![_Pachanga Latino Music Festival 2012 [Show Photos]](http://austinist.com/assets_c/2012/05/AlejandroEscovedo2012SBH02ws-thumb-250x250-714254.jpg)
Austinist CD Review: "Appetizers & Leftovers"
Compiling a respectable musical showcase of local talent that lends credibility to Austin’s self-proclaimed "Live Music Capital" claim is, if not a Sisyphean endeavor, certainly an extraordinarily daunting task. But indie upstart label I Eat Records somehow manages to accomplish just this with their debut compilation CD, "Appetizers & Leftovers". Make no mistake, the album's modest titling almost deliberately shrouds the fact that hidden within lies an ambitious 21-course aural feast featuring everyone from Okkervil River to The Glass Family to folk legend Tom Banjo.
The album opens with Vetran’s "Half Drunk", a gentle acoustic ballad that seems to find vocal inspiration in early Warhol-era Velvet Underground. Following this comes the musical equivalent of a triple-shot espresso - The Casting Couch’s "Row Your Boat" is unabashed sunshine twee pop rife with lush harmonies and a gorgeously ethereal bridge. Deeper into the album, The Glass Family in "Stop Dead in Your Tracks" perform with an astral resonance that all but amplifies the song’s melancholic lyrics - "it's just minds and hearts / that won't communicate / they just run / in circles / falling short of breath."
Though we've tried half a dozen times, we still can't listen to Ethan Azarian’s "Mexico" – a folk tribute to our southern neighbor - without feeling an inexplicable longing for a country we've never even visited. In an uptempo switch, Azarian rejoins The Orange Mothers in “Kids (Don’t Know)” to offer up playful reminisces of their adolescent years: "when we were kids / we smoked pot and wore black clothes / when we were kids / we listened to The Clash." To be fair, he’s also describing us, circa last week.
Athens, Georgia trio Phosphorescent offer up a haunting rendition of an old Kris Kristofferson country classic, "Sunday Morning Coming Down", which is surprisingly effective despite the relatively young age of the lead singer. In Shearwater’s "Professor Nightmare", Jonathan Meiberg's haunting falsetto seems to echo across an empty concert hall, drifting effortlessly over upright bass and vibraphone.
Our favorite track on the album is "Hungarian Death March" by Fluffer's Union; it shares nearly identical drum work with Bloc Party's "Banquet" and a piano chord pattern in a style hearkening back to Spoon's Kill The Moonlight. Plenty of carnivalesque pomp and circumstance in this Eastern European-influenced song had us dancing maniacally in the driver’s seat while stopped near Whole Foods, with the homeless man outside Jackson Ruiz scratching his head and casting furtive glances in our direction.
Additional tracks on “Appetizers & Leftovers” include songs by Okkervil River, Hitchhike, Fine Fifteen, Tom Banjo, The Handsome Charlies, The Places, Thor, Summer Hymns, Murder Beach, Darling New Neighbors, I Love You And I Miss You, Acadia, and Small Things Amplified. A compilation album such as this could have easily been released with half of its content, but I Eat Records seems determined to enter Austin’s music scene with an unmistakably grand flourish. If you ask us, they’re off to a damn fine start.
Copies of “Appetizers & Leftovers” are available for $10 at tonight’s launch party at Emo’s, which we’ll be posting about later today. In the meantime, you can find out more about I Eat Records on their website.
