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Chaotic Platters

Parquet Courts Light Up Gold (What’s Your Rupture?) Andrew Savage might be familiar: He’s spent quite a bit of time playing with the fidgety, quippy, Denton rockers Fergus & Geronimo. A couple of years ago he moved to Brooklyn, hooked up with Austin Brown, and made Light Up Gold as Parquet Courts. It’s a Fergus-bred…

by Luke Winkie

Damned, Damned, Damned

The Damned Thu., 11:15pm, 1100 Warehouse “I didn’t think punk would last five minutes to be honest,” emails the Damned’s manic guitarist, Captain Sensible. “I thought I’d be going back to cleaning toilets at the Fairfield Halls in Croydon.” There worked young “hippie with teeth” Ray Burns when co-worker Chris Millar returned from an audition…

by Tim Stegall

Chaotic Platters

Coliseum Sister Faith (Temporary Residence) Doomy trappings disappear out of this Kentucky trio’s barn for fourth LP Sister Faith. Metallic hardcore still gallops in short, sharp, steely blasts on a pair of two-minute openers, but Nineties grunge-dripping Seaweed now coats Ryan Patterson’s punk heroes. More extreme exhales the five-minute push/pull of “Love Under Will,” with…

by Raoul Hernandez

Soccer Watch

Two dramatic substitutions headline Soccer Watch this week: Seth Casiple made his debut for the Austin Aztex Saturday night as a 57th-minute sub, and, with his first touch of the season, scored the only goal of the game on a free kick as the Aztex beat their perennial rival, the Laredo Heat, 1-0. Casiple is…

by Nick Barbaro

Damned, Damned, Damned

The Bats Thu., 12:30am, Red 7 Few 31-year-old acts put out new albums that equal the vitality of their best-known work. So how did beloved New Zealand proto-indie quartet the Bats crank out 2011’s Free All the Monsters, a front-to-back triumph that more than holds its own against mid-Eighties Flying Nun classics like “North by…

by Greg Beets

Chaotic Platters

Screaming Females Chalk Tape (Don Giovanni Records) During a SXSW day party last year, Titus Andronicus singer Patrick Stickles followed up fellow New Jersey rock squad Screaming Females’ breakneck set by calling chief screamer Marissa Paternoster and the trio’s overfueled sound the perfect balance between immense pain and euphoric pleasure. Consider Chalk Tape reinforcement. Crafted…

by Chase Hoffberger

Quote of the Week

“If I could pay people to forget about us, I would do so right now.” – Council Member Bill Spelman, before voting financial support for Circuit of the Americas’ bid to bring the Summer X Games to Austin

by Chronicle Staff

Damned, Damned, Damned

Baroness Sat., 10:45pm, Mohawk Last August in England, on its first dates supporting tour de force third album Yellow & Green, Baroness’ bus plunged off a viaduct and nearly killed everyone aboard (www.baronessmusic.com/update-from-baroness). Almost a year later, the Georgia-born heavy rock quartet counts Chaos in Tejas as the seventh of 18 shows on its first…

by Raoul Hernandez

Chaotic Platters

Lower Walk on Heads EP (Escho) Copenhagen’s become a hot spot for ferocious, glass-and-nails hardcore. A quartet of angry young Danes, Lower has a vintage charge with waterlogged intensity that’s dangerously unwieldy in the most seductive ways. Deadened bass, brittle guitars, and cadaver vocals cross-pollinate with a distinctly 21st century brand of isolated angst. Walk…

by Luke Winkie

Civics 101

Thursday 30 MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS DAY: VOICES OF RECOVERY II Join Austin in celebrating the second annual Mental Health Awareness Day. Fight the stigma associated with mental health issues, learn about peer support, and find resources within the community. 5:30-8:30pm. Austin State Hospital, 4110 Guadalupe, Bldg. 631, Free. www.beyondtoday.us. Friday 31 LEAP SPRING FLING Become…

