PREMIERE: Art Pop - Hey Hey!!

Kelly Kirwan

“Hey and don’t you know who I am? / They say I’m up-and-coming / Maybe one day I’ll be famous / Or something.” 

It’s a wry line, delivered as if Austin-based Art Pop pressed a megaphone to their lips and started chanting, a little static intertwined with a sly smile and shrug of the shoulders. Their latest single, “Hey Hey!!,” is rife with lines of space-age synth, which become warped and warbled as they stream across the persistent, garage-rock chug of guitars and drums.

“Hey Hey!!” takes the pulsating energy of retro rock and garnishes it with elements of grunge, and even some hints of '80s sci-fi (if only for the song’s introduction). They call to us intermittently over the melody with the eponymous line “Hey! Hey!” as if it were a rebel yell. Their vibe is reminiscent of a street performance, set up on the sidewalk without any frills (or any interest in obtaining them). These are down-to-earth folks with a melody that may just get your heart going, and because they don’t try too hard to get our attention, we hand it over without a second thought. 

“Hey I’m teenage scum / They say I won’t find no one to love / But I found you,” we hear, with an ironic chuckle laced somewhere between the lyrics. It's hard not to fall in love with Art Pop’s comfort in the realm of outsiders—because they make sure we’re right there with them.

REVIEW: Jess Williamson - Heart Song

Kelly Kirwan

Jess Williamson has the twang and hardened resolve of Southern-bred heartbreak. There’s a forlorn ache that swarms her ballads like sand swept up in the wind, and while the dust does settle, it still coats her world in a thin layer of grit. So even in those moments when her voice contorts with a palpable yearning, there’s a certain toughness to her we’d find among the canon of country greats—and her vulnerability never comes across as weakness. No, the wounds have healed, even if their scars will never fade entirely.

With roots in Austin, Texas (a haven for live music in it’s own right), Williamson has followed 2014's Native State with a seven-track LP called Heart Song. It’s a brooding, richly rustic album into which Williamson clearly seems to have poured herself, body and soul. This is a compilation that feels as if it demanded calloused fingers and weary nights, giving rise to a beautiful, emotionally-dense mosaic. Williamson is a mesmerizing storyteller, and her narratives dredge up relatable moments of your past you thought were long buried.

Her idiosyncratic vocals bloom and bend in surprising ways, and she’s honed in on the Western croon that rolls across wide expanses with a lonely reverberation. Her voice will stretch slightly off-key, reaching a piquant pitch that's simultaneously surprising and recognizable, like a birth mark over which we’ve traced our fingers for years—a spot of welcome inconsistency and familiarity.

On the album’s longest track, "Last Word," Williamson’s voice wanders between a whispering fragility and throaty, surefire sentiments. It’s a somewhat stripped-down instrumental number, with airy guitar and slow, drawn-out percussion that’s meant to emphasize the lyrics. “Well this image of you here at my door / Is something I have pictured / Many times before,” Williamson muses, following with, “Well I shouldn’t have to run to touch you / But I do.” It’s a slow-burning rumination paired with languid chords, finishing as we might expect—with Williamson asserting in a breathy murmur, “I will have the last word.”

Then there’s "Devil’s Girl," a relatively bare track that puts the negative space between notes and Williamson’s a cappella to good use. Her voice is slightly (and probably intentionally) shaky as the track presses onward, “The best men I know are in and out of hospitals / Fighting some devils … Maybe I am just the devil’s girl.” That last line is delivered in a low growl, a dangerous thought she tosses unapologetically into the ether. There’s something captivatingly sinister in this song, with Williamson facing the darker parts of her personality and world—and she does so fearlessly. She’s folksy and raw, and Heart Song is a refreshing mix of fresh and rough for us to revel in.

VIDEO PREMIERE: Mah Kee Oh - Word Vomit

Kelly Kirwan

Mah Kee Oh have nailed their latest video. It’s plays like a homemade movie, strung together in a way that’s hysterical and on point with their niche of guitar-riff, percussion-backed rock. Referring to themselves as “two dudes” with a soft spot for rhythm sections,  Grahm Robinson and Gunnar Ebeling are first and foremost having fun with their sound. A do-it-yourself state of mind that just so happens to push out catchy foot-tapping melodies—these are two dudes that you want to shoot the shit with as much as you want to listen to their music. The latest release in their repertoire, Word Vomit is upbeat with a slight veer into garage rock--a dash of social anxiety offset by propulsive beats and poking fun at one's self. 

Robinson takes center stage throughout, adorning a lush fur coat made for high-rollers, or a suit and shades that channels Reservoir Dogsas he plays. He sings dramatically, dipping forward as he breaks into a deep, even-keeled croon—or takes a moment to turn towards the camera, letting his sunglasses fall to the brim of his nose, with an arched eyebrow that might as well be saying (in a Ron Burgundy tone) seductive.

It’s instantly interesting to watch, an engaging video and single that feels familiar, as if Mah Kee Oh were your friends from college—the classic jokesters that down-played their talent with a filter of humor. But their rhythmic chops don’t go unnoticed. It's resonating guitar notes and fuzzy perimeters, exploring those moments where words "fall like vomit from my mouth," and require some quick backpedaling. For a single which pivots on these instances of kicking oneself, it doesn't drown in doubt. It bops along with shades of surf rock, unbothered by a social cue gone haywire. Infectiously good fun. 

