Austin is the Live Music Capital of the World.
Every single night of the week, all over town, Austin reverberates with the sweet sounds of local music. To highlight some of the great local acts you should support, we frequently share a list of five bands you need to hear. Welcome to Volume 29! To check out Volume 28, featuring Glassing, Soda Lillies, Frosty Palms, and more, click here.
Contributed by Ryan Ricks
Photo Credit: Rural Forest Bandcamp
Royal Forest understand the relationship between geography and music. They've recorded singles while cruising at 39,000 feet in a propeller plane, exploring the Monahan Sandhills, and while hanging out in an out-of-service WWII submarine. This experimentation with location makes Royal Forest something of an engineer's band, a group more concerned with composition and tone than wooing audiences with massive pop hooks. Not to say Royal Forest doesn't appreciate a good chorus every now and then. Rural Forest, the band's newest offering, is a collection of early country and western hits, featuring sleek updates of classics from Del Reeves, Merle Haggard, and more. It's a polished compilation that bubbles with sparkling slide guitar, shuffling percussion, and barrelhouse swagger. Whether Royal Forest find themselves recording in the middle of a grain silo or inside an East Austin studio, their memorable blend of country, atmospherics, and pop manages to transcend geography.
But amid all the methodical heartbreak of their country leanings, there exists gems of pure pop as support and structure." - Consequence of Sound
Photo Credit: The Music Site
"Weak," Blushing's lead single from an upcoming EP, opens with a question central to the dream-pop and shoegaze paradigm: "Can you feel it?" Both dream-pop and shoegaze prioritize the visceral over the intellectual, the tangible more than the abstract. You can almost reach out and touch "Sometimes" or "Vapour Trail." The same can be said for Blushing, Austin's dreamiest new four-piece. They make lush and evocative pop that bursts with color and energy, carrying the torch of forebears like Ride and Cocteau Twins and contemporaries like Alvvays and Wild Nothing. Fortunately, Blushing never fall victim to the indulgent reliance on reverb and distortion that undermines most bands filed under the shoegaze/dream-pop category. Instead, Blushing employ reverb and distortion with tact and sensitivity, emphasizing substance over style.
"Blushing’s hypnotic and woozy dream-pop sound becomes a memorable one, with soft female vocals bringing all of its components together." - Austin.com
When:
Friday, February 9th at Hotel Vegas
Sunday, March 11th at JW Marriott Austin
Photo Credit: Big Destiny Website
Though some may disagree, the keystone of stoner metal is the groove. From Sabbath to The Sword, unforgettable guitar grooves have singlehandedly paid Tony Iommi's bills and spawned a devoted fanclub of hirsute headbangers. Local four-piece Big Destiny bring massive riffs and sticky grooves to Austin, pulverizing local venues with their heavy blend of psychedelic rock and heavy metal. The two singles available on their Bandcamp page showcase a band eager to melt faces with fierce bass grooves, colossal guitars, and a sweeping falsetto redolent of Osbourne and Dio. Sure, Big Destiny may proudly wear their influences on their sleeves, and maybe even to the point of hagiography, but the sheer enthusiasm of these infectious hooks and fuzzed-out solos transcend any sort of stylistic ripping off. While the band only has two tracks to their name, it's clear Big Destiny is onto something big.
Photo Credit: Lou Rebecca Facebook
Signed to Austin's Holodeck Records, Lou Rebecca expands the fledgling label's lineup of electronic and synth pop acts. Like many artists signed to Holodeck, Rebecca crafts infectious and elegant pop music, choosing analog synths as her artistic medium. Danceable but sophisticated, Rebecca occupies the sweet spot between pop gold and avant-garde, a position that's won the hearts of both highbrow critics and middle-class America. Even the cover of Rebecca's debut EP seems like a nod to the intersection of high and low culture, an image that certainly bears resemblance to Bowie's iconic Heroes artwork—a nobrow staple. The self-titled EP seamlessly interweaves dreamy slowburns with club-ready dance numbers, a sexy assembly of tunes anchored by Rebecca's mellifluous harmonies. Lou Rebecca is a promising debut from an artist that seems excited to push the boundaries of Austin's pop scene.
Rebecca elegantly blends the dramatic analog synth sound for which the label is known, Italians Do It Better-esque electro dance-floor magic and twinkling, cinematic French dream-pop to intoxicating effect. - Gorilla vs. Bear
Photo Credit: Relapse Records
Composed of former and present members of Power Trip, Iron Regan, and Darkest Hour, Mammoth Grinder formed way back in 2006. Today, the band is a seminal fixture in Austin's metal scene, boasting three acclaimed full-lengths, countless singles and splits, and a deal with the inimitable Relapse Records. Known for their apocalyptic blend of death metal and hardcore punk, Mammoth Grinder marry brutal sludge with aggressive speed, often cramming thunderous percussion, incendiary guitars, and frontman Chris Ulsh's hellish growls into three-minute salvos of destruction. On January 26th, Mammoth Grinder will release their fourth album, Cosmic Crypt. Its leading singles, "Servant of the Most High" and "Superior Firepower" suggest Mammoth Grinder will expand the devastation laid out by the previous work in their oeuvre.
"Nothing feels hasty or rushed. Mammoth Grinder know exactly how to get in, cause a ruckus, and get out in three minutes or less, and aren’t interested in belaboring their point." - Pitchfork
Where: Saturday, February 10th @ The Sidewinder
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