by Chronicle Staff

Food Events

• Basic Hog Butchery Basic knife skills strongly recommended. Reserve via email. Thu., May 30, 6pm. Salt & Time Butcher Shop & Salumeria, 1912 E. Seventh, 512/524-1383. $150. info@saltandtime.com. • Sexy Summer Fashion Benefit for Aids Services of Austin Enjoy a sexy bathing suit fashion show on the outdoor patio at Garrido’s with appetizers and…

by Virginia B. Wood

Listing Chaos

Violent World By Greg Beets Violent Affair (Thu., TBA, Beerland) A “live today/fuck tomorrow” ethos, this Oklahoma City quintet expands on tourmates the Casualties. Violent Future (Sat., 3pm, Red 7) Scoff at the botched fills if you must, but these screaming miscreants from Toronto defy hardcore convention. Violent End (Sat., 3pm, Beerland) Chicago-bred quartet slings…

by Chronicle Staff

Chaotic Platters

Wolf Eyes No Answer: Lower Floors (De Stijl) Strange to think that in the teeming network of noise musicians only one band has ever achieved something approximating crossover success. Wolf Eyes, the long-running project of three Michigan troublemakers, has ruptured conventions for nearly two decades with loud, uncompromising payloads of absolute discord. Things are different…

by Luke Winkie

Headlines

› After a marathon session May 23, City Council doesn’t meet again until June 6 (work session June 4), when it will take up at least some of the postponed matters: EMS changes, city park parking exchanges, and maybe even ridesharing. See “Council Notes: Never Do Today …” › Although it may have resprouted your…

by Chronicle Staff

Mr. Smarty Pants Knows

The level of bacteria on your pillowcase is about the same as on your toilet seat. If you could make a bowling ball the size of Earth, the finger holes would be about 1,000 kilometers across, and a few thousand kilometers deep. But the holes would be far too big to hold themselves open against…

by Mr. Smarty Pants

Chaotic Platters

Iceage You’re Nothing (Matador) This Danish quartet writes toothy, blackened, and thoroughly foreign two-minute punk songs that escape classification in any niche. Matador signed them, international tours roll regularly, and a number of stoic, antagonistic interviews have been written in their honor. Sophomore effort You’re Nothing remains a people’s album nonetheless. More than any rainy,…

by Luke Winkie

Chaotic Platters

Power Trip Manifest Decimation (Southern Lord) Blazing out of Dallas like a kaiju armed with amp stacks and Jackson guitars, Power Trip busts down doors and stomps spinal chords with Manifest Decimation. The quintet’s first LP brandishes muscle at the easiest provocation, bench-pressing power chords like rolls of paper towels and ripping T-shirts through sheer…

by Michael Toland

Damned, Damned, Damned

Absu Sun., 12mid, Red 7 Absu holds hidden knowledge, the Dallas-reared, mystical black metallers more secret order than band. While rhythmic pounder Proscriptor McGovern wasn’t a founding force, his discipline and devotion bound them together through two decades of shifting ordinants. References to arcane texts aren’t just set dressing, but rather a lifelong study for…

by Richard Whittaker

Let the Good Times Roll

The most important component to rolling a successful skeeball, the rollers at the Scoot Inn would have told you this past weekend, is eliminating every variable. “Lock your arm at your elbow and your wrist,” explained Joey “the Cat” Mucha, a two-time winner of the Brewskee-Ball National Championship. “Once that’s in place, you only have…

by Chase Hoffberger

Exhibitionism

Two wounded friends walk a line between nostalgia and regret in Street Corner Arts’ staging of Rajiv Joseph’s play

by Matthew Irwin

Chaotic Platters

Grouper The Man Who Died in His Boat (Kranky) Grouper, the project of Portlander Liz Harris, has ruptured decrepit, blind ambience for almost a decade, but 2008’s Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill arrived slightly askew. Deciduous, misty, and undeniably folky, it brooded like the rest, but strummed instead of bleated, like a country…

by Luke Winkie

The Luv Doc: Wormhole of Despair

Luvdoc, I have a friend who is in a horrible relationship with a guy who treats her like shit. Every time I see her all she wants to do is vent about her problems with him. I have given her all the advice I can, but she never listens. I feel like her ruined relationship…

by The Luv Doc

Kon-Tiki

Real-life adventurer Thor Heyerdahl’s 1947 trip across the Pacific on a raft is re-created in this beautifully lensed film.

