Austin Sound

This Wednesday, Austin Powell and I will be hosting the official release party for The Austin Chronicle Music Anthology, being held at Antone’s with all proceeds benefiting HAAM. The lineup spans over three decades of Austin music, with reunions, special guests, and one-time-only collaborations (see below). Yeah, this is gonna be one helluva night.

So what is this book, you say? Well first off, it’s a thing with pages that you can actually hold in your hands and flip through, kind of like an iPad or Kindle except heavier, and only holds a single volume’s worth of content. I know, weird. But it’s also the product of over 3 years of work on the part of Powell and myself, digging through every issue and piece of music writing in the Austin Chronicle archives. Online, the Chronicle currently only extends back to the late Nineties, one of the reasons Powell and I were interested in surfacing some of the amazing history contained in the paper’s pages as it celebrates its 30th anniversary.

Marathon opens with the sound of a passing train, the shuffle of wind and brakes and steel on steel as the whistle cedes to a plaintive piano. What stands out in that opening sound is just how completely ordinary the train recording in – there is nothing contrived in it, no whistle fading off in the distance or steel guitar accenting the screech to a halt. It comes across as just a simple field recording - mundane even - as we stand witness to its movement, consumed in the inevitable effort of projecting onto it our own meanings, and whatever dynamic inertia that the train may represent becomes oppressed under a static contemplation. And that seems to be where Darden Smith finds himself with Marathon, overwhelmed and maybe even lost in that west Texas expanse. As he declares in “75 Miles of Nothing”, “The Truth is a one night stand blowing like a grain of sand, make whatever you want it to be, when you’re staring at 75 Miles of nothin’, there’s nothing to do, when you’re staring at 75 miles of nothin’, nothin’ but you.”

It’s difficult to decipher exactly what Agent Ribbons wants to be. Recently transplanted to Austin via Sacramento, the trio’s sophomore album ranges broadly in sound and ambition, and while individually the tunes are deployed with both an enchanting and edgy aplomb, as a whole the LP feels somewhat at odds with itself. There’s gritty garage riffs, swooning ballads, and an array of musical stylings that the female troupe manages to brush through in under 40 minutes, all wrapped in a kind of gypsy atmosphere that bobs and weaves to various degrees throughout. But that conflicting sound may also be taken as appropriate and intentional, as Chateau Crone could be understood as an exposition on an increasingly developing madness, a kind of musical take on “The Yellow Wallpaper” or the more directly cited “Grey Gardens.” From the emphatic opening of “I’m Alright” through to the closing carnivalesque yelp and swirl of “Wood, Lead, Rubber,” there is an overall progression into a hideous ecstasy of abandon.

Good southern rock comes across like gospel, the kind of thing that envelopes the listener with its own kind of special aura. And like gospel music, it may move you on record, but it’s best realized as a live experience that feeds on its own vibes. Which is what makes Deadman’s Live at the Saxon Pub such a thing of beauty. From the opening swell of guitars and swirling Hammond B3, “Brother John” sets a scene and a tone that overflows the humble settings of the Saxon. “Well I remember seeing you at the show, and what seemed like yesterday turned out to be a long time ago,” croons Steven Collins at the outset, and that timeless quality of the sound explodes the tunes, accented by the chorus of backing vocals that elevates the song into a classic mold.

The debut offering from the Whiskey Priest, Wave and Cloud, is an album for the patient and penitent. It’s slowly developing folk, established from the start with the over nine-minute long “A Seafarer’s Lament,” which crawls through an ambient backdrop left lingering and lost at sea. The project of Seth Woods (Sad Accordions; Zookeeper; Alex Dupree and the Trapdoor Band), the Whiskey Priest seems torn between impulses, which may account for his moniker. Pulling with a minimalist lull through the first five songs on the album – a murky drawl spun over gently repetitive guitar lines – the album finally jumps with some energy and excitement by the second half of the nearly hour long LP. Woods manages both aspects of his songwriting tendencies well, but they are also incongruous as presented, a problem of more overall pacing and tracklisting that distracts from the quality of the songs rather than enhancing it.

