I just caught wind of this new music video for Candi & The Strangers, directed by a talented local artist who goes by the name Fishlegs. It's pretty much the coolest music video I've seen this year. Or any year. The projection is digitally created but captured in-camera, and the cinematography was done by the insanely multi-talented Dustin Scott and his magical 7D.
Candi and the Strangers officially formed in January 2009 after their producer, Erik Wofford (The Black Angels, Voxtrot, The Octopus Project), decided to step out from behind the mixing board and join the band. Their psych-dream pop sound combines lush arrangements, driving beats, layers of vibraphone, organ, omnichord and guitar mixed with honeyed female vocals.
The band has been compared to the likes of Broadcast, Blonde Redhead, The Velvet Underground, Ladytron and Portishead, just to name a few. The song featured in the video is from their self-titled debut album. Here's a few words from the Austin Sound review:
"There’s something intentionally seductive layered into Candy and the Strangers LP - a permeation of sex into dark, driving, indie-rock, which makes for good listening by principle (think of the successes of international act the XX, or the awkwardly erotic phonetics of Nico with the Velvet Underground.) A little tension is good, and Candi and the Strangers seem to revel in the fusing of dark, bedroom-style synth-pop with breathy, subdued, near-hypnotic female vocals."
Chaos in Tejas is a hardcore/punk/metal/rock festival that takes over Austin once a year. Mostly centered around Red River clubs Emo's, Mohawk, Red 7 and Beerland, the sixth annual festival takes place May 27th to the 30th, featuring more than 100 bands. Some bands fly in for one-time reunions, and some have never even played in the United States before, making it a destination spot for devout fans of underground music.
A few names playing Chaos In Tejas this year that grab my interest are Ty Segall, Riverboat Gamblers, Woven Bones, Fungi Girls, Quintron and Miss Pussycat, and Jeff the Brotherhood. Most of the shows are listed on the two print-outs above, and you can find much more info and show listings at webang.blogspot.com.
Kurt Vile is a long-haired fellow from Philadelphia who writes great songs. Then he writes more songs. And when he's done writing those, he writes a bunch more. He has released three solo albums, God Is Saying This To You (Mexican Summer), Constant Hitmaker (Woodsist), and his latest CD, Childish Prodigy (Matador). Sometimes he plays shows solo, sometimes with a backing band called The Violators, and sometimes as a member of the band The War on Drugs.
While Vile is touring and putting the finishing touches on his next LP, Matador is offering up his new, 7-song EP titled Square Shells. They are so excited about its "perfect summery strummers and psyched-out soundscapes" that they're giving away a free download of the EP for the next 24 hours. The opening track "Ocean City" arrives just in time for summer, followed by the wonderfully ambling "Invisibility: Non-Existent", which clocks in at 7 1/2 minutes. This EP is solid from front to back, and it's available for free, so....
Here's some photo evidence of the Autobus Records showcase we put on at Stubb's over the weekend. What a great night this turned out to be. It was cool to hear and see the new Sleep Good stuff, The Weird Weeds totally to me by surprise with their excellent experimentalism, Mark David Ashworth provided a perfectly calm environment for people to sit back and kick off their shoes, and Brazos had the whole crowd dancing at the end of the night. I was just happy to be involved.
Big thanks to Autobus, Brazos, Mark David Ashworth, The Weird Weeds, Sleep Good, Do512, Birds Barbershop, Lone Star Beer, Austinist, KVRX, Austin Chronicle, Ultra8201, Austin Bloggy Limits, Austin Town Hall, Stubb's, C3, everyone who came out to have some fun with us, and anyone else I'm forgetting that lent their support. Special thanks to Krista De La Rosa for supplying these photos. You can see bunches more here.
Frequent readers of this blog may have noticed that I have a thing for the Wooden Shjips. You might also know that I have a thing for LCD Soundsystem. Of all the bands I've been digging over the past couple of years, these two would be on the bottom of the list for ones I thought likely to collaborate. Wooden Shjips go hard on the space-rock tip, and LCD really just wants to dance. East meets West on the 7'' version of 'Drunk Girls', as the Shjips offer a psychedelia-spewing cover version of LCD Soundsystem's latest single.
