Phases and Stages

Two Guy Trio

Your Rock-n-Roll Birthday (Edible) Two Guy Trio is a young Austin band with more than two guys and more than a trio. Two Guy Trio is also an Austin band with more than its fair share of novel songwriting talent and stylish song arrangement. On Your Rock-n-Roll Birthday, the local quartet has crafted songs so full of sugar and spice, the lush tones and thick harmonies are enough to make a listener sick with a sugar rush. With a little time, the solid rock power-pop surfaces to the top and molds catchy chorus after catchy chorus. While even too much of Matthew Sweet-inspired harmonies can be a bad thing, Two Guy Trio only let it get out of hand a handful of times. Take opener "Still Got It" for example, a song with such a simple, 21/2-minute life that still manages to pack greater punch than the more epic compositions such as "Back in My Direction." Keeping it short and very sweet is the strength of Two Guy Trio, and it makes the edgy melodies of songs like the pensive "Tired Boy" pronounced and articulate. Added to the mixture is a genre-bending cover of Stevie Wonder's "Sir Duke" that, while staying faithful to the original, pinpoints what makes Two Guy Trio better than many of its fellow local college-aged rock bands: They understand how to make rock pop.