Austin Sound

In the final addition to the trilogy of albums spanning Palo Santo, Rook and now, The Golden Archipelago, Jonathan Meiburg’s Shearwater continues to refine the delicately explosive sound that placed Rook at the top of many-a Year End List in 2008. Here again, with nature (and human interaction with it) as the muse, Meiburg steps into the life of island nature as it intertwines with memories of the War in the Pacific. Naturally, it’s a great album (though if you didn’t like Rook, this new one certainly won’t change your opinion). But more naturally it seems, in the year to come, The Golden Archipelago will be put under the critical microscope time and again, until you won’t really need to have heard the album to talk about “the album.” But it would be a shame, a damn shame in fact, to miss out on such an emotionally charged album, if you don’t think about it too hard. So, as I hope was the inspiration of the album itself, let’s see if we can observe it in its element, without pinning it down and suffocating it with a boring rubbing-alcohol analysis.

2008 was a marathon year for Bill Baird and Sunset: Pink Clouds, Bright Blue Dream, and The Glowing City. These three full-length albums, each distinct iterations of Sunset’s characteristic sound, accounted for hours upon hours of music that no doubt took many more hours still to write and record. After a year of formalizing his band and establishing his new east side studio, Baby Blue, 2010 brings yet another new release in the Sunset catalog, Gold Dissolves To Gray. Tempting as it is to throw it up on the shelf with the earlier releases, much of the album serves as a re-imagining of Sunset’s sound as stripped down, comical at times, and all-together a more coherent album.

Sorry old elementary school adage, but sometimes you can judge books by their cover, or in this case, an album. The cover for Ola Podrida’s Belly of the Lion, with its silhouetted figure half standing out in the waning sunlight, half blending into the flat Texas landscape, suggests a number of the isolating themes and sharp dynamics held within these otherwise soft layers of instruments and nonthreatening vocals. It’s a fitting image, too, as Ola Podrida’s sophomore album and debut on local label Western Vinyl also presents the return of David Wingo to Texas after time the songwriter spent in New York.

Just like last year, we’ll be at Fun Fun Fun Fest all day Saturday and Sunday bringing you the latest from Waterloo Park. Follow our live blog for up-to-the-minute reviews and pictures of all the action sandwiched between Red River and Trinity this weekend.

What’s left to say about Neon Indian’s Psychic Chasms? Do a quick google search for something like “It’s high time someone shed some proper love on the 80s” and you’ll be up to your waist in “Best New Music” and FADER boners in .00001 seconds. Ask your older brother what the next big song is and (depending on your family) you’ll likely be accepting an aim file transfer for “Empire State of Mind” with a “Terminally Chill” B-side. Yeah, Neon Indian blew up. And rightly so: with Alan Palomo (of VEGA) at the helm, the band charted a commendable course through a bygone era. But, hey, you knew they were from Austin, right?

To look at Phosphorescent Blues as a mere expansion of the themes that made Brazos’ debut EP, A City Just As Tall, so successful might be the best critical approach, but it would hardly do justice to the completeness and solidarity that characterize the success of the new release as a true album. Suffice it to say then, if you liked A City Just As Tall, fear not - you’ll love Phosphorescent Blues. But give the album a chance to work new and different angles, like soft piano interludes and expanded attention to textures, and you’ll find the interplay of themes and textures, both lyrically and musically, are a stunning accomplishment unto their own.

The precise relation of Listenlisten’s stunning new album to Rhodesia (the former name of Zimbabwe), I can’t say for sure; the Houston group’s relation to “hymns,” however, is studied at extraordinary length on “Hymns from Rhodesia,” an album at times eerily reminiscent of the meandering low-fi hymns one might find on an early Microphones record, and at other times narrowly avoiding all out disaster (but, you know, in a good way).

The haunting waltz “Prologue” briefly introduces us initially-naïve listeners to the gothic pastoral scene the album channels, followed immediately by the equally downbeat (and three-beat) “Funeral Dirge; Burial Service.” Immediately we feel like a lost band of travelers, stumbling in on unknown small-town horrors, the worst of which only begin with funerals. And it’s definitely raining at this point.

Since landing on Austin’s doorstep a few years back, a solid stream of alt-country releases has been the prevailing local music wind in my life, compliments of bands like Thrift Store Cowboys (of Lubbock, actually) and, recently, The Georgian Company. Thankfully, the commonly accepted standard seems to be to embrace the traditions (i.e. includes pedal steel/makes you want to drink whiskey) but pack a punch with an electric guitar riff here and there: blah, blah, blah, “No Depression.” So when I a) saw a pedal steel, mandolin and a wurli included in the credits and b) heard the slow groan of opener “Gunpoint” bidding Country-Pop enthusiast a solemn “Keep Out,” well, it was a good feeling. Which puts the (perhaps unfair) burden on Loose Leaves’ debut of sustaining that mood on the 9 songs that follow.

Kat Edmonson, whose socially-conscious single “Be The Change” made waves in Austin last year (thanks in part to the excellent video that was made with it), has come back with Take To The Sky, a new album full of old jazz standards and brilliant, unashamed pop covers (although Edmonson may take issue with you calling them “covers”). Her breathtaking live performances have been packing Austin clubs for months behind her band’s unique and versatile arrangements and Edmonson’s stunning vocal prowess. She took time out of her busy independent-artist schedule to talk to us about going up North, the new album, covering The Cure, and “kittenish” puns that were perhaps less than fit-to-print. You can see Edmonson live on Tuesday, July 7, as she plays at the Cactus Cafe on campus. We suggest you stop by and pick up Take To The Sky before a major label grabs it up (seriously).

Like any well-greased democracy, the governing body of the Live Music Capital of the World is prone to violent shifts as new members flirt with stardom and old standards are cast to the wayside. So as we now find our creative enclave newly beset by the challenges of violent shootings, disruptive ordinances and socio-demographic shifts in the downtown area, so we also find bright new leaders of our cultural traditions. The Soldier Thread – the dark horse candidate of 2007 – now have legitimate claims on seeking that title. Hitting the #2 spot at Waterloo with this debut album and playing a number of high-profile shows in support of it, the band’s rise to prominence since the modest release of their debut EP Fevers and Fireworks has been undeniable. Debut full-length Shapes gives us both reassuring and troubling reasons as to why.