by Steve Davis

After Earth

Often gorgeous, sometimes fascinating, this Smith-family outing is ultimately unwieldy and unsurprising.

by Louis Black

Chaotic Platters

Andy Stott Luxury Problems (Modern Love) Manchester producer Andy Stott might be an egghead, the sort of buttoned-up auteur concerned with how sound can be stretched or turned around, but third effort Luxury Problems has its priorities straight with its shifting, grayscale noise, sometimes sharpened, siphoned, or chopped off at the neck. The woolly vocal…

by Luke Winkie

Chaotic Platters

Framtid Defeat of Civilization (Crust War/Black Water) Raw doesn’t begin to describe the long-awaited new full-length from these Japanese crust vets. The guitars sound like someone stole the copper wires out of the pickups and ran the cable through three broken distortion pedals with every knob turned past 10. Drummer Shin takes center stage, new…

by Kevin Curtin

Frances Ha

There’s a tour de force performance by Greta Gerwig and no small amount of magic in this winning movie by Noah Baumbach about a generation in flux.

by Kimberley Jones

Exhibitionism

With strong direction and a fine cast, City Theatre’s revival of the jury-room drama of the 1950s feels very contemporary

by Jillian Owens

Chaotic Platters

The Men New Moon (Sacred Bones) Great albums have arcs. They have beginnings and ends, crescendos and centerpieces. They catch you off guard, make you remember every song, and queue up on your Spotify, in your car, and on your phone. Fourth LP New Moon finds Brooklyn fivepiece the Men shedding five years of crashing…

by Chase Hoffberger

Chaotic Platters

Destruction Unit Void (Jolly Dream) These Arizona practitioners of high-desert noise-punk take drought resistance to a new level. As a SXSW set on the Beerland porch demonstrated, Destruction Unit’s feedback-inflamed warble thrives in scorching daylight. Void may not capture the sweat-spurting transcendence of the band’s live shows, but it allows listeners to step inside the…

by Greg Beets

Chaotic Platters

Manilla Road Mysterium (Shadow Kingdom) Thirty-five years on, Manilla Road keeps its loins girded and sword loose in the scabbard on its 16th LP. Guitarist/songwriter Mark Shelton and his Wichita, Kan., combo don’t mess with their perfected formula: epic, rifftastic ironmongers that sound as timeless now as they would accompanying a Saxon invasion. Melody paces…

by Michael Toland

American Mary

The plastic surgery performed in this horror film gives real meaning to going under the knife.

by Steve Davis

Chaotic Platters

Krömosom Live Forever (Southern Lord) From Melbourne with rancor, Krömosom’s blurry hardcore stains the walls with layers of grime and filth. This artifact collection wastes no time on subtlety, exploding with ferocity and getting more teeth-gnashing from there. “Paranoid,” “Are You Free?,” and “Hysteria” grind out thick crust that would wither a redwood. The title…

by Michael Toland

Day Trips

Bryan Beach State Recreation Area outside of the seaside village of Quintana plays with the imagination. A popular local swimming hole near Freeport, it can be a deserted beach one day and a parking lot the next. With about three miles of golden-brown sandy beach, the undeveloped state property is at the southwestern corner of…

by Gerald E. McLeod

Chaotic Platters

Rotten Sound Species at War (Relapse) If Rotten Sound singer Keijo Niinimaa looks familiar, it’s because he screamed through Chaos in Tejas last year with Nasum, the iconic Swedish grindcore crew whose founding frontman, the late Mieszko Talarczyk, died in Thailand during the 2004 tsunami. The Vaasa, Finland, native leads his original outfit through January…

by Chase Hoffberger

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