Austin Sound

Bear Claw – Bear Claw (Monofonus)

Part of a series of one-sided 10” vinyl releases that the always engaging Monofonus Press is releasing, Bear Claw’s official debut offering (earlier released on cassette) is a beautiful and bittersweet pop delight. The trio’s sound sits well in Austin’s indie pop scene, more subdued than many of their contemporaries, but also envelopingly charming without dipping into saccharine treatments. Their minimal approach serves the songs well, Nigel Rainey’s vocals lending a calmly daydreamed disenchantment atop the sparse backbeats and strums and melodica, a bit like a less dramatic young Morrissey. “Needle and Thorn” clips briskly in its lovelorn weariness, with the female harmonies continually adding an effervescent touch. Similarly, “Warm Winter” could easily play alongside locals like the Lovely Sparrows, especially as the chorus swells sadly into “I’ll be a shut-in, I’ll just stay home, Hope you’re here too, Hope I’m not alone.” “Romantic Period” jangles up behind an acoustic bop and sway, while the martial beat of closer “You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby Blue” strikes with a more deliberately bitter heart that even the melodica can’t soothe. An excellent four song set that begs for more.

In 2006, Midlake issued their breakout second album, The Trials of Van Occupanther. Steeped in laid back Seventies folk rock with subtle psychedelic touches, the album was an impressively anachronistic and rural glorification. Now with the release of their long-awaited third album, The Courage of Others, the Denton-based outfit drifts even further afield of their contemporaries. The Courage of Others is a dirge for the modern world, in sound and sentiment. Though more stripped-down than its predecessor, the album is nonetheless intricate in arrangement and incredibly dense in atmosphere and tone. Frontman Tim Smith’s vocals unwind with a delicately lethargic and melancholic tone, his rustic longing accented by the band’s trekking into the sonic terrain of traditional British Isles folk, trading in their Fleetwood Mac influences for Pentangle.

Dana Falconberry’s new album, Hallets, is a case in point of sometimes taking a step backwards to find the best route forwards. Though Hallets officially serves as the local songwriter’s sophomore full length, it is essentially a revision and reworking of material from her 2008 debut LP, Oh Skies of Grey. That album attempted to bolster Falconberry’s delicate folks sound with strong backing percussion and moments of fuzzed electric guitar, a reach from her familiar acoustic and harmony-based style that has made her one of Austin’s most promising young voices. While Skies’ more aggressively produced style worked well at times, it was also a somewhat misdirected introduction of a debut in that it diverged greatly from the very essence of Falconberry’s songs as they had become popular locally. Hallets is an attempt to reset that starting point, an LP much more in line with the songstress’ stunning 2006 debut EP, Paper Sailboat.

For a band as prolific as the Sour Notes (an EP, 7-inch, and now two full-lengths since 2008), the quartet has not only proven remarkably excellent in their quality of output, but also continue to impressively push themselves in new directions. Each release, beginning with the 2008 EP The Meat of the Fruit, has taken their instinctive pop-rock pulse and expanded their sound in arrangements and sensibilities. To some extent, It’s Not Gonna to Be Pretty is an appropriate title for the quartet’s sophomore LP - not because it’s not an excellent album, but rather because compared to their earlier pop leanings, the Sour Notes here seem to consciously be moving at times into more rock textures, unafraid to break up the melodies with more jagged edges. It’s the album’s balance of the quartet’s new harder inclinations with those more familiar pop elements that gives it a fully formed and rewardingly diverse feel, however.

In 2007, Daniel Shaetz charmed us with Clay Nightingale’s debut, The River and Then the Restless Wind. The debut was rife with an innocent nostalgia, which we declared a “fitting patchwork for an album that feels like an evening drive down Austin’s streets with the window rolled down, careless, joyful, and touched with the sentimentality of experiences even as they unfold.” Now the local sextet has finally returned with their sophomore effort, projecting a much tighter and coherent group sound, but retaining that same easy, amusingly mundane and detailed narrative style. Though conveying an attitude a little bit older, a little bit more restless and disillusioned, as the group riffs in the background on “Look Out Driver”: “the kids are still alright.”

