Austin Sound

This weekend, the Black Angels will present Psych Fest 2 at the Radio Room (formerly Bourbon Rocks on Sixth St.). Though only the Fest’s second incarnation, it has already blossomed into a three day event with over 30 bands, including headliners A Place to Bury Strangers, Sky Sunlight Saxon of the Seeds, and locals the Golden Dawn performing their 1968 psych classic, Power Plant. And of course, the Black Angels and scores of other fantastic Austin bands will be joining in on the fun. We talked to Angel’s guitarist Christian Bland earlier this week as he made preparations at the Radio Room, asking him about the past year’s experience teaming up with Roky Erickson (with whom they’ll be playing at the Austin Music Awards), the current psych scene, and the band’s plans for the Fest in the future. Psych Fest starts this Friday, March 13.

There’s something about discussing music over beer that always rides a fine line between pretension and authenticity. Among friends, bare bones honesty surfaces, and we can delve into the meat of albums circulating in these days of plentiful “indie” pop rock bands. Though there’s a dearth that’s worth a mention, fewer deserve a full play on your iPod.

Austin-via-Athens, Ohio five-piece The Story Of is part of that shiny minority, and migrating southwest 4 years ago brought their creative core closer to the fore. Candid, punchy and playful, they’re respectful of each other, as close friends always are, and though their dynamic isn’t uncommon, it nicely compliments the mélange of poppy, bright, sometimes spatial, sometimes somber rock they’ve made since 2002.

PRESENTING THE 2008 SAMMIES

Greetings from the ever soggy, though otherwise climatically inconsistent city of Houston. You know, we, the editors of The Skyline Network, know we have a responsibility not just to make up new words and tell people what the hottest new dice is, we also should participate in some sort of feedback loop wherein we ask our readers what some of their tite mite be. That’s why, every year since 2007, we’ve organized The Sammy Awards, recognizing 713/281/832 favorites among our exceptionally good looking audience. We give them the categories, they give us the votes, we give the winners Certificates of Achievement that we found at the dollar store. And while more of them were thrown in the firepit at the awards party than actually made it out the door (at least one now hangs in the venue’s rest room), it’s our way of saying thanks for the memories. This year, as an added bonus, we were able to assemble a notable cast of notables to provide Special Comments on the winners. We’re very Pine Belt about all this. Without further ado we present The Sammies.

This month in our ongoing blog swap with Dallas-based blog We Shot JR and Houston’s The Skyline Network, we check back in with WSJR who delivers an awesome mix of North Texas oldies in a new series they’ve started up. Below you’ll find 13 tracks for download from artists ranging from Plastic Idols and Telefones to Skuds and Nervebreakers, songs that have slipped through the cracks and been gratefully recovered for your enjoyment. Follow the link on each title to download the song. This will be a continuing series on We Shot Jr., so be sure to check in on their blog regularly for more great music from the archives, as well as the best of what’s going on with our northern neighbors. And keep up to date on Houston’s scene with Skyline!

This Saturday, the Lions return to their home base at Trophy’s for the re-release of last year’s onslaught, No Generation, in what is sure to be a killer throwdown of a show. We took the opportunity to speak with head Lion Matt Drenik about their success in 2008, which included opening tours with the Toadies, signing with management firm Uppercut, and getting songs placed in everything from the TV shows “Californication” and “Sons of Anarchy” to “Guitar Hero.” Next month the quartet, which now features brand new bass player Mike Sellman, will head to LA to record their next album with Matt Hyde, and are planning to finally hit a European tour in the Spring. Helping the Lions rip off the roof of Trophy’s on December 13 are Local H and the Blind Pets.

This month in our Outside Austin blogswap, we hear from the Skyline Network in Houston, who tunes us in to the corrosive potentials of Rusted Shut’s new EP, Hot Sex. Outside Austin is a new monthly feature in which we check in with two of our favorite Texas blogs to hear what’s hot in their scenes, with the Skyline Network reporting from Houston and We Shot JR keeping us up to date on the Dallas/Ft. Worth scene. Be sure to check out their sites to stay on top of what’s happening, because the music don’t stop at Austin City limits! Rusted Shut will be unloading at the Beauty Bar here in Austin this Saturday, November 15.

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.