REVIEW: Hovvdy - Taster

Laura Kerry

A few weeks ago, your social media was probably flooded with images of your favorite musicians and enviable friends eating barbecue, attending shows, and taking selfies with other musicians, all with the hashtag #SXSW. When the tens of thousands of people leave the city every year, some bands remain, reminding us why Austin, Texas became the site of such festivities in the first place. One of those Austin bands is Hovvdy.

Comprised of Will Taylor and Charlie Martin, two drummers-turned-guitar players, Hovvdy has just released their debut album, Taster, on Sports Day Records and Merdurhaus. Starting with its name (a play on “howdy,” which was probably immediately obvious to most but took me a second, I’ll admit), the band feels like a tribute to its location. They met in 2014 through the local music scene, and they’ve collaborated with fellow Austinites Loafer—splitting an EP with them last year—and Ben Littlejohn of the band Bent Denim, who mastered the lo-fi mix of Taster.

In theme, Taster also leans towards a local scope. When the lyrics emerge clearly enough from the compressed murmurs that Hovvdy favors (at least one track features original iPhone recordings), they reveal reflections on a small, intimate scale. Throughout the album, there are phone calls unreturned (“Try Hard”), old friends who become friends again (“Friend”), packing shit up (“In My Head”), and the most local of events, a state fair (“Favorite”). Even when they get philosophical, they do so humbly: “I’m one hundred percent made up of things I don’t understand,” they sing over a ‘50s chord progression on “Can’t Wait,” making their existential angst all the more moving for being relatable.

The music shares that intimacy. Despite being steeped in fuzz and feedback, Taster offers songs that are warm and emotionally direct. With muddy, downtempo, guitar-driven instrumentals as a solid foundation, Hovvdy foregrounds simple but engaging melodies that have a melancholic, nostalgic feel. And because of the haze, the sporadic moments of clarity are especially striking. On “Favorite,” for example, the compressed but close voice stands out against a cloudy guitar and faded synth, making a simple song feel large, pretty, and heartbreaking; on “Try Hard,” the percussion is crisp in the foreground, giving the song special urgency; and on “Pretend,” an outlier for highlighting the electronic sounds only hinted at earlier, the differentiated synth voices and beat loops provide some respite from the guitar fuzz just three songs before the end, and the line, “Pretend to be what I never will,” takes on extra force.

Hovvdy appears to do very little pretending, though; they're no-frills, earnest songwriters who have created a polished bedroom pop album (not always an oxymoron) out of layers of rhythm-heavy fuzzy guitars and breezy melodies. Born out of Austin, they return there now after taking their contemplative show on the road for a brief tour. Let’s see where they go next.

REVIEW: Holy Wave - Freaks of Nurture

Raquel Dalarossa

In 2008, two friends from El Paso, Texas embarked on a twelve-hour drive to Santa Monica, California to catch My Bloody Valentine on their mbv tour. The duo—Kyle Hager and Julian Ruiz—would go on to Austin from there, making an official move to what's arguably the music capital of the country. By 2011, with a couple of other additions, they had formed Holy Wave and released their first LP, Knife Hits. The road trip, though it may seem an inconsequential story, lends pretty key context to the band's specific sound: shoegazey surf-psych.

If it sounds like a messy kind of sub-sub-genre, their newest album, Freaks of Nurture, will quell those worries. Five years have given the band enough time to distill their modus operandi, and their third studio album is undoubtedly their strongest release yet. Perhaps it’s the product of extensive touring all around the states and overseas, or perhaps it’s something to do with filling out their lineup a little more—Joey Cook, Dustin Zozaya, and Ryan Fuson make up the rest of the five-piece. Whatever it was, the ten tracks present on Nurture are rather starkly more sophisticated and accessible than the songs found on their last full-length, Relax.

The band have always leaned pretty far into psych rock in the past, mixing the appropriate amount of organ into their sea of reverb, but on Nurture they’re offering a heavier dose of concise pop. On “Wendy Go Round,” they channel the insouciant but catchy dreaminess of The Kinks, while on “You Should Lie” they kick the tempo up and come out sounding more like Wavves. And though the band have previously been labeled a “garage” act, it’s clear they’re aiming for a more refined sound this time around. Take, for example, the track “Our Pigs,” which went from a scratchy, punky demo first heard on last year’s EP The Evil Has Landed Part II, to a much floatier psych track with guitars toned down and bass punched up.

Where vocals are involved, they nearly always follow the far-away, reverb-heavy pattern we typically associate with shoegaze, and the band show off their ability to fully embrace the hazy wall-of-sound approach on the centerpiece track “California Took My Bobby Away,” though it’s more Slowdive than My Bloody Valentine. A little further down the tracklist, “Sir Isaac Nukem” makes for another real highlight and is a deft combination of all of the band’s strengths, with its earworm of a melody, washed out vocals, and intermittent instrumental jamming. 

Though it’s by no means a marked change from Holy Wave’s previous releases, Freaks of Nurture certainly showcases a conscious effort at evolution, and it does so rather beautifully. Though shoegaze, surf rock, psych rock, and punk rock all make appearances, the tracks manage to be nuanced and, through and through, just plain enjoyable.