AUX
AUX’s self-titled debut EP, evoking the stacked-heel prancers of glam’s mid-Seventies heyday and latter-day scions like Muse, lacks only a feather boa. Its louche trappings can’t slur away an undercooked song or two, but overall, the Austin quartet displays both decadence and depth. Midtempo opener “Carousel” and “Lighthouse” are prototypical Brit-rock, frayed around the edges, a bit unsteady on their feet, buoyed by sticky-sweet choruses that go on for days. Plucked from the Kinks’ Village Green, “Chelsea Valentine” is sunnier than a summer afternoon in Trafalgar Square. “Coward in Me,” amid its maelstrom of guitars, exposes the vulnerability underneath all that rock-star bravado and how easily that facade can be pierced, a darkness also hinted at in the sinewy “How Long.” If you’re at all interested in keeping those new year’s resolutions of chastity and sobriety, best look somewhere else. Everyone else, dive right in.
This article appears in January 12 • 2007.