Austin Sound

The debut offering from the Whiskey Priest, Wave and Cloud, is an album for the patient and penitent. It’s slowly developing folk, established from the start with the over nine-minute long “A Seafarer’s Lament,” which crawls through an ambient backdrop left lingering and lost at sea. The project of Seth Woods (Sad Accordions; Zookeeper; Alex Dupree and the Trapdoor Band), the Whiskey Priest seems torn between impulses, which may account for his moniker. Pulling with a minimalist lull through the first five songs on the album – a murky drawl spun over gently repetitive guitar lines – the album finally jumps with some energy and excitement by the second half of the nearly hour long LP. Woods manages both aspects of his songwriting tendencies well, but they are also incongruous as presented, a problem of more overall pacing and tracklisting that distracts from the quality of the songs rather than enhancing it.

In the words of David Allan Coe: “What the hell’s happenin’, Jesus Christ?, Ain’t there nothin’ sacred no more?” For the Beaumonts, “no more” doesn’t even register, because it’s pretty clear from the Lubbock quintet’s third studio LP that there was nothing sacred to begin with. Over the thirteen songs that the country mockers offer up, there are moments of bestiality, domestic violence, incest and sex in every lewdly possible configuration and situation, church burning, and, of course, drinkin’, drinkin’, and more drinkin’ (with a healthy dose of weed and speed thrown in). Yet as opener “Say What You Want” declares: “You can say what you want to about me, but I never gave my husband Chlamydia.” Fair enough. .

“Get Haunted.” It’s a helluva an imperative for a debut LP, and one that that’s not entirely misdirected. For the Authors, it certainly seems less an invitation than a demand, a necessity. For listeners, it’s a useful point of entry for digging into the sound the local quartet excavates. In retrospect, the Authors 2009 debut EP is a fitting build up to their initial full-length – that disc delivered heavy on potential but was somewhat quelled by both a want of edge and focus. Those are certainly not problems for Get Haunted, but chasing ghosts opens an entirely different sort of challenges. And there are a lot of ghosts swirling throughout the album, flashpoints in sound that make the Authors’ seem eerily familiar, yet still uncannily unique.

Through The Trees’ debut, Dig It Up, is a startlingly audacious ten-song career-opening salvo fired right across the bow. After taking stock of their influences and history – Ben McCormack (vocals/guitars/piano/etc) and Will Tanner (bass/percussion) played together in The Stags, McCormack in a variety of bands ranging from jam to garage band, Rob Jasinski drummed for the long departed garage and hip shaking The Good Looks – Dig It Up is even more disarming. Given where the trio came from, the resulting alt rock as played by late 70s classic rock fans isn’t completely surprising, but it seems refreshingly welcome. Pile on the fact that the band was practically born in the stale beer afternoons at the Hole in the Wall – Tanner owns it, McCormack books it, and Jasinski owns Cream Vintage next door – and one might expect an album of shambling, sloppy burners. Instead, Through The Trees wind up generally soaring through some fifty minutes of majestic rock and roll.

Like so many first albums before it, Smashed, The Blind Pets’ self released debut, is an admirable stab at rock immortality that comes up short while providing a quite a few glimpses at a promising future. Like the image inside the gatefold and printed directly on the disc, Smashed is a fractured record; at times, the band riffs, solos, and shreds its way out of the mundane and slices a mighty groove. Other times, the band freaks out into metallic spasms, seemingly intended to flip their audiences’ ears into a completely different direction. Just because a young band hasn’t quite put it all together yet on their first try doesn’t mean The Blind Pets should be dismissed. On the contrary, it just means listeners will have to work a little harder to find the hidden gems on the record.

Following up their full-of-promise inaugural EP from last year, Hollywood Gossip’s debut full-length finds the band exactly where you would hope to find them. Dear as Diamonds displays an impressive leap in sonic maturity. Whereas You’re So Quiet was a pop purist’s delight, propelled by tunes like “Bicycle” and “Something’s Happening,” Dear as Diamond manages to rock a little more and strike a more reflective tone, but without losing that pop sheen. In progression, the album and band at this point are reminiscent of fellow local pop prospects the Sour Notes. The swooning vocal dives, the jangled guitars, and kick-stepped pep of percussion all feel wonderfully familiar and comfortable, yet surprising moments continually drive the quartet into some impressive new territories.

What Made Milwaukee Famous, aside from its cheeky name, is quietly recognized as one of the most notorious indie rock bands of the last decade to come from Austin, or anywhere for that matter. They toured with indie icons like the National, had placement on national television, and were regular and much anticipated faces on the summer festival circuit. Yet despite getting all the appropriate breaks, they still never have managed to gain significant traction. But with such a regal, indie pedigree, it makes sense that Drew Patrizi’s solo endeavor of his own stockpiled material from the last couple years — which has donned the name Trumpeter Swan — would take the power-pop, crank-the-stereo idioms that defined WMMF’s visceral and heartfelt rock to the next level. Patrizi, in his solo effort, has opted for chamber-pop and studio acrobatics to produce an emotive and lush record, comparable in emotional scope to any of his previous group’s pursuits.

For most people, there’s maybe a five point completely non-descriptive spectrum for rating an album “Awesome, Good, Ok, Not-So-Good, Turd”. With Indian Jewelry’s Totaled, there probably should be a sixth super descriptive option: “What the hell” (followed either by a series of exclamation points, possibly exclamation points and question marks, just question marks, or perhaps a single solitary period).

The new full-length album by the Houston noise gang is somewhere between completely confounding, disturbing, and unlistenable yet listenable. At first listen, Totaled comes across as the loose watery beer bowel movement of a bunch of Reznor-cum-Curtis fans, particularly on “Oceans” and “Look Alive”: just industrial and clanky enough for the former, just morose and despondent for the latter.

Leatherbag’s Randy Reynolds has never shied away from his influences, highlighting them and pushing them to the fore even as he transforms them into his own style. That certainly remains the case with Hey Day, Leatherbag’s third LP and follow up to last year’s two excellent EPs, Tomorrow and Everything I Once Knew. The album sets its tone and conscience with lead-off track “Start All Over Again,” opening with a hefty bassline that sounds lifted straight from the Feelies’ “It’s Only Life” and Reynolds chiming in with lines like “It’s time for you to come full circle, and start all over again.” As Leatherbag continues to - by his own accord - resurface the aesthetic of Austin’s Eighties New Sincerity, he seems to do so as a brace against the mercurial fads of fleeting scenes, proposing with this Neo Sincerity is something that doesn’t purport to be timeless, but that it is above all genuine in its constant evolution as a work in progress. So when Reynolds calls on the opener “recognize that the past is still fiction,” it’s not a statement of trying to break from the past as much as not be bound and beholden to it, which would apply equally to Hey Day’s relationship to the present.

Someday Parish, the new project from Austin songwriter/folkster and McMercy Family Band member Ted Hadji, teeters dangerously on the line between subliminally spiritual folk rock, and Christian Americana. As a reviewer and connoisseur of modern trends in music, I don’t really have a high tolerance for the submissive and servile nature of Christian rock. To me, it seems less like art and more like trying to pander religion to a younger crowd that doesn’t really respond to the whole hymnal, mass/service tradition — but there are always exceptions to every rule. Hadji sidesteps many of those inclinations by taking momentary vacations from his religious focus to dwell on his own personal life, though it may not be enough.