Austin Sound

Things get dark and heavy on the Gary’s second EP, El Camino. With these six songs, recorded by Steve Albini at Electrical Audio in mid 2010, it sounds like the weight of the world is pressing down on the band. Coming hot on the heals of their criminally overlooked debut full length, Logan, El Camino burns slowly with most songs feeling more like “Hurricane Sunrise” than “QSB” (both Logan standouts). And make no mistake; sounding like the product of a long haul Austin-to-Chicago roadtrip is not a bad thing. The Gary have consistently excelled at making songs for the darkest hour of the night, when the last drops of beer have run dry and it’s time to go home and face our realities. El Camino is no exception.

We love the Old Settler’s Fest every year. Even when it gets a little too Austin-hippie jam band for us, there are rarely events that are as chilled out and friendly and that compile such top notch talent in a relatively small area. So we are kind of excited that this year, in addition to the expected roots all-stars like Richard Thompson, Sam Bush, Tim O’Brien, and Jim Lauderdale, there is also a pretty nice dose of artists we would typically consider more in the indie-oriented realm. Most notably is the Friday night headliner of the Avett Brothers, which indicates that either the Old Settler’s Fest has finally caught on, or that the North Carolina trio has been supplanted by their British tribute act in the form of those Mumford lads and are now down to lower tier festivals. We kid, we kid - this is a win-win in our books! Also interesting to note are Langhorne Slim and Elliot Brood, and of course a ton of great local artists ranging from the young Ruby Jane to Jimmie Dale Gilmore. The Fest and camping will be going on out at Camp Ben McCulloch and the Salt Lick Pavilion from Thursday, April 14 to Sunday, April 17, 2011, and for tickets and more info, check out their website. The full lineup and schedule are below:

Over two albums and the past five years, Wiretree has grown from the solo project of Kevin Peroni into one of the emerging acolytes of power-pop in Austin. Behind Peroni’s ranging and easy tenor, the quartet brings touches of the Pernice Brothers and New Pornographers, with a twinge of pedal steel twang and shades of both classic Eighties and contemporary indie pop. It’s a melding of influences and sounds that seems to finally come together in Wiretree’s latest effort, the band’s third LP tentatively titled Make Up, and currently being recorded at Hot Tracks! for a release later this year. You can check out some their new material in their recent ACL Satellite Set, or catch them this Saturday, February 26, at the Hole in the Wall with Digital Antique and The Lennings.

See your bands in this week’s Chronicle. Get your bands here.

Last month we got a taste of the new Okkervil sound when they debuted the first of their new tunes on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. It was an odd little preview with A.C. Newman and the Roots’ ?uestlove and Damon Bryson helping out on the song “Wake and Be Fine”, which will appear the new Jagjaguwar release I Am Very Far due in May. “Weave Room Blues” is even weirder though - as a non-album B-side, they seem to be feeling the freedom to mess around on the song. Either that, or A.C. Newman’s New Pornographers’ stardom is beginning to rub off. There are no official dates up yet for Okkervil around town, but we do know that they will be here for SXSW, so get your RSVPs on to those parties. Check out “Weave Room Blues” below, and you can already pick up the new 7-incher from the band, Mermaid, now.

As they say, with a name like the Magnificent Snails, it better be good. Luckily for the local trio, who drops their debut EP, Baby Acid Trips, this week, they brandish a kind of pop flair that manages to be both catchy and continually interesting. With touches of horns and experimental torques, the Snails can ripple with softly gleaming harmonies, bounce with a kind of Vampire Weekend punch of infectiousness and even cut funky, garage-glam with an effective relish. Despite the fact that the trio includes Austin Sound contributor Chris Galis, we still recommend checking them out this Friday, February 18, at Club 1808, for their EP release show with Waldo Wittenmeyer and the Natural. Get a taste of Baby Acid Trips below.