"Swirling clouds of fuzzed to the max guitar riffs ride over a chugging, mechanically tight rhythm section topped off with singer Ripley Johnson's Lou Reed-esque vocals. The Shjips take the original on and blast into another cosmos. Imagine Suicide mixed with prime (second album) Velvet Underground." - Piccadilly Records
LCD Soundsystem will be in Austin on June 8 for a sold out show at Stubb's. You can still buy a ticket to see them at the Austin City Limits Music Festival on Saturday, October 9.
"Woven Bones have finally harnessed the elusive throb and crash of their intended sonic perfection on their own terms, and this debut album will no doubt convert the middling masses into drooling slaves to their hypnotic heartbeat rhythm. Like the eardrum-shattering noise pop icons that came before them, Woven Bones blaze their own trail of lascivious loudness and controlled snarl that's just what the world needs right now, and the perfect soundtrack to your screwed-up summer." - HoZac Records
Sleep Good is a band from Austin, Texas formed by Will Patterson. Until 2009, Sleep Good was just a moniker for Patterson’s solo recordings but has become a live band with four other members: Willis McClung, Michael Bain, Marc Miner, and John Kolar. Before the formation of the band, Patterson released two albums in high school and graduated early in order to join Austin band Sound Team at age 17. During this time he released a third album, Jungle Box, on cassette tape. When Sound Team broke up he began playing with Bill Baird’s Sunset project and has toured extensively with them.
Now a twenty-one year-old veteran, Patterson is releasing his fourth LP as Sleep Good, and first with the project as a band. Skyclimber was recorded using both lo-fi cassette tapes and hi-fi 1/2″ 8 track tape, all during the band’s spare time while attending the University of Texas. Most tracks are a single take direct to tape, and completely recorded and mixed without the use of a computer. Autobus Records just put up a couple of tracks from Skyclimber for your listening pleasure:
The album will be released in multiple formats including LP, CD, VHS with videos, and video game (Super-Skyclimber RPG). All pre-orders for the CD and LP will be sent digital download codes. The first release will be the digital version on June 15. CD and LP issues will be out on August 24.
Sleep Good will be playing our Autobus Records showcase at Stubb's this Saturday, which also features the talents of Brazos, Mark David Ashworth, and The Weird Weeds. As previously reported, you can get in early for $5 and snag a free beer thanks to our friends at Birds Barbershop.
Sleep Good will head out on tour with Sunset in July, making stops at the Cakeshop in NYC and The Butchershop in Boston. Get more at sleepgoodmusic.com.
The Black Keys’ new album, Brothers, dropped today on Nonesuch Records. Brothers arrives on the heels of three other acclaimed projects the band released in the past year: Dan Auerbach’s solo effort, Keep It Hid, the debut LP from Patrick Carney’s band Drummer, and Blakroc, a collaboration between The Black Keys and renowned MCs including RZA, Mos Def, Q-Tip, and Raekwon.
Carney and Auerbach recorded the bulk of the album at the legendary Alabama studio Muscle Shoals with additional sessions at Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound System in Akron, OH and The Bunker in Brooklyn, NY. Muscle Shoals, an old building located in the sparse Alabama town that lends the studio its name, has produced iconic recordings from The Rolling Stones, Aretha Franklin, and Wilson Pickett, among many others.
The Black Keys will perform on the Late Show with David Letterman on May 25 and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon on May 26. The duo will make their way to Austin in October for the Austin City Limits Music Festival.
I started listening to Phosphorescent back in 2006, shortly after he released his second full-length album, Aw Come Aw Wry. Here's what I said back then:
"I found this disc on the back wall at Austin's great Waterloo Records. "The back wall" is where you can find albums that have been recommended by the staff and each of the CDs has a small sheet of paper next to them that describes the music and has other useful information about the artist and album. For Aw Come Aw Wry I remember the note saying something along the lines of "lyrics that you will find yourself shouting along with, not unlike many songs from Neutral Milk Hotel."
I vividly recall shouting along to some of the lyrics that were found on that album, and some of those songs still stick with me. Phosphorescent is led by Matthew Houck, a heck of a songwriter who has drawn comparisons to Iron and Wine, Will Oldham, and Neil Young. Since releasing Aw Come Aw Wry he's moved team Phosphorescent to the Dead Oceans label, where he released the acclaimed Pride in 2007, followed in 2009 by the Willie Nelson tribute album To Willie.
