My Education, Bright & Hollow Sky
Carousel Lounge, May 7
Between smoky conversations, New Balance sneakers tapping the floor, and pink elephants on the walls, a soft clank from a bass fell into the paper-thin chug of a guitar. Like a TV screen, reality is never at the Carousel Lounge, where scruffy hipsters, circus murals, and pastel walls color what could pass for Pee-wee Herman’s old playhouse. Two of Austin’s homegrown own showed up here on a drizzly Saturday night, Bright & Hollow Sky and the instrumental rock sextet My Education. This was on a wall in New York City last month: “Opening bands are like children in extra large t-shirts or Democrats – harmless.” Bright & Hollow Sky played librarian rock first, the stuff Thurston Moore dreamed of when he was still in diapers. Prickly basslines that look at each other funny coupled with gruff singing about nothing in particular and the dull woof of drums. They played and played and played and when you looked up, time shuffled its feet. Starting way too late, My Education set up their instruments like schoolkids anxious to color outside the lines. Then these dudes went Rothko, leaving nothing but warm air to color their black noise. Playing only three moody, seven-minute songs from their latest album, Italian, My Education proved that when violas lay down with guitars, they get up remembering that the silence of the heart is louder than words. Like their brainy professors Slint, Mogwai, and Bardo Pond, quiet coupled with the thunderous waves from Brian Purington’s guitar as some serious shit crescendos bumped against thick thumps from drummer Sean Seagler. When it ended, claps cluttered the air and only the breaths of machines were left. Singers are so 20th century.
This article appears in May 13 • 2005.