our friends over at Covert Curiosity) The Black Angels are doing a bunch of fests in Europe leading up to the album, and ATP in New York, but we hope they’ll be back down here for a release show.

Ah, look - Austin Music Hall and the new Backyard are just like the rest of us! Can’t pay their debts. According to the Statesman yesterday, Sixth River Architects is suing Direct Events, Tim O’Connor and Doug Moyes for not paying up $57,500 they still owe on the venues. We haven’t yet trekked out to the new Backyard, but we figured if anyone should be sued over the Austin Music Hall, it would be the folks responsible for the sound being so damned crappy in there! ZING! Good thing Willie Nelson has his 4th of July Picnic scheduled for the Backyard in a couple of weeks - maybe that will raise some money. This year’s lineup includes Kris Kristofferson, David Allen Coe, Billy Joe Shaver, Los Lonely Boys, and of course Willie. And a bunch more folks.

Soft Healer can be somewhat deceptive. At their core, the local quartet lays down swanky, retro R&B and soul grooves, bronzed by indelible bass lines and subtly throbbing beats, and punctuated by sharp guitar jolts and smooth sax. The sultry and swaying vocals of Marie Butcher tie it all together, bending like smoke through the barroom and rising in powerful sweeps that falls between Dusty Springfield and Cat Power. Yet atop their underlying pop touch, the band can also turn intimidating psychedelic flourishes with a cathartic edge, which helps account for their bill this Friday at Emo’s with local psych droners Headdress and L.A.’s Pocahaunted. Soft Healer released their debut 7″ earlier this year on Captured Tracks, from which you can download “Gentle One” below, and will have a 10″ one-sider coming out on Monofonus later this summer. Expect their debut LP from Captured Tracks soon as well, but catch them first this Friday, June 25th, at Emo’s.

Still reeling from the (not that surprising) breakup of Voxtrot? Well, here are your new Austin pop idols. We’ve been keeping tabs on Hollywood Gossip since their debut EP, You’re So Quiet, got us moving to kick off 2009. And now the local quartet has their debut full-length dropping this weekend. Called Dear as Diamonds, it clearly shows the band getting ahold of their sound and maturing, while not letting go of any of the bopping delight that we loved in the first place. Below, you can download the lead single from the album, “Narcissus in a Window”, which honestly sounds like a super jangled-out cut from the Smiths. In other words, pretty dang good! Hollywood Gossip will be celebrating the CD release at the Ghost Room this Saturday, June 19th, along with Sally Crewe and the Sudden Moves and One Hundred Flowers.

Oh, Daniel Johnston - one of the few and proud who has eeked out a successful career by being not all there. See, there’s hope for you yet! Of course, Johnston has the ability to actually write some memorable songs, and sometimes even perform them. Such will be the case when he plays the Mohawk this Saturday, which is being billed as his only Austin performance for the rest of 2010. The show conveniently coincides with the release of Spanish label Munster Records’ 6 LP/disc box set of some of his earliest recordings. Unsurprisingly titled The Story of An Artist, the set culls together Songs of Pain (1981), Don’t Be Scared (1982), The What of Whom (1982), and More Songs of Pain (1983), along with The Lost Recordings I and Lost Recordings II. All of these were of course originally available only on cassette, and distributed exclusively through McDonald’s drive-thru, or something. Perhaps even cooler is the 64-page booklet that comes with the set, featuring liner notes by Everett True and Austin’s own Kathy McCarty, as well as a shit ton of Johnston’s artwork, photos, and the usual good box-set stuff. The set will be released on Tuesday.

Wild Moccasins, one our favorite pop delights out of Houston, have just released their debut LP, titled Skin Collision Past. Their first taste at recording, last year’s Microscopic Metronomes, won us over with it’s frenetic pop and exchanged vocal interplay from couple Zahira Gutierrez and Cody Swann. It’s a delight even further enforced by their live shows. After all, we do love a good snake pit! You can download the title track for the new album below, which the quintet is offering up as they prepare to head out on tour to support the album next month. Unfortunately, no Austin dates, and we’re not sure what’s up with that. Hopefully that will be amended when they get back at the end of July. We’re going to spend the time trying to figure out what the hell “Skin Collision Past” is supposed to mean. We, of course, just assume it’s something dirty.

No matter how hard we try to deny or hide it, Texans have an accent. Not everyone’s is obvious in everyday speech, but after a few beers the twang starts to become more pronounced and difficult to ignore. And it doesn’t take long for that accent to take hold upon adopting the state either. Such is the case of singer-songwriter Claire Small. The Austin-by-way-of Nashville songwriter’s sophomore full-length, How Do You Like Love?, would be mislabeled under country, as her ambient folk-rock influences contradict the traditional structure too openly. Still, throughout Small’s dreamy LP is the presence of elements like honky-tonk electric organ that allow her pop-inflections to fluctuate from light country shadings to full-blown country homages.

Claire Small seems to epitomize the Austin influence, that ideal of bringing both flower children and cowboys together to shake hands on neutral ground.

This video doesn’t seem to have been made specifically for Built by Snow’s “Invaders,” but it sure as hell could have been. Or vice versa. BBS’s brand of geekery fits perfectly with the Space Invaders-themed pixelization of New York City put together by onemoreprod.com. According the Youtube, someone saw the video, and thought the local quartet’s song offered the ideal soundtrack. Point, Youtube! If you have any love for Built By Snow’s glitchy Atari pop, then you’re likely already sold on what will happen below. If you’re not yet convinced, maybe the video will lead you there, but you can also check out the band live tonight as they digitize Trophy’s alongside The Kilns, Frants, and Reggie O’Farrell, none of whom we’ve ever heard of before. Which doesn’t necessarily mean anything - we’re just going to go to watch the ROT Rally-ers try figure out what the hell is up with these nerds! Hope Trophy’s has the chicken wire screen up in front of the stage.

Normally, we probably wouldn’t post this, as its relationship to Austin is somewhat tenuous. Yet the just released video for Gil Scott-Heron’s take on local luminary Bill Callahan’s “I’m New Here” is pretty danged stop-you-in-your-tracks worthy. The song, originally from Callahan’s 2005, new-to-Austin album A River Ain’t Too Much To Love (back when he was still operating under the Smog moniker), serves as the title track for Scott-Heron’s recent comeback venture - the famed Sixties songwriter’s first in 16 years. Safe to say, Scott-Heron thoroughly makes the song his own, and it is both haunting and redemptive, served well by his aged perspective and voice. The essential Smog-iness of the song still lingers, however, so we give it thumbs up all round. We also wonder what Bill Callahan actually thinks of Scott-Heron’s take on it. Maybe we’ll find out one day, despite his typical, soft-spoken reticence. (We’re still not sure what “Sycamore” is based on). In the meantime, we’ll have to make due with Callahan’s new Drag City release of live recordings, Rough Travel for a Rare Thing. Watch Scott-Heron’s video below, as well as a Youtube of Callahan’s original.