PLUS: Austin Chronic & 4/20 Merch • Summer Camps

October 26 • 2018

Oct 26 - Nov 1, 2018 / Vol. 38 / No. 9
Digital Edition

Cover Story

Texas Platters

Three years after sophomore opus Space Is Still the Place broke orbit, TBLSH shows no plans for touchdown as they continue gliding across the cosmos. On EP Missing Something, bassist Jack O’Brien, guitarist Curtis Roush, and drummer Joseph Mirasole man the ship, but the newest crew member, keyboardist Edward Braillif, makes his presence felt. Bonham…

by Alejandra Ramirez

Pie Squared

When I get a new cookbook, I go through it with a stack of sticky notes at the ready to mark all the recipes I want to try. It’s always a good omen when the book looks like it’s been hit by a confetti bomb, colorful pieces of paper popping out of the top and…

by Melanie Haupt

Texas Platters

Though tangentially connected to a panoply of familiar pop tropes, Zorch co-conspirator Sam Chown’s second album under the Shmu moniker lives in a headspace all its own. Garbled, spiraling melodies dance on the edge of wakefulness. From moment to moment, Lead Me to the Glow flashes between Shuggie Otis, Discipline-era King Crimson, and Tame Impala,…

by Greg Beets

November Road

Lou Berney’s latest, set around JFK’s assassination, is a tightly written crime tale worthy of Raymond Chandler or James M. Cain

by Jesse Sublett

Check, Please!

Just have you a little slice of this pie, now, while I attempt to explain why there’s a graphic novel about a Canadian college hockey team among all these food-oriented books being reviewed in conjunction with the 2018 Texas Book Festival. That pie you’re eating, it was baked by one Eric “Bitty” Bittle, a valuable…

by W. A. Brenner

Texas Platters

Jaimee Harris’ debut disc bookends opposing approaches: the broiling, biting, opening push of “Damn Right” and the ethereal, slowly sinking piano pull of closer “Where Are You Now.” Both are about loss, surviving, and struggling to find strength, sometimes fierce and defiant, sometimes crushing and barely holding on. Red Rescue spans that emotional depth across…

by Doug Freeman

Breaking Bread

There’s nothing quite like a fresh, warm loaf of bread. The smell of it baking may only be trumped by that of chocolate chip cookies when it comes to calling man, woman, and child to the dinner table from their respective corners of the house or yard. But for Martin Philip, breaking bread is more…

by Alisha McDarris

Headlines

Council’s Off Week: No City Council meeting this week (presumably they’re all treading water, like the rest of us) – the early agenda for Nov. 1 is fairly light, dominated by zoning items, including the return of the Camelback PUD for second and third readings (with all questions and mediations answered …). See “Camelback PUD…

by Chronicle Staff

I Am a Filipino and This Is How We Cook

The book’s title is as much a statement of a manifesto as a straightforward cookbook. That’s not by accident – it’s immediately stated as such. One of the book’s first pages features a passage of “I Am a Filipino,” an anti-colonialist essay written by General Carlos P. Romulo, first appearing in The Philip­pines Herald in…

by Kahron Spearman

Soccer Watch

The Texas Longhorns (13-2-2) wound up their home schedule last weekend with shutout wins over Kansas and Kansas State; this week they’re at Texas Tech, then starting the Big 12 Tourna­ment Sunday, Oct. 28, in Kansas City. This Wednesday, Oct. 24, Austin Bold FC broke ground at Circuit of the Americas on Austin’s first soccer-specific…

by Nick Barbaro

Texas Platters

Doyle Bramhall II isn’t just a blues musician anymore. While the genre veils itself in sepia tones, Shades, like 2016’s exemplary Rich Man – Bramhall’s solo album reboot after a 16-year absence – takes on new life. For decades, blues predetermined the Texan’s future, but now it simply informs an entirely new whole. Make no…

