7 and 7 Is

Finally. Finally, someone's heeded Ms. Manners' music biz etiquette. Make the artwork pretty, boys and girls. Make the nice consumer want to pick up the outpourings from your soul. Singles, especially, should be visually striking, 'cause at $3-4 dollars for two or three songs, it's one of your main selling points. Austin's Monroe Mustang, recent signees to Trance Syndicate, clearly understood this with their first handsome 45, "I Was Eighteen. It Was Hate," and by the fact that they enlisted local artist extraordinaire, Roy Tompkins, to do the sleeve for their new At-a-Glance single, "Wusses" b/w "Carcrash Head." Musically, these four lads are a car crash indeed, with their living-room shoegazer geek pop displaying a fine sense of melody, weirdness, and distortion flare-up. Poster artist and No Lie label owner Lindsey Kuhn knows a few things about artwork, so we expect the packaging for the Live at Emo's Volume 2 series of 45s to be snappy (at press time only test pressings were available). Having shelved the full-length a couple years ago, seven of the album's original 13 tracks finally see the light of day on three singles. Each will be sold separately, but there will be a limited edition box with all three, which will be on sale at their namesake club during the conference. The first 45, pairing The Monomen and Sugar Shack with Jack O' Fire and Jesus Christ Superfly is all high octane lo-fi punk, with the latter two local bands in particularly good form. The second single, featuring Steel Pole Bathtub, Unsane, and Gomez isn't quite as good with the former band needing more of a production boost, though again, the locals save the day -- in this case Gomez's aptly named punk rave-up "Screech." It's the third 7-inch, however, that's the set's crowning glory, with the Supersuckers sticking to punked-up country on Willie Nelson's "Whiskey River," rather than going it relatively straight-faced as on their awkward new album, Must've Been High. They're of course no match for the king, Don Walser, who blows everyone away with a single yodel on "I'll Hold You in My Heart 'til I Can Hold You in My Arms." Magnificent. Speaking of blowing everyone away, forget Wilco, forget Son Volt, forget everyone except Raleigh, North Carolina's Whiskeytown, who on their new 4-song Bloodshot EP demonstrate what Gram Parsons might have been like if he could sing. These folks are going to be the last word on this No Depression movement, mark my words. Finally, if you missed the Paranoids' Wednesday night showcase, track down the local band's new Rise EP, Slowdown, because urgent, Sixties garage noise this jagged and insistent hasn't been this exciting since the raw, early days of the High Numbers. Again, only an advance was available at press time, but Slowdown needs no artwork, just your ears. Ms. Manners over and out.
-- Raoul Hernandez

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Showcases: Monroe Mustang (Saturday, Emo's, 8pm); Jesus Christ Superfly (Sunday, Hole in the Wall, 1am); Supersuckers (Friday, Brazos Street Stage, 8pm); Don Walser (Friday, Antone's, 11pm); Whiskeytown (Friday, Waterloo Brewing Co., Midnight)
At-a-Glance: PO 12363, Austin, TX 78711; No Lie: 4206 Parry Ave., Dallas, TX 75223; Bloodshot: 912 W. Addison, Chicago, IL 60613; Rise: 2116 Guadalupe #210, Austin, TX 78705
"7 & 7 Is" reviews all local and national singles. Send to: "7 & 7 Is," The Austin Chronicle, PO 49066, Austin, TX 78765