“Paper Cuts” features new songs and music videos from Austin artists. Listen to our playlist on the @austinchronicle Spotify.
Sun June, “Get Enough”
“It’s a study for a painting.” Dissonant drones pile on by the close of “Get Enough,” Sun June’s lead single for forthcoming third album Bad Dream Jaguar (releasing in October via Run for Cover). The sextet’s follow-up to name-making 2021 LP Somewhere enters ears with a light tread as usual, Laura Colwell’s hush contradicting the all-consuming love – and accompanying loneliness – she vocalizes. Here, the indie-pop group’s knack for name-drops (Karen O, Patti Smith) expands with an imaginary reunion of the Beatles as a metaphor for something once lost. Sun-sweltered guitar licks tickle throughout, disrupting the still-life portrait Colwell imagines at track’s end. – Laiken Neumann
Meat Joy, “Another Pair”
As the 2008 Chronicle penned, Gretchen Phillips “co-founded the punk-concept, art-damaged spectacle Meat Joy, launching from there into high-profile lesbian post-folk superstar act Two Nice Girls.” Delightfully cranky, brash, and bare-bones, the unearthed “Another Pair” announces the October reissue of Meat Joy’s sole 1984 self-titled LP. The original lineup of Phillips, John Perkins (aka actor John Hawkes), Mellissa Cobb, Tim Mateer, and Jamie Spidle reunites, too, for two local fall gigs. On Bandcamp, Cobb says the blunt group lyrics were meant to encourage Spidle out of a sucky relationship. Spidle writes: “As the subject of this song I recall basically thinking at the time, ‘Well, of course he wants to cheat on me! I’m lacking in boobs!'” – Rachel Rascoe
El Combo Oscuro, “Sol y Tierra”
Just as “Guantanamera” defines the patriotic Cuban romanticism of the early 20th century, the sashaying cumbia rock of El Combo Oscuro keeps banging the keys of new millennial Latinx in ATX. As the local sextet continues working up its full-length bow, their singles jukebox cues up another guacharaca-esque rhythm: scratching percussion, whirling organ, and hip-gyrating choruses. “The light from the stars, the cosmos are in your eyes/ The galaxy is in your mind, we all return to earth,” intones John Dell, also bandleading El Tule. Cooking underground pibil-style, we rise from said earth for the cosmic bump-n-grind of “Sol y Tierra.” – Raoul Hernandez
Half Dream, “Will I Still Bloom?”
“If I find myself somewhere in the middle, does that mean I’m just a little less special?/ Will I still bloom?” The Austin dream rockers look at themselves head-on in the mirror on their first release of 2023 and find a blazing existential crisis staring right back. Feverish basslines, soaring vocals reminiscent of Florence Welch, and a relentless drumbeat set the tone for earnest, cathartic angst. It’s an aching, explosive listen, a primal shout into the void, and a sincere question to the heavens of what still lies in store.
– Elizabeth Braaten
Curved Light, “II (Amber)”
“Night dreams of day, light dreams of darkness,” posts veteran ATX dreamweaver Peter Tran, whose Curved Light delivers both with every keystroke. Six cuts averaging eight minutes each, this month’s digital full-length Patterns of Environments I refracts elemental ambience: azure, ruby, amber, amethyst, topaz, emerald. From kickoff “I (Ruby)” to crystalline closer “VI (Amethyst),” POEI pops. Second track “II (Amber)” washes synthesizers, plucks keyboards, and phases musical figures and pinging riffs. Like the LP, it sounds like weather, ever-shifting currents of earth and sea and sky captured in time-lapse pulses of energy and motion. – Raoul Hernandez
This article appears in August 25 • 2023.
