by rudyards | November 16th, 2013
Jealous Creatures – (Houston, TX )
https://www.jealouscreatures.com/
Taking shape in early 2011, Jealous Creatures began as a collaboration between Houston locals Sarah Hirsch and Josh Barry.
Hirsch had spent time in Austin playing guitar and singing with a number of bands before deciding to return to her hometown and start something fresh. Barry, who had worked his way through a lengthy stint as drummer in Houston new wave band Japanic, was on the lookout for something new.
Reworking Hirsch’s folk-laced demos into riff-driven rock songs, the pair decided to recruit additional members for a full-fledged band. After hooking up with ex-Big Top bassist Lisa Gallo Roth, fellow Japanic keyboardist Rob Smith, and guitarist Ian Hlavacek, the band released its debut album on their own Critter Records label.
The self-titled EP showcases both sides of the band, with full-on rock like “Coffee Stains’ and ‘Faith in Man?,’ paying homage to the gritty pop rock of Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders—while tracks like the subdued Eggs Alone embody a successful mix of raucous indie rock and Norah Jones-like soul.
Currently, the band is pleasing crowds around Texas with their live shows and has plans to return to the studio in June 2011 to record their first full length recording.
Super Robot Party (Houston, TX)
I hadn’t seen Super Robot Party, but I know the guys from 10 years ago. Matt Crow was in mytwilightpilot, and there’s a definite mtp stamp on their sound, but the vocals take the band in a decidedly britpop direction, so it comes out a little like if you slowed down and then Americanized the sound of Doves. in other words, beautiful!- Jason Smith – spacecityrock.com
Super Robot Party: This new reverb-laden five piece crafts ethereal shoegaze drones, touched with tidbits of folk. The experimental mixture sounds a lot like someone’s garage in 1991, heck even a blend of several garages on the street, full of kids and guitars. The Pasadena group has nearly three dozen tracks available on Soundcloud, or for the full experience, catch them tonight at Dean’s with Jealous Creatures and A Sundae Drive.-Marc Brubaker – The Houston Press
A Sundae Drive (Houston, TX)
https://www.facebook.com/asundaedrivemusic?sk=info#!/asundaedrivemusic
For most of the band’s debut EP, You’re Gonna Get Me, it feels like A Sundae Drive just rolls hazily along, serene smiles across the band members’ faces as the music unwinds itself to whatever its eventual destination’s going to be. They nod and sway like they’ve done it forever, but they’re not dreampop (or shoegaze, or whatever you want to call it), not exactly, but they’ve taken pieces of that sound and made ‘em their own.
Take the driving bass at the start of “…And See the World,” for one example — it bumps its way speedily through, Britpop-style, but over the top there’re wavery, watery guitars that bring to mind Teenage Fanclub (or maybe Surfer Blood), as well as some sweetly drifting harmony vocals. On the other end of the spectrum, “I’m a Poster” is right-angled and math-y, with defiant, J. Robbins-like vocals, spiraling guitars, and a jagged, almost stop-start structure. And despite the differences, it all sounds like the same band, which is no mean feat in itself.
Then there’s “Buenos Aires, Manny Pacquiao,” a soft-voiced look backwards at childhood that makes me think of Austinites Meryll more than anything else; both bands craft songs that are intensely personal and reference events that happened when the singer was a kid but still feel utterly relevant to the listener, right here in the present. There’s also a resemblance to Copeland’s gently-rocking post-emo pop, both on “Buenos Aires” or on the steadily-building “So Sleep.”
What’s really interesting about the EP, though, is that A Sundae Drive sound like a pop band that doesn’t really realize it is a pop band. They’ve got all the indie-rock influences poking out from beneath their sleeves, sure, and it’s obvious they love a lot of sharper-edged stuff — the Pixies-esque guitar drone in the background on “Alone Bad, Friends Good” gives that away, not to mention that nice “walking” melody — but the actual songs they’re writing are warm and fuzzy ’round the edges, nodding in a friendly way when you walk in the door.
At the EP’s end, when the band turns down for the up-close, slow-stepping rumble of “I’m Gonna Miss You Like Crazy,” with the droney, half-distorted, Seam-like guitar line and frontman Zeek Garcia’s deliberate, quiet vocals whispering in my ear, it hits me: I really, really like this band. A Sundae Drive don’t need to bash you over the head with how good they are; they’d much rather stand in the corner, plug in, and play until your brain catches up to what your ears already know. – Space City Rock
Hear You Me (Houston, TX)
https://www.facebook.com/hearyoumetx
A long time ago in a suburb far away…
Hear You Me has been around for a long time, playing shows around Houston mostly, with the rare show in Austin, at the 21st Street Co-op. Starting out as a 2 piece punk rock act in a garage, we quickly decided we weren’t punk, got a bassist and got weird. Unable to decide on a specific genre, the band decided to not decide and rock even harder. Try as they may, Hear You Me is unkillable.
