Austin Sound

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.

Here’s something weird: The Happen-Ins aren’t doing anything remotely new or innovative on their self titled debut album, yet somehow they seem like a fun fresh breath of air. Maybe it’s because the album features instructions for “things to consider before, during, and after listening to this record” – and those things, in the end, will apparently and assuredly result in “palpitations, perspirations, and motivations to stomp the floor”. Maybe it’s because The Happen-Ins just sound like they’re having fun playing old school rock and roll. Or maybe it’s because, along with having a sense of humor, swagger, and melody, The Happen-Ins play the music your parents (or, shit, grandparents in some of your cases) might have loved, but they don’t sound worn out like the grooves on a dusty old Creedence record. Their debut affair practically bursts from the speakers, with exuberance that is all too often missing from their peers’ recordings.

Legs Against Arms’ debut EP gives a glimpse at what we could see later this year with their first full-length release. With a title like Come On Let’s Disappear, you’re going to mine connotative thoughts of early decade alt-rock bands playing radio-friendly tunes and getting placement on crummy WB teen dramas. But Legs Against Arms manages to overstep such dubious prejudices despite the presence of cinematic crescendos and throaty, heart felt vocals — there’s something more bubbling below. It’s somewhere between the glassy, streamlined rock and roll of the EP’s first three tracks and the conclusive two-part epic of Disappear’s’s last two songs, “B.I.O.L.O.G.Y.” and “Paper Ships”.

Even the first second of the Paper Shapes’ debut, Shape Invasion, is a full-force wall of sound. Without warning or introduction guitars and bass sweep in for a non-stop frenzy for the entirety of the short EP, which falls under 15 minutes. Jaw-dropping, swift bass and guitar lines tangle together for an unrelenting solidity. The band’s talent is undeniable, it takes deft fingers to keep pace of the Paper Shapes’ guitar and bass, even if a lack of fresh elements give the EP a déjà vu feel.

On their debut album, The Bronze, Woodgrain does something good, possibly even very good. Exactly how to describe what that thing is, though, is nearly impossible. Lying somewhere between metal (this is a band that was chosen to open for The Sword on a half dozen or so tour dates) and a Brian Eno Moog-gasm, Woodgrain is relatively indescribable (other than maybe “repetitive” or “coma inducing” at times). There are times when “indescribable” means “horrible”, “awful” or “waste of sounds waves” – but not in the case of Woodgrain. The Bronze is a genuinely exciting and interesting album; it’s just hard to say what exactly is going on (perhaps the album art featuring a centaur astronaut carrying roses on the moon in front of a basketball hoop should have been an indicator).

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.

On 2009’s debut, …And Girls Club, the Strange Boys grape-vined through sixteen songs of unabashed, uninhibited, youthful garage rock. Their tunes wavered between alt-country, blues and R&B, and sultry lo-fi noodling — all maintaining the indiscernible trademark of front man Ryan Sambol’s cerebral, tongue-in-cheek whimsy. Critics applauded it and (a few) disliked it — all for the same reasons. The Strange Boys just didn’t seem to be playing by the rules.

For their latest offering, Be Brave acts like more of a mantra than a title track or album name for the Austin foursome. Where …And Girls Club had edge and swagger — perhaps even a decided indifference to perfection and professionalism — Be Brave has a more mellow and tame persona. This departure in sound and album aesthetic will definitely divide the room on whether the sophomore album was a step up or not.

For centuries, man has been looking to the stars for guidance and inspiration. While Austin’s Balmorhea may not need to cross the Atlantic with astrolabe in hand, the five-piece, in their fourth LP release Constellations, uses the heavens and the sea for a muse, crafting out of it a sparse and vast album far different than their previous musical outings. At once bare and beautiful, the band eschews the high-tech cosmos stereotypes of ‘space music,’ and opts instead for a more human, analog sound, capturing the essence of the cold void with the warm sounds of wood and sinew.

Dusting off the telescope lens, the first offering, “To the Order of Night,” is a slow and empty start. Gentle piano keys are left to ring out, alone, as ambient wood scratching noises of Travis Chapman’s upright bass creak and flutter like a film reel left spinning too long.

If it takes more than a decade to release your debut album, calling it a greatest hits collection isn’t necessarily a misnomer, right? In the case of Gleeson’s debut, The Very Very Best of Gleeson, the wait was more like fifteen years and, thankfully, it wasn’t for naught. Fifteen years ago, power-pop wasn’t exactly topping the charts and it still isn’t, but that’s really of no concern for Ty Chandler’s brainchild. While Chandler may have been sitting on Gleeson’s tunes for years, his other labor of love – Almost There Records – was putting out a steady stream of some of Austin’s best power-pop in the interim. After all, this is a guy (and label) that has gone so far as to host Big Star, Cheap Trick, Mott The Hoople, the Who, and the Kinks Hoot Nights. What did you expect his band’s album to sound like? Something other than mostly ridiculously catchy power-pop with an Austin-fried edge? Get real.

In 2008, local subdued psych quintet, the Able Sea released a self-titled debut of hushed pop songs that swayed in and out of focus like a ship on woozy, 1960s, coastal horizon. Their sound was comprised of disparate influences from folk, rock, and psychedelic camps alike all brought into a hazy fruition via the quasi-séance-like vocals of principal songwriting duo Alex Thompson and Robert Pearson. The album cover of the debut conjures a mysticism that lends itself to the kind of pondering one might do while looking out to an endless, sepia-toned sea — a nine-song coda for the very moment in time the picture was taken.

Enter 2009, and a follow-up sophomore album capriciously entitled the Able Sea II — a more straightforward picture of an ocean horizon with blue water white-capping underneath an even bluer sky donned on the cover. Judging by appearances, it looks like the Able Sea have made a departure in tone and timbre to a much cleaner and more focused (perhaps more pure) sound.