Austin Sound

You may or may not have heard of the movie School of Rock, starring the so-called “Jack Black,” scare quotes very much intended for the name is as obviously spurious as Costanza’s legendary porno moniker, “Buck Naked.” In S/O/R, the main character, played by Mr. Black, sketches out what purports to be the entire history of rock and roll on a blackboard, for the edification of schoolchildren. Implausible as it sounds, his history is fair, intelligent, and mostly complete, but there’s at least one noteworthy genre that fails to get its chalky due, and that is the one variously referred to as Cosmic American, Space Country, and Psycountry (for Psychedelic Country) and whose most perfect exemplar is probably David Crosby’s 1971 “If I Could Only Remember My Name.” It’s a niche with strong Austin roots, from the 13th Floor Elevators through the Cosmic Cowboys of the ’70s to current AustinSound.net (or, at least, B.D. Fischer) faves Lomita. Space country (my favored term) relies on the surprising sonic similarity between the slide guitar of traditional country and the various effects and distortions of traditional psychedelia � if that term makes sense, talking now about progenitors like the Jefferson Airplane, Pink Floyd, and Ziggy Stardust all the way through My Bloody Valentine, the various incarnations of Dean Wareham, The Verve, Halley, Explosions in the Sky, etc. etc. That similarity itself reflects a mutual thematic focus on isolation and loneliness, from the outlaw Cosmic Cowboys fighting one-man wars against the Nashville machine to Major Tom drifting into space by himself, sending his best wishes back to his wife.

There’s something about The Laughing’s new Tiger Cry EP that reminds me of 2005. What is it? The layered vocals a la Devendra Banhart? the tintinnabulation of Arcade Fire? the delightfully disorienting production of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah? the frenetic growls of Wolf Parade? the big-cat nod to Neko Case? What?

All of the above, natch, but Tiger Cry does more than allude to the some of the most heady debuts to streak across the indie rock sky of that banner year before last: It stands should-to-shoulder. With their carnivalesque vocals in the manner of contemporary snake-oil salesmen wielding digital megaphones and full-to-bursting enthusiasms, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah is the closest comparison. The Laughing, however, are more laid back and prone to in-jokes: Their myspace labels them “ghettotech” and “tropical,” an inaccuracy that is a joke – and a funny one - on the substitution of appellation for analysis and appreciation, signaling just how serious (not very) the Laughing takes itself. Another example: According to their website, Tiger Cry tells the clearly tongue-in-cheek story of Svän, a “mythical beast” and expert instructor on “how to survive and grow,” and indeed the songs circle and circle back to the tiger motif (”Show Your Stripes,” “Lions Can’t Fight,” “Wait Until He Roars,” the title track) without any apparent connection to deeper meaning or meanings. It’s all just good dirty fun.

In the funhouse mirror of contemporary times, an accusation of selling out is likely to suffer an ad hominem reflection, and the accuser accused of kowtowing to the bankrupt gods of coolerthanthou. Nothing is less cool, after all, than trying to be cool. With the critic’s quiver emptied of that arrow - few are more vulnerable to ad hominem attacks than critics - I’ll bypass that most obvious fact about The Hourly Radio (their name, even given the Brave New World allusion, announces their Top 40 ambition), for their eagerness and ambition is something like endearing, and, after all, even indie rock bands have to pay the bills. Aaron Closson’s voice may be just Jaret Reddick enough for them to make it.

Regarding Your Request For Closure opens poorly. The first lines of track one, “Betsy,” are “I’ve got a hole in my heart / and it’s a big one.” The warbling syllabic extension on “heart” doesn’t help. It doesn’t rank with Color Me Badd’s “I Wanna Sex You Up” (”Come inside take off your clothes / I’ll make you feel at home” [my pick for Best Worst Opening Lines Ever]), ca. 1991, but it’s not good. And those are the only lines in the 2:11 song, repeated over and over, warbling and all. It’s all too serious. People don’t feel that way any more. Can’t be real.

It doesn’t promise to get any better with track two, “Jesus In Your Ovaries.” At best, I was expecting some half-funny Austin Lounge Lizards-type schtick. But, for neither the first nor the last time, Crawling With Kings (the name itself is bizarre enough to surprise) surprised, and “Jesus In Your Ovaries” is a very pretty little pro-chioce pop song, a gentle guitar strumming soft over a lazy snare, the prettiness half-heartedly concealing a boiling seethe: “freedom don’t dress up a crowd / this was our one big production / we just needed an introduction / and bullshit escaped from their mouths / everything’s traveling south.” Although the aborto-political stuff is maybe not exactly my cup of tea, at least it’s serious, specific, and believable. At least it’s not holes in sung-about hearts.

