Austin Sound

Building on the chemistry achieved with their former project, The Story Of, Alex Huff, David McCully, and Michael Brennan teamed with drummer Brian Bolek to create Melogrand earlier this year, and already with a 7″ under their belt, the quartet’s melodic pop has been garnering deserved attention down Red River. While maintaining some of the expansive elements that defined The Story Of’s direction, Melogrand smooths the edges with a tighter focus and Brit-pop touch that can still drift into extensive psych-laced digressions, especially live. The band’s debut LP will be released later this year, and looks already to be one the year’s best local premiers. Melogrand will be joining the giant Red River Rocks party this Saturday, August 28, at the Mohawk, which features three stages of bands and DJs including Dead Confederate, Hacienda, Futurebirds, The Eastern Sea, Frank Smith, The Noise Revival Orchestra, The Mercers, Booher and the Turkeyz, The Georgian Company, ZEALE, Freshmillions, Ume, Built By Snow, The Pons, Stereo is a Lie, The Boxing Lesson, Red Falcon, Young Girls, My Education, Team Fabrication, and much more. The party kicks off at 2:00pm.

The Hex Dispensers are brash, bristling, and a burst of unrivaled garage punk energy and intensity. True to their name, however, the quartet are equally as about dispelling the seriousness of their edge with smart but often irreverent shocks of blazing chords and infectiously riotous odes to the otherworldly underbelly and outcasts. The band’s sophomore album, Winchester Mystery House, was released last year courtesy of Douchmaster Records, and they just unloaded a new ghostly single 7″ on Trouble In Mind, featuring a surprising ballad and cover of Denton-based Occult Detective Club’s “I’m a Ghost.” You can watch the Hex Dispensers work their black magic this Saturday, August 7, at Emo’s, as they join a stellar lineup of the Royal Baths, Moonhearts, a Giant Dog and headliner Ty Segall.

The Crack Pipes are an Austin institution, ripping up Red River for the past 15 years. The quintet pummels out a garage blues that is unleashed with a punk catharsis and soulful swagger. It’s an impressive melding of styles that actually justifies their wide range of influences listed below (from Stax to SST). Though it’s been a while since the Pipes smoked out a new recording, their return to the stage in 2008 following guitarist Billy Steve Korpi’s diagnosis with Leukemia has helped brace the upstart Austin garage scene with a sense of the mid-Nineties tradition that preceded it. Few things match the Crack Pipes fervent energy onstage, led by the manic sermonizing of frontman Ray Pride, which you can get a taste of with the classic “Q&A” for download below. The Crack Pipes will taking over Emo’s Inside this Saturday, July 24, along with John Schooley and His One Man Band, and with the legendary Delta bluesman T-Model Ford headlining.

When Candi and the Strangers released their eponymous debut album last winter, it was a surprising rush of rich, throbbing textures coursing around the ethereally entrancing vocals of Samantha Constant. There are flashes of Stereolab-esque, Euro electro-pop, but the most impressive elements of the local quintet’s sound emerge from the intricate melding of varied and complex arrangements into such seamless pop tunes, at once dense and airy. The band is planning on releasing their second album this fall, and you can watch them bring the sound to life with their recently added visuals at the Mohawk this Friday, July 16, as they join the lineup for the From the Mind of Adi” series for an Art/Fashion/Music Extravaganza benefiting HAAM. Also playing amid the spectacular are the Happen-Ins and the Bubbles.

Soft Healer can be somewhat deceptive. At their core, the local quartet lays down swanky, retro R&B and soul grooves, bronzed by indelible bass lines and subtly throbbing beats, and punctuated by sharp guitar jolts and smooth sax. The sultry and swaying vocals of Marie Butcher tie it all together, bending like smoke through the barroom and rising in powerful sweeps that falls between Dusty Springfield and Cat Power. Yet atop their underlying pop touch, the band can also turn intimidating psychedelic flourishes with a cathartic edge, which helps account for their bill this Friday at Emo’s with local psych droners Headdress and L.A.’s Pocahaunted. Soft Healer released their debut 7″ earlier this year on Captured Tracks, from which you can download “Gentle One” below, and will have a 10″ one-sider coming out on Monofonus later this summer. Expect their debut LP from Captured Tracks soon as well, but catch them first this Friday, June 25th, at Emo’s.

