Austin Sound

“Get Haunted.” It’s a helluva an imperative for a debut LP, and one that that’s not entirely misdirected. For the Authors, it certainly seems less an invitation than a demand, a necessity. For listeners, it’s a useful point of entry for digging into the sound the local quartet excavates. In retrospect, the Authors 2009 debut EP is a fitting build up to their initial full-length – that disc delivered heavy on potential but was somewhat quelled by both a want of edge and focus. Those are certainly not problems for Get Haunted, but chasing ghosts opens an entirely different sort of challenges. And there are a lot of ghosts swirling throughout the album, flashpoints in sound that make the Authors’ seem eerily familiar, yet still uncannily unique.

In our latest roundup of local shortstacks, we check in on three new bands who are offering up their debut EP’s, and get a taste of the latest work from on old Austin favorite. Spoon’s surprise announcement last week that they would be dropping a new EP called Got Nuffin’ apparently caught their spell checkers once more by surprise as well, but hey, we know the feeling. The three tunes aren’t much to chew on, but we reckon at least it’s sumpin’. Meanwhile, new group Literature, which features some guitar work by Kevin Adickes of Austin Sound favorites Moth! Fight! (where have those guys gone?), throw out their debut. Though more of a demo than official release, there are some good sparks ignited in the rough production. And just because you can’t have Literature without The Authors (no matter what Barthes says), we take on their eponymous debut, which seems to go high on the production end, but falters on originality. Also on tap in our roundup, new quartet Your Kisses Cause Crashes get caught in the headlights.