Austin Sound

On their sophomore LP, Candi and The Strangers jives out powdery synth-pop blended with muted disco and causes one to beg, “More Moog.” 10th of Always purveys movement through space, and its done remarkably well through fleshly synthetic melodies and vibrantly blurred rhythms. Because of all the dripping fuzz and boomeranging reverb on 10th of Always it’s hard to know whether Samantha Constant is saying ‘glide’ or ‘dive.’ But somehow it doesn’t matter. Part of the fun of the album is the ambience, and part of the ambience is traveling on a space ship or Milky Way vessel, as the Strangers beckon, “welcome to my dream, relax and float downstream.” The album is true mood music — much like Al Green or Radiohead — it changes the tone of a room. After succumbing to it, the listener buys into a new world of possibility. At times the album is uncannily reflective of shoegaze greats while simultaneously referencing pop culture icons like Nico and Candy Darling. These retro-familiar elements paired with a coded musical and vocal rhetoric craft an album that is otherworldly but altogether mellow mosh crowd ready.

There is some baggage tucked into Oh No Oh My’s body of work. The console is full of a slew of television commercials; the glove compartment, a contest for a Mr. Gatti’s jingle; and in the trunk, the band’s own take on their latest album. People Problems is a causeway of sophisticated indie-pop awash with ever-unfolding beauty, struggle, and tension, yet in interviews with the band, the songs on the album are simply about “slitting a girl’s throat” or “going crazy”. Here Oh No Oh My faces the near-impossible task of crafting something commercial out of material that is inherently challenging, like finding one’s place in the world or death or relationships - topics that abound within People Problems’ palette. Problems shoves the band into a new era. Though the quartet resorts to its characteristic shock-factor appeal at times, Oh No Oh My fails to undermine the complexity of its music. On their second full-length, lyricists and multi-instramentalists Greg Barkley and Daniel Hoxmeier, drummer Joel Calvin, and keyboardist Tim Regan stand unflinching and People Problems finds the band sufficient in and of its music. The album, mixed at Spoon’s recording house Public Hi-Fi, is full of impressive guest appearances including Scott Brackett’s (Okkervil River) lovely trumpet and Miranda Brown of Crooked Fingers. Even still, it’s the band’s carefully constructed rises and falls — its core of opposing traffic — that gives Problems life.

Chris Brecht and Dead Flowers second album and follow-up to 2008’s
The Great Ride, leads the listener through a musty corridor with a flashlight, opens a door and flips a switch to reveal stained floral curtains and yellowing lampshades. Slowly, with every listen, the curtains swish and the lampshades crack revealing the deliberate and delicate lace-like arrangements of the room: the Wurlitzer’s exacting pulse, the pedal steel’s reckless extension, the vocals’ penetrating reverberations. The assumption of what one thinks Motel is shrivels and falls off, and a song called “Living Twice as Hard” isn’t just a cliché for the grief and befalls of reckless living. Dead Flower Motel betters with each listen, revealing unseen turns and crevices. But like all motels, it is embedded with a sense of impermanence and the moments of revelation are constantly fleeting too fast.