Austin has seen a number of solid orchestral pop and rock outfits in recent years, but perhaps none have created more buzz than Mother Falcon. The young group, which boasts around 20 given members, wowed the crowd at SXSW when they were given the opportunity to play the Austin Music Awards, but they have been equally swelling huge crowds along Red River as well. Their debut EP, Still Life, is an amazing example of expansive and intricately arranged movements carved into pristine and concise pop. Strings dominate and dance behind the emotive vocal turns, balancing the distinctive croon of Tamir Kalifa against harmonies between Nick Gregg and Claire Puckett. While the band’s album is mesmerizing (and they are planning on recording a full-length later this year), they are best beheld in their sprawling live sets. You can do just that this Sunday, May 23, as they play the aftershow for Of Montreal at the Mohawk. In other words, plan to stick around.

Literature produces a blast of unfettered, jangled proto-punk raucousness, cut with deliciously lo-fi garage playfulness touched off by the sound of the Modern Lovers. Behind Nathaniel Cardaci’s lyrical wit and onstage mania, the quartet is equally capably of compelling pop gems-in-the-rough and shots of fevered energy, bolstered by guitar from MothFight’s Kevin Attics and bass courtesy of local tape-and-vinyl label Natrix Natrix impresario Seth Whaland. Last year, Literature put out their debut, Hello Berlin on cassette, which recently just got a second run from Voice Academy and Dead Format. They are also the first band to turn the tables on us with their own interview in their awesome Sound Off below. Literature will be open for interpretation this Saturday, May 15, as they blow out Beerland with the Beets, Ringo Deathstar, and Yellow Fever. Get a taste with the track “It’s Cruel” for download.

Surging originally out of San Antonio, Hacienda’s indelible retro pop masterpieces have landed them in good company the past couple years. Most notably, the Villanueva brothers and cousin Dante Schwebel (who takes the lead in answering our profile questions) have served as the backing band for Dan Auerbach’s solo work, but it’s their own tunes that have merited the majority of their much deserved national attention. Cutting Beach Boys harmonies with a suave touch of Tex-Mex rock on par with the Sir Douglas Quintet, Hacienda’s 2008 debut, Loud is the Night delivered a flash of Sixties style that explodes live. This month, the quartet returns with their followup, Big Red and Barbacoa, which you can get a preview of with the song “I Keep Waiting” for download below. Hacienda will be hitting Antone’s this Saturday, April 17, with an awesome local lineup of the Heartless Bastards headlining and Leatherbag opening the night.

For the past few weeks, Western Ghost House has been running the west coast with Crooks, but their tour ends at the Mohawk this Sunday, March 7. Western Ghost House first captured our attention last year with their live show, and now with an EP and couple of good tours under their belt, have congealed into a local band to watch in 2010. While their songs can kick with hard-lined, dark alt. country vibe, their unbridled bursts and Jesse Pantoja breathless, Dan Bejar-esque vocals have taken the band in much a much more convincingly indie direction. The quartet is preparing the release of their debut LP for this summer, and you check out their new road-tested tunes March 7 at the Mohawk for a welcome home show along with Woodsboss and Crooks.

Deadman don’t as much riff off their influences as revel in them, unloading songs saturated in the Seventies folk rock of the Band and the Flying Burrito Brothers. Yet few artists can deliver that sound with as much authenticity and their own songwriting prowess as Steven Collins, who has built Deadman into a formidable outfit over the past couple of years. Though Collins’ songs often wrangle with heavy themes like faith and doubt, loss and redemption, they’re always set within a familiar, easy flowing sound lifts well beyond their subjects. Following up 2008’s excellent Severe Mercy, the band has a new extended single of “Take Your Mat Up and Walk” available to set the stage for the upcoming album by the same name. You can download one of the versions of the single below, and also catch Deadman this Thursday, February 25, as they take a turn at the Sessions showcase at the Hideout Theatre. They also hold down a residency at the Saxon Pub every Tuesday night, so you have plenty of chances to check them out.