Since first dropping their self-released eponymous debut in 2007, Yellow Fever has been hot on the Austin scene, but their recording output, and even their presence playing live, has seemed somewhat sporadic and confined to intermittent bursts. Now teamed with the Vivian Girls to release the first album on their label Wild World, Yellow Fever has hopefully found footing that can take their minimalist psych-pop to the next level. That being said, for fans that have been following band, their official debut LP just retreads earlier released material, which while nice to finally have compiled on a single disc, is certainly intended to serve primarily as the band’s proper introduction to the rest of the world outside of Austin.

By year’s end, Austin will have boasted an impressive number of singles. Credit the the downturn of the economy, the upturn of vinyl, or the changing culture of Mp3s and singles, the result has been a boon for short-stack lovers. No doubt, however, that these four recent vinyl releases serve as a nice capstone for local one-offs this year, with Follow That Bird and the Sour Notes both offering up excellent follow ups to debuts that appeared in the past year, and the much anticipated new project of Sound Team’s Matt Oliver, TV Torso, delivering a double shot of 7″ vinyl as a debut. As indicators of what might be around the bend with bigger releases for each band, all of the efforts suggest next 2010 will be a good year for local music.

The first Fun Fun Fun Fest emerged almost by accident in December of 2006, the result of too many big names converging on Austin at once for then-Emo’s booker Graham Williams to place in various venues. A year later, Williams had founded Transmission Entertainment and reinvigorated the north end of Red River, with the Fun Fun Fun Fest serving as the capstone of the new company. Now in it’s fourth year, the Fest has become a uniquely Austin event - dedicated to a small but eclectic grassroots and indie music scene that has come to represent the aesthetic of Transmission Entertainment itself. We sat down with Williams at Transmission’s new headquarters in a house at the corner of 8th and Red River as they readied for the final run of Fun Fun Fun Fest preparations, and spoke at length about the evolution of the Fest, how big Transmission and FFFFest can get, and the good and bad of Austin’s contemporary competitive booking scene. Fun Fun Fun, of course, goes on this Saturday and Sunday in Waterloo Park, with afterparties spilling out all down Red River through the weekend.

There is no band in Austin right now more on their way to domination than The Sword, the lords of thunder that have ripped the local music scene’s indie heart with their heavy pummel of guitars and metal sprung from Black Sabbath’s burning altar. Riding upon an epic sweep, the local quartet has branded Red River behind a fierce doom and sludge onslaught, carving out an international reputation on the strength of their two acclaimed albums, 2006’s Age of Winters and last year’s Gods of the Earth, as well as being tapped to open for Metallica on their 2008 tour. We spoke with the Sword’s frontman J.D. Cronise about the band’s helping forge an unlikely metal resurgence from Austin, his songwriting, and the surprising details of the band’s third LP, planned to be released next year (acoustic guitars!). The Sword will be laying waste to Waterloo Park on Saturday, November 7, as part of the Fun Fun Fun Fest, scheduled to play at 4:25 on the Black stage.

The Black and White Years’ excellent eponymous 2008 debut garnered them well-deserved praise, but could hardly be reviewed on its own musical merits as nearly every blurb about the band necessarily mentioned its production under the hands and influence of the Talking Heads’ Jerry Harrison. With their new EP, however, the local quartet attempts to set out their sound on their own terms, producing and releasing the album themselves. The good news is that Nusery Myths makes clear that the Black and White Years are well capable of holding their own on their own, and that their infectious grooves weren’t simply the product of production. That being said, however, the new EP is generally a hit or miss affair. Those who balked at Scott Butler’s hesitating yelps on the debut will likely never find footing with the band, as it has become clear that his jittery vocals and jumpy falsetto shifts are now hallmark for the band’s sound. Yet even those who did surrender to the fevered neo-wave ballads will be put to the test as Butler throws his voice in full effect here, and sometimes to the detriment of good songs.