Austin Sound

This week we are excited to debut a new monthly feature with help from our friends at the Dallas/Ft. Worth blog We Shot JR and Houston’s the Skyline Network that offers some incite into what’s hot in their hometowns right now. We Shot JR takes the pulse of the North Texas scene better than any publication around, and the Skyline Network consistently uncovers the best of Houston before it breaks. Each month, Austin Sound will alternate checking in with each to see what bands are making waves in their neighborhoods and that we in Austin should be on the lookout for. In our first installment, We Shot Jr. offers up four local bands that have recently impressed them: Darktown Strutters, Bad Sports, Sunnybrook, and Febrifuge. Next month, we’ll check in with the Skyline Network to see what’s turning heads in Houston, but we recommend you keep up with both sites for the best that those towns have to offer.

I’ve been stealing online music for so long that I barely know how to buy it anymore. That’s not my fault, though — the stuff is just out there, low-hanging fruit waiting to be plucked. Just put the name of any album and the word “blogspot” into a search engine and you’ll likely find a bunch of sites with whole album files uploaded to each one, ready for you to suck onto your hard drive with a quick, digital, slurp. Until, that is, the site gets shut down by the music industry, or you get sued for perusing the site’s wares, or your ISP starts charging extra for hogging everyone else’s bandwidth. Or all three.

However, not all blogspot sites are the same. Some of the best (and potentially most legally defensible) are those that host MP3 audio streams of obscure vinyl recordings that are either out of copyright or long out of print.

It’s taken Shawn Jones of The Lovely Sparrows nearly two years to craft an album worthy of following up the EP that completely redefined the band’s sound in 2006, Pulling Up Floors, Pouring On (New) Paint. The new album, titled Bury The Cynics, is more expansive, both musically and lyrically, than its predecessor, but its writing was marred by its own set of problems, including the theft of a laptop containing most of the demos. Now on the brink of the album’s release, we sat down with Shawn Jones to talk about the new album, the state of the band, his view on the local scene, hipsters, swing music and, most importantly, to reprimand him for his lengthy absence.

If you follow the Austin music scene pretty closely you may have already noticed one line keeps popping up over and over in liner notes: “Recorded by Erik Wofford at Cacophony Recorders.” Wofford’s fingerprints are on some of the best records coming out of Austin recently - The Black Angels, What Made Milwaukee Famous, Explosions In The Sky, Voxtrot, Brothers And Sisters, The Octopus Project, Zykos, and dozens more. His records are starting to be recognized for their unique aesthetic - a vintage rock sound, often awash in natural reverb. That natural reverb is a result of Cacophony’s recording space, a beautiful loft on Austin’s east side with 28 foot ceilings and a view of the lake. I had the pleasure of sitting down with Erik Wofford a few weeks ago to discuss his philosophy on recording and a few of the details of how things work at Cacophony Recorders.

Jacob Green has a touch of the synaesthesia. He is a music maker with a visual mind, and light and color bleeds into melody and timbre whenever he sets out to create.

Green is a local musician and composer, a member of experimental ensembles Brekekekexkoaxkoax and Austin New Music Co-op, and a tender of records at End of an Ear. Sunday night, July 27, at the Salvage Vanguard Theater, the Church of the Friendly Ghost presented a program of improvised projections and sound according to Green’s creative direction and vision.

Hello Lovers is one of the most unique groups in Austin. Behind John King’s volatile, swooning moans that pitch in gritty, operatic swells atop lush strings, Hello Lovers melds Antony’s passionate croon with Scott Walker’s dark orchestral visions, cut with a southern flair. Last year’s debut EP, Vanity Fair, was an unsettling yet graceful baroque construction, and their new full-length, Gone With the Wind, proves even more impressive as the group has come together into a dramatic force of strings and piano. Hello Lovers will be releasing the CD this Thursday, July 17 at the Mohawk, and we spoke to the band about the origins of their stunning sound and the making of the new album.

To get the “inside scoop,” as we professional reporters say, on the new Sunset album The Glowing City (which is due July 15th on Autobus Records) I emailed Bill Baird asking him if he wouldn’t mind talking about it with me. He agreed, and suggested we do the interview on Google Chat. Unsure of which emoticons most accurately reflected the professional aura of seriousness I maintain when conducting all my interviews, I was at first hesitant, but reluctantly assented. So late one night, after we had each returned home from work (and made a stop by the refrigerator), Bill Baird and I met in “cyberspace” to talk about the two latest Sunset albums, Baird’s lyrical influences, thunderstorms and more. What resulted was, naturally, something of a disaster.

This month, the Charles Potts Magic Windmill band released their sophomore LP, The Golden Calves. Like most of their work, The Golden Calves carries a biting wit that balances the narratives between irony and sincerity, emphasized by the group’s impressively tight, dead-pan harmonies. With the now-sextet adding drums and more power to their live sound, the Windmill Band expertly pushes boundaries of both genre and taste with their famously self-described “New York City style experimental country.” We spoke with Windmill Band founders Dirk Michener and Travis Catsull for an expectedly tongue-in-cheek explanation of their sound, the band’s origins, the organization of Business Deal Records, and the wonders of sleeping in ditches and cars.

This Thursday, Shearwater unveils their new album, Rook, at the Parish in a special show featuring a mini orchestra and video projections. The group’s official debut on Matador, which will be released next week, is Shearwater’s most impressive effort to date, harnessing both the crescendoing power and subtle beauty of Jonathan Meiburg’s songwriting and vocal range. We spoke with Meiburg about the upcoming show and album, as well as his recent decision to leave Okkervil River, the preponderancies of modern geography, and the fact that “there’s nothing worse than the sad cello.”

Aliens is perhaps the most unique band in Austin, at least in terms of not quite fitting in with the “scene,” so it is somewhat ironic that Aliens and Misc. Music mastermind Blake Sandberg and I are sitting in the interview capital of the city - Spider House. Since moving to Austin from New York, Sandberg has started the Misc. Music label, which boasts such extraordinary and off kilter talents as Daniel Johnston, Jad Fair, and, of course, Aliens, who recently released their excellent debut LP, Head First. Crammed into a secluded booth in a corner of the coffee house, Sandberg shares his ideas on the nature of “genre labels,” the exclusivity of “the Austin sound,” radio commercials and, most importantly, Aliens.