Now comes Phosphorescent’s breakthrough album, Here's To Taking It Easy, which dropped just last week. Uncut calls it “a bold record, steeped in Neil Young’s ‘Doom Trilogy’ and the rich sounds of classic rock.” It features the current live incarnation of Phosphorescent (Scott Stapleton, piano; Jeff Bailey, bass; Chris Marine, drums; Jesse Anderson Ainslie, guitar; Ricky Ray Jackson, pedal steel; and strictly studio accompaniment from John Natchez, horns; and Heather McIntosh, cello).
Phosphorescent are touring in support of the new album, and I'm told the live show right now is simply undeniable . The band is currently in Europe, but will bring the show to Austin on July 22 at The ND at 501 Studios, formerly known as the Independent. Tickets are on sale now, and I'll be offering up two pair for giveaway on Twitter, so get to following.
Ty Segall hooked me up with the Caesar 7'' when we had him play at our day party during SXSW, which was one of the highlights of the week for me. Over the past two years he's released records more often than most people do laundry, amassing a collection of irresistibly catchy psychedelic-garage-pop tunes filled with 1960s rock riffs. I've probably spun "Caesar" track a dozen times already, which turns out to be the opening number on the San Francisco psych wunderkind's third album Melted, slated for release May 25, 2010 on Goner Records.
Segall says Melted sounds like "Cherry Cola, Sno-Cones and taffy." Goner says it is "a huge step forward in fidelity, in songwriting, and in overall zaniness."
"On the heels of two critically acclaimed solo albums, Segall holed up in a basement studio with Mike Donovan of the Sic Alps in late 2009 and early 2010 to come up with Melted. Friends occasionally dropped by to hang out and help--including Mike Donovan (Sic Alps), John Dwyer (Thee Oh Sees) and Eric Bauer (Crack W.A.R.). The result is a carefree yet precise balance of acoustic and electric elements. Distorted echo and thunder mix together with enough clean guitar lines and addictive choruses to deliver an album that recalls the '60s without sounding like anything created during that decade."
I'm digging the nostalgic feel of the music video for "Collector," the first single from Here We Go Magic's new album Pigeons, available June 8th. "The film stock looks like a VHS tape that's been rotting in your mom's basement for the past 15 years, and the members of the band have the thousand-yard stares we're used to seeing in ancestral post-punkers."
Here We Go Magic will soon embark on a massive tour alongside New Pornographers, with stops at Glastonbury, Boonaroo and the Pitchfork Music Festival, among others. Check out Pop Matters for a review of their recent show in Austin at The ND at 501 Studios
Following up on the Psychic Summer LP I told you about last year, the Chicago psych-rock quintet CAVE will drop their latest effort, Pure Moods, on May 18 via Drag City. They get tighter and tighter with each release, having rehearsed and toured together for going on 4 years now, and I hear they are a totally awesome live. Clocking in at just under 26 minutes, Pure Moods was recorded in semi-written, semi-improvised fashion, focusing on crunchy post-punk guitar rambles that are wrapped around sickeningly tight drum and bass.
"Following up last year's Psychic Psummer album, Chicago-based krautrock resurrectionists Cave return to the fray with three new tracks, once again harking back to the locked-in rhythm sections and psychedelic propulsions of 1970s Germany. 'Hot Bricks' is a tremendous starting point, dreamily motoring its way across half a side's worth of sublime Can-style manoeuvres, while 'Teenager' takes on a more ferocious tone, at first weaving through ambling wah-wah passages and disaffected vocals, before building up to a more trance-like, hard-rocking state of repetition. Over on the B-side the band kick back with 'Brigitte's Trip (White Light/White Jazz)' which occupies a more fluid, undulating tone that shifts between sparse, comparatively sedate stretches of cosmic groove and full-on psych-rock wig-outs."
Beginning next month, the band will hit the road for a two-month tour of the U.S. and Canada, gigging with Quintron and Miss Pussycat while making appearances at the Pitchfork Music Festival and the Sled Island Festival. See tour dates and keep up with CAVE on myspace.
Woven Bones is an Austin three-piece whose music is a psychedelic-shoegaze-rock and roll concoction filled with rumbling distortion, fuzzy vocal effects and thick reverb that can't help but draw comparisons to the sound of The Velvet Underground. You can read up on Woven Bones at the Fader, Pitchfork, Stereogum, and Austinist.
