Ben Ballinger’s songs hit like a hangover. They spill out of him with the tumbling urgency of necessary escape, as if more compelled than crafted. Lyrics waver unsteadily between a hazy epiphany and half-remembered guilt, the Sunday morning coming-down that bleeds with an ambiguity of revelation and regret.
Opening Austin imprint Nile Mile Records’ showcase on Tuesday at Maggie Mae’s Gibson Room, the local songwriter looked like an appropriately disheveled blur of bad decisions himself, more like standing at the close of SXSW than its beginning. Yet the moment he struck the first chords of “Natatorium” from 2014 LP The State I’m In, Ballinger fell into place onstage, uncompromised and focused.
He devoted much of the nine-song set to tracks from his new Brian Beattie-produced EP, expected this summer, all of which showcased an impressive step forward from his previous two LPs. “Mosey” twirled an increasingly intensifying bluesy riff, while “Wait for You” dropped into a mournful croon before unleashing a crashing release from the full quintet.
“Sometimes,” lifted from Ballinger’s 2010 LP Fabrication, locked the singer into a steady groove as he spun a hallucinatory lyrical stream. The set’s highlight came in welcoming fellow rising Austinite Carson McHone onstage to duet on the tender “Flower Girl.” McHone shaded her counterpart perfectly with soft, twanged harmonies to his emotional pleas.
Ballinger closed by cutting soulful with new offering “I Got You” and roaring on “Ashes to Ashes,” capping off a short set that proved Austin has a new singer-songwriter to track.
This article appears in March 11 • 2016.
