Austin Sound

In 2007, Daniel Shaetz charmed us with Clay Nightingale’s debut, The River and Then the Restless Wind. The debut was rife with an innocent nostalgia, which we declared a “fitting patchwork for an album that feels like an evening drive down Austin’s streets with the window rolled down, careless, joyful, and touched with the sentimentality of experiences even as they unfold.” Now the local sextet has finally returned with their sophomore effort, projecting a much tighter and coherent group sound, but retaining that same easy, amusingly mundane and detailed narrative style. Though conveying an attitude a little bit older, a little bit more restless and disillusioned, as the group riffs in the background on “Look Out Driver”: “the kids are still alright.”

Clay Nightingale is the project of San Marcos’ Daniel Shaetz – thankfully, because that would be a tough name for a kid to grow up with. But then Shaetz seems to take things in stride, especially on the group’s debut full-length. There is a strong sense of Wilco’s Being There days overlaying a playful lyricism, but, like Wilco, the easiness is hinged upon poignant moments arising from the heart of the songs. The album also encompasses a twenty-something aesthetic of living in central Texas, making the round of bars, humid hipster parties, tenuous relationships, and, of course, music played with a laid back informality of mellow late nights and drunken hoe-downs.