Austin Sound

Perhaps no one has their ear better tuned to Austin’s indie scene than Dániel Perlaky. As head of Indierect Records, Perlaky has been among the first to recognize the talent and help promote such seminal Austin acts The Arm, Ghostland Obervatory, and current label signees Belaire and Lomita. Indierect has established itself as a cornerstone of Austin’s labels and Perlaky has become a force in his own right in helping to direct increasing attention to local artists through projects like his annual SXSW publication The Austin Independent. His answers below are some of the most elucidating we’ve received on the current state of running a small label and Austin’s music scene. For more information on the label and Indierect artists, you can check out their website at www.indierect.com

Belaire’s long awaited debut full-length, Exploding, Impacting is a bit misleading on a couple of fronts. One might expect some affinity to Voxtrot, considering that half the band (Matt Simon and Jason Chronis) pulls double duty for both Austin acts. But the opening track should immediately quell any of those expectations – this is clearly a different project, primarily fueled by twin twee powerhouses Cari and Christa Palazzolo. These opening tracks also provide another act of misdirection as Exploding, Impacting takes some interesting turns in 38 minutes and 18 seconds. After “Jen,” an instrumental intro, the first few tracks are pure and delicious candy. “You Really Got Me Goin’” floats with airy “aahhs” of harmony behind Cari’s punctuated verses, while the title track, the best of these, is an up-beat, put-the-windows-down song. But these first songs are not the whole story.

Not very long ago in these pages I touted Lomita as Austin’s next “It band,” inheriting (I argued) the mantle previously held by What Made Milwaukee Famous, Trail of Dead, Kissinger, and Spoon. I did so, at least in part, on the basis of an emerging psychedelic country gestalt in Austin, with Lomita at its center. Downtown Mystic, on both counts - the socio-musical quality as well as their centrality to the Austin Space Country scene - unfortunately leaves a shaken and uncertain jury.

DISCLAIMER: This AustinSound writer has no personal connection to Lomita. He has never met them, their friends, relatives, or asssociates, to his knowledge. Dan McGonigle’s girlfriend is not his cousin’s ex-roommate, as far as he knows. He has no reason to wish them personal good or ill, except insofar as he maintains this site’s general and intense commitment to Truth, Honor, and the American Way.

In preparation for writing these reviews, I like to listen to the album in as many different circumstances as possible: lying alone in the dark, blazed out of my mind, in my car on the way to work, in a random shuffle on my meager apartment three-disc changer while I chop onions and mince garlic for another fabulous meal. It was in this last context that I found myself listening to Lomita’s Stress Echo along with David Bowie’s Space Oddity (the title track is the famous “Ground Control to Major Tom” song) and Robert Earl Keen’s West Textures, and it was the one that seemed most perfect. I didn’t plan it that way; I merely removed Grandaddy’s Sumday and slid Stress Echo right into the old shuffle. Pure happenstance. But difficult as it is to believe, Stress Echo perfectly mediates what I had theretofore believed could not be mediated, had not even considered could be mediated: it bridges the unbridgeable Bowie-Keen sonic divide.