Austin Sound

Ralph White sings a world unto himself. At times terrifying, playful, stoic and passionate, the multi-instrumentalist upends roots with squawking, understated moan and wail. Swirling in layered loops of fiddle, banjo, kalimba, and accordion, White’s tunes are mesmerizing in their raw, off-beat dexterity as the former Bad Liver continues to prove himself one of Austin’s most unique musical visionaries. Primarily based on ragged banjo with the tinkling clip of overlayed kalimba, White melds the plucked virtuosity and world reach of Sandy Bull with the cataclysmic daring Eugene Chadbourne, yet it’s his harrowing vocals that always remain the primary draw and most visceral element of the tunes.

It’s difficult, if not impossible and somewhat pointless, to anticipate whether Sixteen Deluxe could have been really big. At the end of Nineties, the band was poised to acolyte the Austin scene behind their showers and sparks of deep-distortion bled shoegaze, signed to Warner Bros and garnering national attention. An all too familiar story followed from there, though: short-lived major label love, followed by band drama, drugs, and eventual disbandment. If 1998 seemed like nothing but promise for the quartet, by 2000 it was bust. Yet this is largely what is also so great about the recent reunion shows from the band, and the subsequent release of the early live shots and demos on Year One. Watching Carrie Clark, “Frenchie” Smith, Jeff Copas, and Steven Hall during SXSW, there was no pressure – just a return to the early joy of feedback bliss simply for what it was worth, and that is exactly the sound that emerges from Year One. The recent shows and these first early recordings serve as complimentary bookends of band simply in love with the sound, of pushing themselves with unconcerned expectations, and perhaps resurrecting something that got lost along the way.

Harlem is a band that almost dares you to take them seriously. Their live shows are riddled with a stoned and unruly disaffection, hilarious insults leveraged at the audience and themselves, and an at times chaotic ravaging of the stage. And while their music is rock solid, loaded with infectious hooks and an impressive retro garage-pop bounce, it’s as if the Austin trio wants to draw you in only to frustrate any of those expectations. It may be a well-crafted and calculated approach, designed to loosen the audience from hipster stoicism and revel in their abandon. Yet no matter how great Harlem’s songs are (and Hippies is indeed packed with fantastic songs), the band seems determined to undermine any essential timelessness of their sound. Harlem is incredibly talented, tight, and smart, but damned if they’re going to let you think that they care about any of those things.

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.