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36 Vayadhinile

36 Vayadhinile 2015, NR, 115 min. Directed by Rosshan Andrews, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Jyothika, Rahman, Abirami. Tamil drama; no subtitles.

by Marjorie Baumgarten

The Luv Doc: Online Dating for Virgins

Luv Doc, Is online dating a good idea for a virgin? – Chastity The best! To my knowledge, Chastity, no one has ever lost their virginity online. Judging from the several thousand porn sites I have accidentally stumbled across, deflowerment always happens in the real world – usually accompanied by depressing fluorescent lighting and a…

by The Luv Doc

Lightning Bolt

Rhode Island’s Lightning Bolt remain one of the most surreal acts on the scene. Decked in bizarre, horror-fantasy masks and delirious percussion, they’ve earned a reputation for one of the most kinetic, memorable live shows you’ll ever see. Surprising, then, that they became such a consistent studio band over the course of two decades. The…

by Luke Winkie

The Soft Moon

Luis Vasquez turns his Bay Area-based Soft Moon project from rickety, guitar-driven post-punk to an even bleaker realm of zombified synth and grim percussion. In line with the “-wave” suffixes that circulated the Euro underground circa 1979, Deeper – his third LP – plunges into his most self-assured head space yet. Vasquez never beat around…

by Luke Winkie

Soccer Watch

The Austin Aztex finish their four-game homestand Saturday night, May 9, hosting Real Monarchs SLC at 8pm at House Park, 13th & Lamar. Doors open at 6:30, with a special performance by the Peterson Brothers Band, and food this week by Chef’s Rolling Roadshow, Load a Bowl, and Rosarito. It’ll be the Aztex’s sixth home…

by Nick Barbaro

Metz

Nirvana doesn’t appear on Metz’s list of influences, just like Parquet Courts are slow to cite Pavement among theirs. On the former’s sophomore LP, the Toronto trio source generously from the aforementioned grunge gods, as well as contemporaries like the Jesus Lizard. “Acetate” opens acerbic, instrumentation battling: drums hard-hitting, vox bellowed, guitars in the red.…

by Neph Basedow

The Blank Tapes

Matt Adams was never circumspect about his THC tendencies, but Geodesic Dome Piece sparks more directly both in sentiment and sound. “Do you like to get high?” he asks on “Do You Wanna Get High?” – a rhetorical question for anyone spinning the Blank Tapes’ prolific output over the past decade. And yet, following up…

by Doug Freeman

Levitation Picks

Willie Thrasher & Linda Saddleback Fri., 5:30pm, Elevation Amphitheater An Inuk from Aklavik, Northwest Territories, Willie Thrasher has made music since the mid-Sixties, when he drummed for the Cordells, the first Inuit rock band. Since then, he’s replaced the sticks with a guitar, writing songs reflecting his heritage and personal experience. He recorded his acknowledged…

by Chronicle Staff

The Black Ryder

2013 Psych Fest deluge survivors, the Black Ryder are scarcely the same band that carved out 2009’s Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride, goth-tinged garage-rock replaced for the follow-up with ethereal doom. Their debut hinted at this metamorphosis in the dreamlike “Outside,” but as Australia-via-L.A. core duo Aimee Nash and Scott Von Ryper swap lead…

by Richard Whittaker

Art and Motherhood on the West Austin Studio Tour

Virginia Fleck When I mention to artist Virginia Fleck that, due to the proximity of Mother’s Day, the Chronicle is sparking its West Austin Studio Tour coverage with a look at artists who are also mothers, she smiles. “For this year’s WEST,” she says, “for the first time I’m partnering with another artist, Yuliya Lanina,…

by W. A. Brenner

Thee Oh Sees

Rescinding their intentions, Mutilator Defeated at Last marks Thee Oh Sees’ second LP since an announcement in 2013 of indefinite hiatus. Not surprisingly, the San Franciscans’ backpedaling remains most welcome. Opener “Web” commences with guitar tones swirling psychedelic, frontman John Dwyer whispering lyrics in a precise, punctuated staccato. Two minutes in, that reservedness gets scrapped…

by Neph Basedow

Art and Motherhood on the West Austin Studio Tour

Jana Swec Jana Swec is a founding member of Big Medium, East Austin Studio Tour, and West Austin Studio Tour. As Big Medium and the wider Austin arts family has grown, so too has Swec’s immediate family. Recent parent of three with Big Medium director Shea Little, Swec has her hands full being a mother,…

by Seth Orion Schwaiger

Ryley Walker

Ryley Walker Sat., 5:30pm, Elevation Amphitheater When Ryley Walker’s debut All Kinds of You arrived in 2014, it heralded the arrival of a distinctive voice in contemporary music – an impression reinforced by this year’s masterful follow-up, the highly acclaimed Primrose Green. Drawing heavily from the acid folk/rock of the late Sixties and early Seventies,…

by Michael Toland

Earth

Like nature itself, Earth’s glacial sludge rock awes even when it’s bleak and uncomfortable. Takes discipline to grind and drone at such a tectonic pace, giving painstakingly sustained notes open space to disintegrate. The veteran Olympia, Wash., unit’s 10th studio LP renders guitarist Dylan Carlson’s riffage as a singular, all-encompassing force. “There Is a Serpent…

by Greg Beets

Art and Motherhood on the West Austin Studio Tour

Valerie Fowler Valerie Fowler has a fascination with botanicals that often translates, after weeks and weeks of applying a stunning variety of pigments to canvas, into near psychedelic renderings of abundant plant life and the patterns such vegetal complication can form. The acclaimed painter is also responsible for the illustrations and hand-cranked moving panoramas of…

