This is fine.
I don’t know about you, but the weekend really started for the ATH crew sometime around Wednesday, as this week has already graced us with some rad shows. If you were too lame to make it out the past two nights, never fear, our city never fails to give us some music to see. Find your weekend show preview and some hype-up tunes to get you ready after the jump.
Man. The festivals and large events in this town never cease, and while I appreciate that, I’m a bit sick and tired of it all. Are you in the same boat? Perhaps you want to carefully venture downtown and catch some live music? You’re lucky, as the local bands are bringing you some great line-ups all over the map this weekend. Here’s a quick look at where you can go. Read more
Well, we’re rolling into the dreaded holiday weekend that haunts a lot of people, but what better way to spend your Valentines Day by watching a great show, either with your loved one, or finding one. There’s tons going on this weekend, so I wanted to spotlight a few shows you should look into. Dinner and flowers are dumb; rock n’ roll is the way to go. Read more to find out where you should be.
We’re almost one month into 2014, and already the music world is really jumping full ahead, especially here in Austin. Seeing as this is our home base, we wanted those of you in town to check out the great release shows this weekend, and those of you who live afar can just simply check out the great music our city is rocking. Here’s a few great shows where the first band in each line is releasing either an album or an EP.
Friday:
Abram Shook, Good Field and Royal Forest @ Mohawk @ 9 PM
Black and White Years, White Walls, Isaiah the Mosaic @ Parish @ 8 PM
Saturday:
The Boxing Lesson, Blackstone Rangers, Baker Family, Yum @ Mohawk @ 9 PM
Growl, The Laughing, Milezo, Young Mammals @ Holy Mountain @ 9 PM
Great weekend of rock n’ roll. Great weekend for four releases in 2 days!
[audio:https://austintownhall.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/06-Coastal.mp3] [audio:https://austintownhall.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/LittleOne.mp3]
We’ve put our pretty little heads together ladies and gentlemen to bring you our favorite songs from this past year. It was a difficult task with our ever growing staff, but we feel like this list best represents the diverse taste of our staff. Love it or hate it, it’s ours to call our own. Hit play and put your head down or dance or shimmmy or drool or whatever works. Most of all we hope you hear something you missed, something you want to buy or something you want to see live.
Scroll past the playlist for full the run of the bestest songs ever this year.
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| Date | Wednesday, September 18th |
|---|---|
| Location | Red 7 |
| Doors | 9:00 PM |
| Tickets | $10 from Red 7 |
Let’s be honest Austin, there’s tons of shows coming and going from here until December, but, I’m going out on a limb and saying that this is definitely a show you cannot miss! The openers, The Young, are from Austin, so that’s always good to go out and support, but the two co-headliners, Disappears and Weekend, are just ridiculously good. Both bands have released incredible records (Era and Jinx respectively) within the last couple of months, and both of those albums should pop up on every year-end list, if the music world knows what’s good for it. It’s going to be loud, but it’s going to be beautiful, making Wednesday night’s show something you’ll regret if you don’t find yourself at Red 7.
Download: Weekend – Mirror [MP3]
Okay, so 24 hours later and this track is probably old news, but you can’t escape the fact that it’s simply just a great song. While the first Weekend effort was simply noisy, it looks like the next effort is going to perhaps go a little softer, maybe. Yes, there’s that dark sense of post-punk brooding from the start, but a little bit into the track and the guitar begins to soften the approach, cutting in and out of the background. And when you hear the vocals, it’s a nice change to hear the clarity, though the affecting quality still remains. The band will release their second LP, Jinx, via Slumberland Records on July 23rd–get ready to rave about this release.
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We’ve got great weather, so there’s no reason not to get out and catch some live music this weekend. After all, isn’t that what being an Austinite is all about? Here’s our weekend show highlights, which are mostly about Saturday, since we’re throwing a show on Friday night with our buddies at Above the Radar Productions. Where will we see you? Read more
As rock n’ roll season heads into full swing, it’s time we all take advantate of the many shows that are coming our way in the next few months before SXSW hits us hard. Surely you know Ty Segall is playing at the Mohawk on Friday night with Ex-Cult and OBN IIIs, but what else is going on in town? Well, in case Ty isn’t your taste, or you can’t make it, here’s some other show suggestions for a pretty solid weekend in Austin. Read more
Rating: 
Slumberland has been fortunate enough to have always stayed true to their original sound aesthetic as a label while still offering up a diverse clientele for their audience. Enter San Franciscos’ Weekend, another group offering up a noisy debut, fueled by certain sonic and textural elements we’ve all come to recognize. Their album Sports does have certain touches of diversity when compared to the grand spectrum of things, yet those modifiers that make them relevant often seem to get in the way of the progress they offer as a group.
Listening to the first track, “Coma Summer,” you almost get the idea that this might just be a nice little pop number, as the song’s intro includes a nice pounding drum and jangling guitar. Still, the echo in the background has a haunting quality, and as the song pushes forward, that quality explodes into buzzsaw guitars that practically obliterate any chance of vocal comprehension. Underlying melody is all well and good folks, but if you don’t allow room for breathing, then what’s the point?
Clearly, the scope of the record does have some lyrical value, but it often seems to have evolved as an afterthought to the completed musical process for Weekend. “Youth Haunts” has this brooding bass work that really propels the song forward, but as guitars knife their way discordantly through the song, the vocals appear very distant, as if they were recorded separately, then spliced onto the tape in another session altogether. Similarly, “Landscape” has that certain appeal one would find in the early days of Manchester, yet part of you probably feels a driving need to connect with the vocals themselves. That’s probably one of the great difficulties with Sports; you either connect with the noise itself, or you’re spending your time chasing after the lyrical content. One of the things that made bands like Joy Division so successful was their ability to bring you that connection, offering up vocals that could be discerned, while still piling noise into the whole affair.
One might find themselves extremely frustrated with Weekend by the end of this whole affair, as there are clearly elements that seem successful in their own merit, such as the track “Age Class.” Once again, the rhythm section practically owns the song, giving you this animalistic power that only increases the tension as the song progresses. Normally, there would be some sort of release, some sort of resolution, but Sports just never offers that sort of cleansing moment. Perhaps that is where my listening habits have gone wrong; I’m not capable of connecting both the sounds of this record and the vocals in order to decipher the message, song by song, let alone the whole album. While plenty of elements suggest the conceptual ideas throughout the entire listen, for some reason, the band’s purpose just never seems to fully evolve, leaving listener’s, myself in particular, asking for more from the group. I suppose you can leave this all up to personal tastes, but despite lots of pleasurable listening moments, it just never seemed to complete its journey, leaving me interested, yet entirely unfulfilled.
[audio:https://austintownhall.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/01-Coma-Summer-1.mp3]Download: Weekend – Coma Summer [MP3]