DISCLAIMER: This AustinSound writer has no personal connection to Lomita. He has never met them, their friends, relatives, or asssociates, to his knowledge. Dan McGonigle’s girlfriend is not his cousin’s ex-roommate, as far as he knows. He has no reason to wish them personal good or ill, except insofar as he maintains this site’s general and intense commitment to Truth, Honor, and the American Way.

In preparation for writing these reviews, I like to listen to the album in as many different circumstances as possible: lying alone in the dark, blazed out of my mind, in my car on the way to work, in a random shuffle on my meager apartment three-disc changer while I chop onions and mince garlic for another fabulous meal. It was in this last context that I found myself listening to Lomita’s Stress Echo along with David Bowie’s Space Oddity (the title track is the famous “Ground Control to Major Tom” song) and Robert Earl Keen’s West Textures, and it was the one that seemed most perfect. I didn’t plan it that way; I merely removed Grandaddy’s Sumday and slid Stress Echo right into the old shuffle. Pure happenstance. But difficult as it is to believe, Stress Echo perfectly mediates what I had theretofore believed could not be mediated, had not even considered could be mediated: it bridges the unbridgeable Bowie-Keen sonic divide.

“Ambient” is one of those genres that’s context- dependent for its meaning. Depending on the mouth in which the word is born, “ambient” can mean anything from an invitation to stoner transcendence to do-nothing music—often, as in this case, not even vocals!—for do-nothing people that does hardly any good for hardly anyone. While the latter charge, in my opinion, hardly sticks, if my experience is any guide I think we can all agree that this EP is great for getting stoned and getting into strange stoner conversations with strangers. In strange places.

Forgive that self-indulgent story, but this is self-indulgent music, lush and operatic in the extreme. The first two and the last of the seven tracks are My Education originals; the middle four are remixes by other bands of previously released songs by My Education. Track one, “Spirit of Peace (a variation a theme by Popul Vuh, begins with a single piano playing single notes, an effect that from these virtuosos some might describe as haunting but that I think of more as elegaic, becoming eventually more beautiful than sad. It is joined soon enough by symphonic strings in perfect harmony. It’s not that this start is misleading, for much of Moody Dipper is just downright pretty, but part of what makes this EP so compelling is its management of consonance with dissonance, often simultaneously, as on the dueling snare/hi-hat and synthesizer solos that dominate track three, eight minutes and twenty-five seconds of “Dalek: Green Arrow: Dead Verse Remix.”

The Always Already’s myspace says “New Wave,” but with their raucous energy and open-mouthed alcoholic quasi-British slurring reminiscent of The Mooney Suzuki, who have graced several SXSWs over the past half-decade-plus, I say they’re more like “New Mod.” It’s all there on this seemingly untitled four-track EP - the disc/case/liner notes do not themselves indicate a title, but their “label’s” website, www.complicateeverything.com, calls it “Red Bird EP” and it is unclear if that is its actual title or merely descriptive, for there is in fact a red bird on the cover. There’s the boisterous strumming, the beat-carrying hi-hat, and a little fuck-you, ain’t-life-grand superiority (think Roger Daltrey crowing [sorry, couldn't help it] “Out here in the fields / I fight for my meals” on “Baba O’Riley”), as in “Maybe It’s Geography’s” opening couplet, “Dear Mother / instant lover.” I like it, but it may be a little too there, for the tracks have a certain sameness that it is perhaps unreasonable to expect anything other than at this stage of their career, “Red Bird” being their second four-track EP, their entire extant corpus, and “I Am Electric” shows up on both.

For a lot of us in the indie rock universe, Built to Spill remains the North Star. This may be in part because they’ve had/done a little bit of everything: Perfectionist genius on the guitar and behind the mike? Check. A classic emo voice in high dudgeon? Space rock like a dream underwater (e.g., “Randy Described Eternity” from 1997’s Perfect From Now On)? Check check. Tight little unassailable pop nuggets (e.g. all of 1999’s Keep It Like A Secret)? Genuinely deep philosophical musings (e.g., “In Your Mind” from 2001’s Ancient Melodies Of The Future)? A little snarko-clever irony (e.g. the album title most recently mentioned - think about it)? Check check check and on and on and on.