Austin Sound

There were a lot of Texas artists that received Grammy nominations this year, but we’re most excited to see Pinetop Perkins return to the list after winning last year and local Latin favorites Grupo Fantasma get a nod for Best Latin Rock Or Alternative Album for Sonidos Gold! Pinetop is up for Best Traditional Blues Album for Pinetop Perkins & Friends, and Marcia Ball also gets some recognition under Best Contemporary Blues Album with Peace, Love & BBQ. Check out all the Texas related artists among the Grammy Nominees below (list courtesy of the Texas Music Office). The 51st annual Grammy Awards will be held on Feb. 8, 2009.

Yeah, we like to think that Austin is the center of the musical universe, in Texas if not the entire world, but we also know that a lot of good stuff floats in from Houston and Dallas as well. Now is your chance to show those out-of-towners some support as both the Houston Press and Dallas Observer are holding their annual music polls. Unfortunately, it looks like the HP insists on nominating the bands you can vote for, but UGK will likely sweep anyway.

Local music channel METV has announced their nominees for this year’s Viewers Choice awards, allowing fans to pick their favorite Austin videos from the past year. There are three categories with 15 nominees in each, including some great videos we haven’t seen. The categories are for Best Austin Video, Best Studio performance, and Best ME Live performance.

What’s more, voters have a chance to win tons of cool stuff, including a 42″ Flat Screen TV! You can check out all the videos and performances, and cast your vote at www.metelevision.com/awards.

The ballots for this year’s Plug Independent Music Awards are up and once again a number of Austin Bands are represented. The 2008 winners will be announced at the March 6 show in New York, and internet voting for fans lasts until February - so in the true democratic spirit, vote early and often.

This year’s local nominees include Spoon for best album with Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, which also gets a nod for best indie album alongside Okkervil River’s The Stage Names. Dallas’ St. Vincent (aka Annie Clark) comes up with nominations for both New Artist and Female Artist of the Year, as well as Video of the Year for “Jesus Saves, I Spend,” while new Dripping Springs resident Sam Beam is up for Male Artist of the Year and Americana Album for Iron and Wine’s The Shepherd’s Dog.

7/16/07
Since 2002, the Indie Music Video Festival has been doing their damnedest to preserve the art of the music video (because MTV has long given up on that racket). So every year, the Festival chooses their favorite independent music videos and sets out on a tour to crown the best one, and 2007 has two Austin entries among the finalists.

Not surprisingly, the Octopus Project’s gerbil approved vid for “Music is Happiness” made the list, just as it did for SXSW’s Music Video nominees. Also making the top contenders though, was Beta Valentine’s fantastic “Curse of the Midnight Idol,” the lead track from their 2005 album The Proposition.

2/11/07
Although the Grammy’s are tonight, Austin Sound was much more interested in the Plug Awards on Saturday night. A few Austin bands made the nominations – Voxtrot, The Black Angels, The Sword, Chosen Darkness, and Alejandro Escovedo – as well Waterloo Records and Emo’s. But alas, the award brought back to Austin this year went to SXSW for best music festival.

Still, we’re pretty satisfied with the results (with the exception of the Arctic Monkeys as New Artist of the Year - ouch). And although Yo La Tengo’s latest is good, it’s certainly not their best work nor as good as some of the other Indie Rock Album nominees. But we were pretty excited to see Band of Horses’ Everything All the Time take down Album of the Year. By far one of the best releases (and debuts!) of last year, it seemed to be a bit hidden on a lot of year-end best-of lists. The fans clearly hadn’t forgotten though.

[Ed. correction: The Chronicle Poll ends next Wednesday on the 31st]

Entries for the 2006-07 Austin Chronicle music poll and awards are due by this Thursday January 25, so if you haven’t yet voted, be sure to do so by then. Austin Sound’s writers and photographers spent the past week arguing back and forth over our choices for the poll and own best-of recognitions. In the end, we tried to spread out the love, so you won’t see many repeats on the list below. It would have been easy to just let Ghostland Observatory run away with everything, but we just named them Band of the Year and left it at that.

To get an idea of our extremely rigorous and scientific criteria for dolling out our final critics’ picks, it’s a combination of the success of the artist this year and our own love for their music. We also diverged a bit from the Chronicle’s poll, adding Best DVD and Local Blog to the list below, as well as reinstating the Chronicle’s original category of Best Music Critic.

Dallas’ Radiant, who, as we previously reported, won the title of best unsigned band in the nation in a contest sponsored by Pontiac and Jimmy Kimmel Live, have been posting some reports of their exploits in NYC. The group performed live in Times Square on New Year’s Eve, had some recording time set up at Electric Lady Studios and then, last night, had their performance shown on Jimmy Kimmel Live (which we guess means it wasn’t really live).

When the group headed to the Big Apple, they also took along Austin actress and youtube filmmaker Sedreana Saldana to record the entire thing. The result is the 8 minute documentary that follows the group up and back. The comments on the youtube page insist that the band is actually much cooler than the film makes them out to be – and we hope so. It’s a good thing that the music career is taking off, because the acting isn’t really that hot.

1/8/07
Now’s the time of year when you, oh discriminating music aficionados of Austin, let your voices be heard! The 2006-07 Austin Chronicle Music Poll is officially open for the voting with added categories for best indie band and best local label. We know you have an opinion – you can’t live in this town and not have an idea or two about “good” music, so lay it down here.

Last year Spoon came away the big winner, taking down band, song and album of the year. We don’t think anyone will be quite as dominant this year, though Ghostland Observatory should win something for their breakout successes this year. You should also know that the tabulators go to stringent efforts to prevent stuffing the ballot box, though nothing beats good old grassroots campaigning anyway - unless it’s being a contestant on Rock Star: Supernova, which then might land you on the Hall of Fame ballot.

12/29/06
With the release of this year’s full length We Hope You Win, the Dallas group Radiant seemed to be making a statement about being an unsigned band – mainly that just because a major label hasn’t come calling doesn’t mean you’re confined to the standard indie sound. Voted 2004’s best new band by the Dallas Observer, fans have been expecting big things from the group since 2003’s The Sound of Splitting Atoms EP. The result of their latest is a highly polished and orchestrated set that seems to echo standard radio-rock like Coldplay or the Killers, but with the punch of classic U2 that left everyone wondering why nobody has seemed to recognize the band. That is likely to no longer be a problem after this weekend.