Summer In The City: The season's best albums

Whoever decreed that summer was a good time for kicking back and taking it easy must have forgotten to send the memo to Austin's hard-working batch of musicians, because this summer has seen the release of more top-notch local albums than you can shake the proverbial stick at. After a relatively quiet spring, the floodgates opened sometime in May, meaning my listening pile now sits comfortably at a couple of feet high.

Of course, not everybody has time to comb through two dozen-something albums, so I'm doing you the public service of singling out what I think are five of the season's best albums. I'll be looking past the greats that everybody already knows about - we all love Alejandro Escovedo and the Black Angels, yes - to bring you the hidden gems. With that in mind, here's five discs, in no particular order, to help you cure the summertime blues.

5. Model United Nations
Tiger Physics EP

I hear more about these guys every day, and it's no surprise why - they play super-catch indie pop with all the enthusiasm of a group that seems to be discovering the joy of music as they go along. This is a brief but infectious listen.

4. Dan Grissom
What Was EP

Grissom seems to come from the Elliott Smith or Iron and Wine school of singer/songwriters. A soulful acoustic balladeer with nakedly honest lyrics and melodies that slowly work their way under your skin, he's one of Austin's most direct and compelling solo artist, and this EP is a concentrated blast of pure beauty.

3. Shearwater
Rook

Okay, so maybe calling Shearwater a "hidden gem" might be a stretch - after all, they're busy opening shows for Coldplay right now. But Rook, released on indie label stalwart Matador Records, lays to rest any doubts about Shearwater being a mere Okkervil River offshoot, establishing the band as one of Austin's most promising exports. Rook is an experimental, lyrical, operatic album, thematically intense and quietly devastating. Arcade Fire, eat your heart out.

2. My Education
Bad Vibrations

At times rocky and at times folky, Bad Vibrations is always deeply ambient, a kind of sonic tidal wave that sweeps you away. There's some definite Explosions in the Sky influence going on here, but My Education pull you into their world with a style that's still very much their own.

1. Pataphysics
Take A Look Out Your Window

Quirk is the name of the game here - both sonically and lyrically unusual, Pataphysics uses a New Wave pop sound to pull in performers from a whole spectrum of Austin's best underground bands. With a wide variety of sounds, the band indulges in every bit as much adventurous when it comes to wordplay - possibly the album's best song is titled "Jesus Grow A Handlebar Mustache." Limited to 350 copies, this imminently catchy and listenable one should be snapped up as soon as possible.

Brothers and Sisters: Live at Waterloo Records 7/16/08

As a starving, struggling college-age joe, there are two and only two things I need to be happy: free music and free beer.

Fortunately, both were flowing in abundance Wednesday at much-loved local standby Waterloo Records. Waterloo has a history of throwing the city's best in-store shows to commemorate new albums, and Saint Arnold's Brewing Co., bless them, always shows up with plenty of free beer in tow. Few things are more pleasant on a hot summer afternoon.

As many good memories as I have associated with Waterloo in-stores - I can keenly remember walking up to the trendy and mainstream but also ludicrously cute KT Tunstall and blabbering like a moron - Wednesday's show proved a particular treat. Brothers and Sisters, a 70s AOR folk rock throwback that's way better than actual 70s AOR folk rock ever was, celebrated the release of their Fortunately with a mix of old and new tunes.

I've long been a fan of Brothers and Sisters, which eschews contemporary indie rock coolness for an old-school charm. Led by siblings Will and (the utterly fetching) Lily Courtney, the band even incorporates that rarest and most precious of instruments, the steel guitar (played by the impeccable Ray Jackson). They've yet to blow up - outside of having a song featured on The OC and positive write-ups in Mojo and the now-defunct No Depression - but they're one of Austin's sterling and underappreciated acts.

Check out a sampling of their songs, past and present, at the imeem playlist below, or hit up their official site to download their excellent new single, "You're Gone."

You can thank me later.

Beat It

As the dog days of summer wear on, it bears mentioning that Austin's music scene encompasses much, much more than the blues, country, punk and indie rock that so regularly lends it mentions in the music press. Don't get me wrong, I'm a certified PBR-drinkin', Converse wearin', The Believer readin', NPR-listenin', Emo's-visitin' type, but I know there's more to my fair city than mere cliches. That's why I, along with hundreds of other poetry afficiandos, hit up the University of Texas' Harry Ransom Center last night to see renowned local string quartet Tosca perform an arrangement of classic Beat poem "Howl," by Allan Ginsberg.

Indie music fans will best know Tosca for their work playing strings on the debut LP from Austin's own Voxtrot, as well as contributing to Spoon's damn-near-perfect 2007 album Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga... or, perhaps, for their score for Richard Linklater's rotoscoped, curiously eccentric film Waking Life. At any rate, the four lovely ladies of Tosca are among the city's best and most accomplished musicians, and Thursday night saw them perform Boston composer Lee Hyla's arrangment of Allan Ginsberg's "Howl," accompanied by voice artist Robert Kraft. The event was part of an ongoing exhibit focused on the Beat Generation - the clever, counter-cultural, road-trippin' writers from the 50s and 60s like Ginsberg himself, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs and Carl Solomon.

The performance had an unsurprising atmosphere of the swanky, with plenty of (over?) educated students and professors enjoying the show in formal attire, but - this being Austin - plenty of the crowd went for the flip-flops and T-shirt approach. I don't know if Kerouac ever passed through Austin, being more of a San Francisco/New York kind of guy, but I like to think he'd have approved.

Anyhow, Tosca knocked the 20-minute-long-or-so performance out of the park. The intensity of Hyla's string arrangment - combined with Kraft's impassioned, strong, baritone delivery - made Ginsberg's already visceral poem into a powerful paean to the brilliantly mad. In a comfortable seat in a Texan city with searing, triple-digit heat, I could still feel the cold autumn winds of New York City streets. I'd read the poem before, but felt that I was really only truly processing it for the first time.

"We were asked to do it, and we said yes even though we hadn’t seen the score or the music, so we didn’t realize what we were getting into," Tosca member Leigh Mahoney told me after the show. "It was overwhelming when we finally got the music. We worked on it for the past two months. We’d have normally given it 6-8 months, but we had agreed and we did not back out."

"I think that the the poem has a rhythm to it, it’s not just meter and rhyme, it has a definite rhythm, and there’s avant-garde jazz elements to it too," said Mahoney on why "Howl" made particular sense with a string quarter. "There’s these elements of jazz in the poetry that the music just brings to another level."

Although cameras and recorders were strictly banned from this performance, keep your eyes on this space for a video of the show - Mahoney's been nice enough to send me a private version via old-school snail mail. So in the meantime, check out this excellent version of "Howl," read by its author. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go drink some Lone Star and listen to some garage rock. Can't get too classy.