"Relocating to Austin from his roots in Florida in 2008, Andrew Burr slithered restlessly, reinventing Woven Bones from it’s primordial Spacemen 3-blues/psyche jangle into a hard driving, meaner, louder, and altogether more vicious band that’s turned into one of their city’s new shining lights of creative energy.
Crossing the dark drawl of the cramps ‘76 demo-era sludge with Jesus and Mary Chain’s demonic drum waves, and a dedication to simplicity as ravaging and throbbing as those buzzed out gospel recordings that Sonic Boom tried so desperately to recreate, Woven Bones are not here to put up a front. Their honest, neurotically-frayed, and manic songs conjure ominous impulses instantly on impact, and weave an intricate web of repetition that certainly carries them down the dark path to your soul."
The Debut LP from Woven Bones is dropping next week on Chicago's HoZac Records, and tonight they celebrate the release with a free show at Beerland. Prep yourself by taking "In and Out and Back Again" for a spin below:
Autobus Records is an artist-owned record label that has worked with and released albums by some of Austin's best indie bands, including Sunset, Brazos, Mark David Ashworth, Weird Weeds, and more.Autobus is a DIY operation that began in 2007, started by a group of friends that grew out of the Tonewheel Collective, a bi-weekly acoustic show that was documented by the Austinist and the Austin Chronicle.
Do512 and Covert Curiosity are happy to give them the spotlight with a show at Stubb's indoor featuring Autobus artists Brazos, Mark David Ashworth, the Weird Weeds, and Sleep Good. Sunset will unfortunately (for us) be on tour and unable to join the party. Tickets are on sale now at Front Gate Tickets.
Doors are at 9:30, and the first 50 people to show up with RSVP will get in the door for $5. We will also have free Lone Star courtesy of Birds Barbershop, so come out early to get your drink on!
BRAZOS:
“Their sound is all at once jazzy and melodic, moody and bright. They are Radiohead’s younger siblings half the time and the other half roll along lazily, like the central Texas River from which they derive their name…perfect cohesion of time and melody. The ability of solid and capable song craftsmanship is readily apparent. ” - Tripwire
“Martin Crane, the leader and songwriter of the band, does big and bombastic on a smaller scale. He takes the massive span of what a group such as U2 or My Morning Jacket builds into their everyday, musical actions and boils it down into something that he and his talented mates know how to play with. They aren’t in need of a surefire arena rocker nor a super ballad that Crane can belt and all the rest can dress up into a Coldplay sort of wall of towering sound, or more so, toweringly ubiquitous lyrics that are meant to be “worldly” in that they are for the everyman and everywoman, hinting at so many universal points.” - Daytrotter
"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. 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." - Austin Sound
"Viceroy comes across as a warped travelogue that envelopes the listener with its eccentricities. That Ashworth performs the multi-instrumental arrangements almost entirely by himself makes it even more remarkable. Borrowing a bit from the city folk of Beck and with a voice that occasionally recalls Ron Sexsmith's melancholy, Ashworth mixes staggered beats with visions of the places he's been, ever searching and imploring for answers that aren't there yet." - Austin Chronicle
"The Weird Weeds are a gorgeously combustive band from Austin. The trio moves back and forth between discordant feedback and gentle balladry, finding ways to stitch disparate movements into edgy, heartfelt experimental pop. They have “weird” in their name, but the songs are catchy, not off-putting." - Stereogum
"Over the last four years, Weird Weeds have slowly become the city’s best experimental rock band. When I say “experimental,” I mean it: their songs tend to be terse, through-composed, and loaded with inexplicable sounds generated from prepared instruments. On first listen, the band’s music can be confusing.After multiple listens, though, what initially sounds aleatory ends up betraying immense craft, and songs that at first feel ephemeral soon become indelible." - Pop Matters
"Will Patterson (formerly of Sound Team) is the musician behind Sleep Good's willowy indie-pop. With influences as varied as Jeff Tweedy, The Beatles, and yes, even Jimmy Buffett, he smoothly blends poppy sing-alongs with thought-provoking lyrics that belie his youth. Like fellow Texas musician Ben Kweller, Patterson got his start in other bands (Ari Fouk), and Sleep Good gives the multi-instrumentalist a chance to hone his craft -- he plays the mandolin, xylophone, guitar, keyboard and drums." - Splendid Magazine
