Austin Sound

For those of you who haven’t noticed, SXSW has started already. The music kickoff comes Wednesday night, but there have been free shows going on downtown since Saturday (like when I was at Harlem, the Strange Boys, and Blair at the Red Eyed Fly for free) including local garage rockers Woven Bones, the Octopus Project, and second-city R&B duo Flosstradamus at the Mohawk on Sunday night—one that I regret to have missed. So here is the SXSW Music Tuesday unofficial preview.

Legs Against Arms’ debut EP gives a glimpse at what we could see later this year with their first full-length release. With a title like Come On Let’s Disappear, you’re going to mine connotative thoughts of early decade alt-rock bands playing radio-friendly tunes and getting placement on crummy WB teen dramas. But Legs Against Arms manages to overstep such dubious prejudices despite the presence of cinematic crescendos and throaty, heart felt vocals — there’s something more bubbling below. It’s somewhere between the glassy, streamlined rock and roll of the EP’s first three tracks and the conclusive two-part epic of Disappear’s’s last two songs, “B.I.O.L.O.G.Y.” and “Paper Ships”.

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.

In 2008, local subdued psych quintet, the Able Sea released a self-titled debut of hushed pop songs that swayed in and out of focus like a ship on woozy, 1960s, coastal horizon. Their sound was comprised of disparate influences from folk, rock, and psychedelic camps alike all brought into a hazy fruition via the quasi-séance-like vocals of principal songwriting duo Alex Thompson and Robert Pearson. The album cover of the debut conjures a mysticism that lends itself to the kind of pondering one might do while looking out to an endless, sepia-toned sea — a nine-song coda for the very moment in time the picture was taken.

Enter 2009, and a follow-up sophomore album capriciously entitled the Able Sea II — a more straightforward picture of an ocean horizon with blue water white-capping underneath an even bluer sky donned on the cover. Judging by appearances, it looks like the Able Sea have made a departure in tone and timbre to a much cleaner and more focused (perhaps more pure) sound.

It’s startling to hear a band so decided in their sound on a first album. You expect them to be scattered and unsure of themselves — to have almost unwittingly stumbled upon something to be perfected in future albums. But Candi and the Strangers self-titled debut LP seems to have such an assured character already. There’s something intentionally seductive layered into Candy and the Strangers LP - a permeation of sex into dark, driving, indie-rock, which makes for good listening by principle (think of the successes of international act the XX, or the awkwardly erotic phonetics of Nico with the Velvet Underground.) A little tension is good, and Candi and the Strangers seem to revel in the fusing of dark, bedroom-style synth-pop with breathy, subdued, near-hypnotic female vocals.

The Rocketboys have come a long way since their humble beginnings in Abilene playing small venues to crowds of college kids. They now have a pretty good album, 20,000 Ghosts, that has production credits to a name-drop-worthy role call. Produced by Louie Lino, who has worked with east coast acts such as Nada Surf and Matt Pond, and mastered by indie-noodler Alan Douches, Ghosts is cut from a very decadent indie-rock cloth. The quintet can be seen on the cover distantly perched on a rock amidst fog and trees, in a sort of minimal and drab mystical setting, and it calls to mind the very present ethereal space supplied in the layers of 20,000 Ghosts — an album that sounds full but also finds a way to breath in between passages of ambient indie rock and piano-laced ballads.

Raised on steady diet of pre-Ghost Is Born Wilco and pretty much anything Ryan Adams has recorded, Wiretree’s sophomore LP, Luck, is a collage of turn-of-the-millennium alt-country rock and pop. Kevin Peroni, who plays the majority of the instrumentation on Luck, sings with hushed urgency to a tuneful track list full of pop idiom and refined rock and roll.

Luck, in many ways, defines the ideal pop sound. Each song, carefully crafted by Peroni, begins in verses that build into choruses while he delicately intones over piano and guitar rock. And you know when the chorus has arrived because the voice takes on a sort metallic tone as it tries to reach those elevated, repeat-worthy melodies, the cymbals come crashing in, and a distorted guitar rings out over the acoustic rhythm. Peroni’s equation-like approach to his songwriting and instrumentation might seem a bit elementary on paper, but for the most part it makes for a quite enjoyable record.

One of the privileges afforded by folk music belongs to the songwriter: the amount of space in which they can craft their worlds and their stories of truth, temptation, and many times, failure and heartache. A handful of leather-throated troubadours like Kris Kristofferson and Towns van Zandt have portrayed their own beautiful and sardonic personas in their carefully written pastoral, road/trail weary narratives. It’s the characters and, often times, their flaws that keep us listening.

In respect to Minorcan’s (aka Ryan Anderson) 12″ debut release on Blood on the Vinyl, Keep at Hand, three characters are woven into the tapestry of this LP. They are apparent on the album’s misleadingly stark cover. Pictured: A man and woman’s lower torsos in partial undress are seen being roped down by a pair of red stained hands.

Conditions weren’t the best for Austin garage rockers, The Strange Boys. The rain had been falling hard from the end of Harlem’s set and all through set up. So it was kind of a relief to hear twangy guitar and mumbled vocals of the Boys. What’s more, the group’s new addition of vocalist/saxophonist Jenna Thornhill [...]

With so many bands submerging themselves under layer of synthesizers and loop effects (like so many electro-pop outfits that performed on the Orange Stage this year), it’s great to see that Austin Harlem are actually playing their own instruments and enjoying their own sound on stage. Coming from the audience, I think its safe to [...]