Early in 2010, Balmorhea released Constellations with local imprint Western Vinyl, their fourth album in as many years. The quintet’s sold out release show at the Central Presbyterian Church was a testament to how popular the instrumental outfit has become in Austin, inspiring a fervid but reverential fanbase enthralled by Balmorhea’s intricate, classically-based expositions. With Constellations, principle songwriters Rob Lowe and Michael Muller turned to a much more subdued, if no less impressive, stylistic compositions, peeling back the dramatic build that had increasingly crescendoed on their previous works. Yet what still emerges most from Balmorhea’s tunes are vivid imagistic and emotional episodes, fleeting narratives that arise through their subtle constructions spearheaded by guitar and piano. We spoke with Lowe and Muller via email about their recent work, the philosophy behind the band, and their place in the Austin music scene. Balmorhea will be making their Austin City Limits Festival debut on the Austin Ventures Stage on Saturday, October 9 at 11:20am.

Several years ago, Ryan Bingham was kicking around Texas and the Southwest, a former rodeo rider beginning to garner attention for the rough-hewn songwriting of his official debut on Lost Highway, 2007’s Mescalito. Three years and two albums later, including last year’s Roadhouse Sun and newly released Junky Star, and Bingham has shot into the national spotlight, in no small part due to his co-writing (with T Bone Burnett) the Oscar-winning theme song to the movie Crazy Heart. Junky Star capitalizes on Bingham’s screen success with his best album to date, a collection of weary and worn tunes wrought from the road and the dire desperation of hard times. Bingham’s songwriting has matured to the kind of raw and emotional storytelling of early Steve Earle or Bruce Springsteen to establish him as one of the best emerging talents in the broad spectrum of Americana. Ryan Bingham & the Dead Horses will be playing the Austin Ventures Stage at the ACL Festival on Friday, Oct. 8 at 7:15pm. They will also be doing an official aftershow that night at Momo’s.

In the words of David Allan Coe: “What the hell’s happenin’, Jesus Christ?, Ain’t there nothin’ sacred no more?” For the Beaumonts, “no more” doesn’t even register, because it’s pretty clear from the Lubbock quintet’s third studio LP that there was nothing sacred to begin with. Over the thirteen songs that the country mockers offer up, there are moments of bestiality, domestic violence, incest and sex in every lewdly possible configuration and situation, church burning, and, of course, drinkin’, drinkin’, and more drinkin’ (with a healthy dose of weed and speed thrown in). Yet as opener “Say What You Want” declares: “You can say what you want to about me, but I never gave my husband Chlamydia.” Fair enough. .

Following up their full-of-promise inaugural EP from last year, Hollywood Gossip’s debut full-length finds the band exactly where you would hope to find them. Dear as Diamonds displays an impressive leap in sonic maturity. Whereas You’re So Quiet was a pop purist’s delight, propelled by tunes like “Bicycle” and “Something’s Happening,” Dear as Diamond manages to rock a little more and strike a more reflective tone, but without losing that pop sheen. In progression, the album and band at this point are reminiscent of fellow local pop prospects the Sour Notes. The swooning vocal dives, the jangled guitars, and kick-stepped pep of percussion all feel wonderfully familiar and comfortable, yet surprising moments continually drive the quartet into some impressive new territories.

Leatherbag’s Randy Reynolds has never shied away from his influences, highlighting them and pushing them to the fore even as he transforms them into his own style. That certainly remains the case with Hey Day, Leatherbag’s third LP and follow up to last year’s two excellent EPs, Tomorrow and Everything I Once Knew. The album sets its tone and conscience with lead-off track “Start All Over Again,” opening with a hefty bassline that sounds lifted straight from the Feelies’ “It’s Only Life” and Reynolds chiming in with lines like “It’s time for you to come full circle, and start all over again.” As Leatherbag continues to - by his own accord - resurface the aesthetic of Austin’s Eighties New Sincerity, he seems to do so as a brace against the mercurial fads of fleeting scenes, proposing with this Neo Sincerity is something that doesn’t purport to be timeless, but that it is above all genuine in its constant evolution as a work in progress. So when Reynolds calls on the opener “recognize that the past is still fiction,” it’s not a statement of trying to break from the past as much as not be bound and beholden to it, which would apply equally to Hey Day’s relationship to the present.