So seems the Murdocks have finally had enough of us. You know, they just got really good, so it only makes sense to go out on top and thus up the pricetag on their eventual reunion show. Good business strategy. Very savvy. Of course, seeing as how it took them nearly half a decade to get their last LP out, maybe this isn’t so much a hiatus as it is a break to do some recording. Or something. Last year the local trio impressed with the release of Distortionist, but according to the band, this Thursday will mark their last show for the indeterminate future. We know how these “trial separations” go, though - first you start up the side project, and then things just fall off, and before you know it, it’s been two years since you thought about all those good old Murdocks days. It’s cool though - we can take it. The funny thing about this breakup though, is that they’re going to still dump a bunch of videos and tunes on us over the next year that they have in the attic. So what’s up guys, is this good bye or not? Don’t tease us. Either way, we’ll still be down at Emo’s on Thursday night for one final fling with Murdocks as the band unloads their “hits” from across the past decade with support from Paper Shapes, Antic Romantics and Shazz.

A couple of weeks ago, our friends over at Do512 officially launched their new in-house concert series with the inauguration of the Do512 Lounge. With help from Austin Music Weekly filming the gigs, they have put together an amazing, intimate experience. Consider it kinda Austin City Limits for next generation. So while they don’t have a deal with TV (yet!), they do have the web and the awesome talents of the AMW crew. Their first “pilot” show in the Lounge was Saints of Valory, but the Black Angels were really the ones to initially set the tone for what the Do512 folks want to accomplish - big bands, intimate venue, and free beer. Sounds like Austin to us! The Black Angels played about a 5 song set to a crowd of about 50 fans, and if you couldn’t be there, you should definitely check out the video below and pay attention to Do512 for your chance to get in on some of their upcoming performances in the Lounge. You can also check out more videos from the series on Austin Music Weekly’s Youtube page (as well as other great shows from around town), including the most recent Lounge sets from James McMurtry and the Bright Light Social Hour.

Next week the Sour Notes will be releasing their fourth LP (in as many years!), titled Last Looks. We’ve been following, and fans of, the quintet over that time, with the band proving to be impressively aggressive in their evolution. Last Looks, which was actually recorded on the heels of last year’s It’s Not Gonna Be Pretty, was held onto for release until now as the band upped their touring profile, and we’re excited to finally get to hear their new material and share it with you via the streams they’ve offered up below. The quintet now features drummer Taylor Steinberg, pianist Kelly DeWitt and bassist Amarah Ulghani joining founding Notes Chris Page and Jared Boulanger, but perhaps even more exciting is the additional strings and brass added across Last Looks courtesy of Mother Falcon, who will be joining the Sour Notes live for the CD release show next Thursday at the Mohawk. Also on the bill are For Hours And Hours and Missions. If you can’t wait until then to get a taste of the band’s latest sound, you can catch them tomorrow, February 12, as they participate in the free “Rehearsal at the Astoria” series at Atrhouse, and wet your palette with the full album stream of Last Looks below:

On their sophomore LP, Candi and The Strangers jives out powdery synth-pop blended with muted disco and causes one to beg, “More Moog.” 10th of Always purveys movement through space, and its done remarkably well through fleshly synthetic melodies and vibrantly blurred rhythms. Because of all the dripping fuzz and boomeranging reverb on 10th of Always it’s hard to know whether Samantha Constant is saying ‘glide’ or ‘dive.’ But somehow it doesn’t matter. Part of the fun of the album is the ambience, and part of the ambience is traveling on a space ship or Milky Way vessel, as the Strangers beckon, “welcome to my dream, relax and float downstream.” The album is true mood music — much like Al Green or Radiohead — it changes the tone of a room. After succumbing to it, the listener buys into a new world of possibility. At times the album is uncannily reflective of shoegaze greats while simultaneously referencing pop culture icons like Nico and Candy Darling. These retro-familiar elements paired with a coded musical and vocal rhetoric craft an album that is otherworldly but altogether mellow mosh crowd ready.