by W. A. Brenner

The Jesus & Mary Chain

The Jesus & Mary Chain Sat., 12:15am, Reverberation Stage “Rock & roll gave us our lives, you know? We are the people we are today because of being in a rock band. It gave us our identity and it gave us so much to be grateful for.” So says singer Jim Reid of Scottish institution…

by Marc Savlov

The Myrrors

Wander in the desert too long and you start to see things. The Myrrors brings them to aural light. Arena Negra, the second LP from this mysterious Tucson quintet, doesn’t so much play back as ebb and flow. Guitar shimmers and drum crashes roll across the scorched landscape like storm clouds, while violins and saxophones…

by Michael Toland

Quote of the Week

“I am horrified that I have to choose between the possibility that my Governor actually believes this stuff and the possibility that my Governor doesn’t have the backbone to stand up to those who do.” – Former GOP Rep. Todd Smith slams Gov. Greg Abbott for appeasing conspiracy theorists by sending the Texas State Guard…

by Chronicle Staff

Art and Motherhood on the West Austin Studio Tour

Laura Daly Mockingbird Domestics is an Austin family affair, led by the husband-and-wife team of Laura and Jeff Daly. It is a store that not only strives for familiar charm but also offers its customers a well-curated environment, an attribute for which Laura is largely responsible. She is the store’s co-founder and also helps manage…

by Caitlin Greenwood

13th Floor Elevators

13th Floor Elevators Sun., 10pm, Reverberation Stage An all-seeing eye caps the psychedelic pyramid, but the cornerstone remains the 13th Floor Elevators. The Austin quintet’s late-Sixties recordings, most notably the mind-expansive garage rock of their 1966 debut and the free-flowing perfection of follow-up Easter Everywhere, proved revolutionary for generations of bands dropping acid and cranking…

by Kevin Curtin

Eternal Tapestry

Recorded in the foothills of Mount Hood outside its Portland, Ore., home base, Eternal Tapestry’s sixth release unfolds in a meditative manner. Though culled from improvisational jams, this instrumental exploration of psych’s deep catacombs never feels anything less than deliberate. The title track makes a compelling centerpiece. Against a heavy, eyelid-summoning backdrop of organ drone…

by Greg Beets

Levitation Interviews

Flaming Lips Sun., 11:45pm, Reverberation Stage For the past 15 years or so, there’s been nothing like a Flaming Lips concert. Singer Wayne Coyne surfing the crowd inside a clear orb, a stage filled with people in furry animal costumes, and more confetti and balloons than seem possible become the ultimate rock & roll circus.…

by Jim Caligiuri

Föllakzoid

This space-worthy Santiago, Chile, trio makes a convincing case for trashing your earbuds and investing in quality headphones. Four songs clocking in at nine minutes or more, Föllakzoid’s III unfolds subtly and gradually to steady, hypnotic rhythms inspired by their Andean forebears. More recent eras of inspiration include late-Sixties West Germany and mid-Nineties Chicago. “Electric”…

by Greg Beets

Local Levitation

Sungod (Fri., 3:45pm, Reverberation) Michael Sharp and Braden Balentine layer analogs and organics to produce complicated, cinematic beauty. Hollow Trees (Fri., 4:45pm, Levitation)Distorted, driving psych-rock featuring Black Angel Christian Bland and former Warlock Bob Mustachio. Hundred Visions (Fri., 5pm, Reverberation) Grungy guitar rock trio fronted by six-string splatter painter Ben Maddox. Ringo Deathstarr (Fri., 6:15pm,…

by Kevin Curtin

The Fat White Family

Psychedelia trips good and bad, and on debut Champagne Holocaust, the Fat White Family nails the latter. The Peckham, England, band’s warped country/folk/punk cuts bad acid with dirt. Appealing melodies collide with the band’s gutter aesthetic, leaving a fine coat of grime on what could have been flower power. “I was born to have it…

by Michael Toland

Mr. Smarty Pants Knows

The “jay” part in “jaywalking” is an early 20th century term for rube or bumpkin. According to author James Longhurst, before it was car drivers vs. cyclists, it was horse carriages vs. cyclists. In 1870, one bicycle-hating farmer in Chicago named Absalom Wycoff was known for horsewhipping any cyclists who rode past his property. A…

by Mr. Smarty Pants

A Place to Bury Strangers

A Place to Bury Strangers revels in discomfort on Transfixiation. The NYCers fourth LP pulls from the trio’s usual obsessions – shoegaze, noise rock, 120 Minutes circa 1988 – with zero interest in making things easy. “What We Don’t See” puts a sing-along melody over a simple rhythm pulse, but intertwines it with seasick guitar.…

by Michael Toland

Spiritualized

Spiritualized Fri., 10:30pm, Reverberation Stage “I’ve said all my life that I think the most psychedelic song in the world is Buddy Holly’s ‘Slippin’ and Slidin’,’ and it’s not even trying,” offers Jason Pierce from his home in London. “It’s not trying to make itself that music, but I think psychedelic music is rooted in…

by Doug Freeman

The Holydrug Couple

Concocting a 2013 acid-pop trip more gentle than synapse-frying on second LP Noctuary, Santiago, Chile, duo THC hops a different train for follow-up Moonlust. Indulging a love of French electro, the band itself admits that most of the tunes owe a debt to Air: pop melodies, languid tempos, breathy vocals, synth-led textures – the feel…

by Michael Toland

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