BEDHEAD / SIXTEEN DELUXE / MY DAD IS DEAD / STARFISH
LIBERTY LUNCH, AUSTIN

OK. Listen up. The world's too fucking noisy. Too much extraneous matter being slammed into our heads every second of the day. The mess needs sorting. Silence. Give me some fucking silence.

Give me the gracefulness of Bedhead, a band who slow everything right down, who linger over their chords, who make their sound so intimate you feel you shouldn't even be listening. A band so gentle, so strung out, they make The Aphex Twin or Codeine sound jittery in comparison, a band so melancholy and pure, they make Leonard Cohen sound like Elton John. The three guitars seem to (be) creating layers of silence, rather than noise. Or rather, just something very quiet, but very beautiful. They cover The Stranglers' Golden Brown and make it sound like silver teardrops falling. Clearly unsuited to be the headlining band at local indie label Trance Syndicate's fifth anniversary party, they're mesmerizing, nonetheless.

Investigate their self-titled EP: it's the best sleep therapy around.

Yeah, too noisy, too fucking noisy...we don't need bands who show off their maleness, who run us ragged with tempestuous emotion. We want bands who are scarily in control of their feelings (with jagged guitar and dipped phrasing). bands who remember the cool white boy funk of early Eighties UK bands like Josef K and Orange Juice.

Such a band are the homely, disturbing My Dad Is Dead. Named thus 'cos it was the most honest name mainman Mark Edwards could come up (with) nearly 10 years ago, My Dad Is Dead's relatively straightforward pop tunes vary from wry and charming to fucking embittered. He sings like the guy from Wall of Voodoo, but let's not hold that against him. He writes lyrics like he's stuck inside some particularly mundane movie - but turns this matter of factness into a triumph of empathy. Or something.

Recommended listening? The richly sonorous For Richer, For Poorer LP. Give me some time to think, remember?

Yeah, too noisy, too fucking...Starfish, I just love. A hometown band (via Olympia, Washington) who understand the sheer THRILL of playing live and then drinking five six-packs of beer, and turn it up LOUD! Fuck the silence, I want to celebrate! Their debut LP was co-produced by Bob Mould, and although this goes some way towards indicating the explosive power of their male/female-led tunes, Starfish are in no way as lame as Sugar. No fucking way. Instead, they EXPLODE and LEAP and YELL with POP BUOYANCY. Tunes to rattle your neighbors' teeth to.

...And let's keep fucking the silence (hey, we ain't gonna get too many other chances here). Yeah, fuck it. I wanna get lost. I want some sonic torture. I want some more NOISE! And let's face it, the psychedelic, shape-changing Sixteen Deluxe go crazy apeshit whether they're on acid, uppers, dope, speed, or not. And they're also, by popular acclaim, the LOUDEST bans in Austin. Like, LOUD (can we get these capital letters any larger?

Chris' and Carrie's vocals interlock like two skeletons dancing, the 30 plus effects pedals cause the guitars to get denser and denser as the light spin round wilder and wilder, songs are reduced to long torpid riffs of sonic dissonance, hooks are left screaming in mid air, guitars squeal and haze out...their album is called Backfeedmagnetbabe, in case you need any further pointers.

Outrageous!