by Alejandra Ramirez

Texas Platters

Returning from a set of buzzy 2015 EPs, the local brother-sister duo ditches their label and revisits adolescence. Sticking to simple acoustics, the pair induces the twinkle and turbulence of early-Aughts indie. Jendayi Bonds, 21, deals soulful vox and bright guitar on high school returns “Growing Pains” and “Essay.” A light percussive touch from drummer…

by Rachel Rascoe

Number One Chinese Restaurant

Lillian Li’s debut novel, Number One Chinese Restaurant, revolves around the private lives of characters in orbit around a very public space: an upscale Peking Duck restaurant in Maryland. Jumping between the points of view of various characters, Li balances the political ramifications of each character’s struggles with their particular emotional and personal realities. Her…

by Emily Beyda

Texas Platters

High-flying futurism grounded in elastic electro-soul, third EP Holy Mountain Wata finds multi-instrumentalist Jessica Bathea building her most distinct celestial aesthetic. “Remember” sets the singer’s values of individualism and aligned chakras, delivered in lush neo-soul and spoken verse. Bassline and synth hold down hypnotic psychedelic texture (“Oh My Goodness”) amid warped sampling (“Slowly”). The six-minute…

by Rachel Rascoe

Mr. Smarty Pants Knows

According to Bloomberg News, farmers in the U.S. Northeast dumped almost 145 million pounds of milk through July 2018, the most in at least a decade – including 23.6 million pounds that month alone. The reasons include tariffs, and changing tastes in our appetite for Greek yogurt. In 2004, UT researchers invented a Halloween-based imaginary…

by Mr. Smarty Pants

Texas Platters

In a playful pop declaration of self-worth, Jane Ellen Bryant finds power in personal multiplicity. Building on past rock comparisons to Sheryl Crow, the Austin songwriter aims at St. Vincent’s high-gloss production (“Take Me as I Am”) to launch her third collection. Punchy banger “Attention” takes the cake, seconded by fluttery Sixties twanger “Too Smooth.”…

by Rachel Rascoe

Texas Platters

Power metal remains inherently ridiculous: overheated singing, gonzo instrumentalisms, bombastic lyrics. So it takes real skill and conviction to go so far over the top that you’re back on the bottom. Austin’s own Immortal Guardian has both in spades. Singer Carlos Zema’s range moves from guttural growl to ambulance siren with little effort, and primary…

by Michael Toland

Buttermilk Graffiti

If you’ve ever seen The Mind of a Chef season 3, you already know what you’re sitting down to with Edward Lee’s Buttermilk Graffiti. Much like the show, there are ample descriptions of Lee stuffing himself to the gills as he tries to parse flavors and dive down into the heritage of individual ingredients. His…

by Jessi Devenyns

There There

The Big Oakland Powwow provides a window into modern Native American life in Tommy Orange’s searing debut novel

by Rosalind Faires

Texas BBQ: Small Town to Downtown

A picture is worth, they say, a thousand words. So how can I, in only about 300 words, possibly convey to you the power of the dozens and dozens of full-color images burning from the glossy oversized pages of Wyatt McSpadden’s Texas BBQ: Small Town to Downtown? Math is hard, they also say, but then…

by W. A. Brenner

Texas Platters

Initially released by homegrown label Trance Syndicate in 1996, this odds-and-sods collection arrived not long after Cherubs disintegrated in the wake of high-water mark Heroin Man. Now that the Austin noise-rock trio has reunited, Short of Popular plays as more than a lament for what might have been. Recorded at Sweatbox Studio in a dilapidated…

by Greg Beets

You and I Eat the Same

“Food brings everyone together” isn’t a trailblazing theme in literature or television. Most cookie-cutter travel shows center on the prevailing sense that wherever you are in the world, food is a pillar of familiarity and togetherness. But You and I Eat the Same takes the idea of cultural unity, puts it in its crosshairs, and…

by Danny Palumbo

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