Austin Sound

2008 was a marathon year for Bill Baird and Sunset: Pink Clouds, Bright Blue Dream, and The Glowing City. These three full-length albums, each distinct iterations of Sunset’s characteristic sound, accounted for hours upon hours of music that no doubt took many more hours still to write and record. After a year of formalizing his band and establishing his new east side studio, Baby Blue, 2010 brings yet another new release in the Sunset catalog, Gold Dissolves To Gray. Tempting as it is to throw it up on the shelf with the earlier releases, much of the album serves as a re-imagining of Sunset’s sound as stripped down, comical at times, and all-together a more coherent album.

They say Mark David Ashworth left Austin a while ago for San Francisco, but we know that he really ended up tweaked out on some mysterious island. “The record is spinning again. We’re just not on the song we wanna be on!” Luckily Ashworth occasionally flashes back to Austin and still keeps his foot in the local scene with his connection to Autobus Records. We do wish he’d come back, though, especially after getting a taste of his sophomore album, Bright is the Ring of Words, which Autobus will release on February 23. Like his debut, Viceroy, the new album sounds gorgeously intimate, but bolstered by much grander arrangements. This is apparently the product the product of recording both in his small Mission District apartment and in the orchestra room of some middle school? It’s all so confusing! The song available for download below, “Sometimes it Turns Dry and the Leaves Fall Before They Are Beautiful,” is actually a William Carlos Williams poem that Ashworth set to music, so there’s that. The songwriter will reportedly be back in Austin for SXSW, but the album will have to suffice till then.

To look at Phosphorescent Blues as a mere expansion of the themes that made Brazos’ debut EP, A City Just As Tall, so successful might be the best critical approach, but it would hardly do justice to the completeness and solidarity that characterize the success of the new release as a true album. Suffice it to say then, if you liked A City Just As Tall, fear not - you’ll love Phosphorescent Blues. But give the album a chance to work new and different angles, like soft piano interludes and expanded attention to textures, and you’ll find the interplay of themes and textures, both lyrically and musically, are a stunning accomplishment unto their own.

There seems to be a general contention these days between the single and EP. We love that the single is making a comeback, especially in 7″ form as we get from Sunset and the Black below, but we have to continue to take issue with the idea of a three song EP. We’ll let our hangups over the issue of EP vs single slide with Leatherbag and Corto Maltese, though, as both are excellent and welcome offerings that compact their distinctive sounds into great releases. Leatherbag’s Everything I Once Knew encapsulates the range of styles that he has progressed through over the years, while the Corto Maltese’ Answer, Answer proves appropriately more polished than their much acclaimed demo while still retaining their unbridled edge. Okkervil River offers up a new song, “Millionaire,” on their single to The Stand Ins’s, “Pop Lie,” along with an alternate take on the song, and the recent 7″ vinyl releases from Sunset (Loveshines II) and the Black (Little Hits) are must have local singles.

The Glowing City, the new album from Bill Baird’s Sunset, is an ambitious sprawling tribute to psychedelic, prog, folk, and post-rock. Attributed to seven musicians plus another eighteen (twenty-one or more if you count Townes the Dog, the guy who recorded street traffic, and whomever played in the Tejano band on the radio next door to the studio), The Glowing City is filled with lush instrumentation and voices that appear from unlit corners. There’s a sense that maybe complete chaos is right around the bend when all these folks are allowed to get together.

At eighteen tracks and almost 80 minutes long, The Glowing City is a difficult album to digest in one or two listens. Like the best parts of Pink Floyd’s Atom Heart Mother and/or Obscured By Clouds with a dash of Sgt Pepper, Bowie, and Love, this album yields new gifts every listen as the nuances and influences are picked up and peeled away.

Martin Crane and Erik Wofford are Austin’s production dream team. These two masters at Cacophony Recorders could make even a high school ska band sound good. But for as much talent as there is behind the knobs and switches on this recording, there’s just as much talent on the business side of the microphones, compliments of Praveen Ayyagari, with some help from Crane and a few others, including members of White Denim and Tacks, The Boy Disaster. After listening to album after album of new music, it’s nice to sit back, relax and tap my foot along to Canopy’s first offering, a short, 5-song, laid-back (in a good way) EP called Canopy/Anopy.

The EP opens with clicks, hi-hat, toms, and Ayyagari’s airy vocals of “Neon Line,” sounding like the softer shades of Animal Collective or Grizzly Bear before melting into a chorus that layers on the reverb (which seems to have a “sublime” function). Ayyagari sings, “Life’s much harder when it hits you both ways,” trailing off into Crane’s equally compelling guitar. Ayyagri’s vocals trill in the higher register with a smooth if staccatoed lilt, following like a poppier version of Crane’s band Brazos.

Dreams are nothing like albums. Between the time we put head to pillow and the time we wake up to start whatever monotony the day has in store, we completely submit our consciousness to the will of our imagination. Dreams are highly introspective, at least in my experience. Both people close to me and people that I thought I’d forgotten long ago run amuck in my subconscious; what little “plot” I can discern from them is usually related to the things that are stressful in my life. And what’s more, you don’t have a choice! You’re asleep, and whatever dreams you get are the ones you’re stuck with. Ever tried to coerce your subconscious into a sex-dream? Doesn’t work, does it?

But albums, on the other hand, albums are almost none of these things, especially from the listening perspective (which, unless you’re Bill Baird, means you and me). Listening to an album is looking in on the consciously created artistic work of another, and it’s by your choice alone. But then there’s Bright Blue Dream. When an album drags you in with haunted vocals and harsh rhythms, keeps you at its mercy through 14-minute guitar explorations, and then releases you after an hour or so like a mid-afternoon nap, then you can’t help but feeling like maybe, just maybe, you were dreaming.

I have memories from my childhood of being conscripted into lawn care for my mother. Watering plants, picking up dog poop, and especially pulling weeds, all the things that lead to back problems in middle age. “Don’t pull out all of my flowers!” she’d say (flowers being crucial to the Neighborhood-wide “Lawn of The Month” award). An hour later she’d come back to inspect the work, “What are all these sunflowers doing here?” she’d ask. “They’re flowers,” I’d come back in their defense. It just seemed odd to me, to rip such a delicate little yellow flower right out of the ground. But where I saw flowers, she saw squatters, and she paid the allowance. So if you guessed that this is an allegorical story about The Weird Weeds and traditional popular music, then you guessed right. One man’s weed is another man’s flower, and one man’s nonsensical noise music is another man’s record collection.

In his first release post-Sound Team, Bill Baird has joined up with the artist conglomerate label Autobus to produce Pink Clouds, a limited edition 100 copy run cassette tape. Baird is also working on a new CD, currently entitled Bright Blue Dream, which should see release on Autobus in March.

To celebrate Pink Clouds, Baird will be heading west on a short tour, kicking off tonight at Beerland. Baird will be taking to the road with a full six piece band, and the shows will purportedly feature accompanying video that he has orchestrated into a full sensorial experience. Gulf of Mexico will also be playing at Beerland, making their debut with former Sound Team drummer, Jordan Johns.

Is there anything more interesting to consider than what an artist’s potential is? After all, with so much music being made these days the easiest way to break it down is to seek out those who appear to have bright futures. This way, with each effort they release there is at least some hope for improvement and new ideas, and not just the same music with different lyrics. Of course, along with this approach comes the inevitable disappointment in finding out that you latched onto an act that peaked with whatever attracted you to them to begin with. Then there are bands like Brazos, who shine with so much potential on a single release that you can’t decide if future outputs will be disasters or pure brilliance. This is where A City Just As Tall comes into play.