Ask any mop-haired kid roaming the UT campus with clingy jeans and just a hint of bong water breath, and said youth will tell you By The End Of Tonight is the hottest thing since Malibu real estate. Lucky for him, and you, they're playing a post-extended-hiatus set at Emo's tonight. The Alvin, TX quartet render layers of messy, metallic instrumental post-rock into songs that meander towards catharsis like a lost baby deer wandering into a pack of starving wolves, and if that image doesn't get the house party started, we don't know what does. They've put out several full-lengths and EPs courtesy of Brooklyn's Temporary Residence label, which they share with spiritual godfathers Explosions In The Sky, so you know this ain't no joke.
...Hold on, wait; Brooklyn? This band lives 40 min from Houston but they have to go all the way to NYC to put out a record?
Now would be as good a time as any to bemoan the utter dearth of competitive, vanguard-level record labels in this fair city of ours. While Houston's Swishahouse has evolved into the biggest hip-hop indie since Death Row (damn if rappers don't know their marketing), pretty much every Austin rock band that outgrows a girlfriends-and-roommates fan base has wound up outsourcing its business to a label halfway across the country. Here's a breakdown of major Texas bands and their respective labels:
By The End Of Tonight - Temporary Residence Ltd. (Brooklyn)
Explosions In The Sky - Temporary Residence Ltd. (Brooklyn)
I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness - Secretly Canadian (Bloomington, IN)
Okkervil River - Jagjaguwar - (Bloomington, IN)
The Sword - Kemado (Brooklyn)
Voxtrot - Beggars Banquet (UK)
What Made Milwaukee Famous - Barsuk (Seattle)
Young Heart Attack - Beggars Banquet (UK)
These are just the indie labels. Sound Team—SOUND TEAM, people—share Capitol Records' vast resources with Duran Duran, the Beastie Boys, and Radiohead. Trail of Dead have been with Interscope since time immemorial, but they get bonus points for starting out on (Butthole Surfers drummer) King Coffey's presently-defunct, once-Austin-based Trance Syndicate label. Both The Black Angels and Ghostland Observatory self-release, for the time being. This is the cream of the Austin crop, but besides loads of venues there's hardly anything here to support them. Let's step it up, people! Before all our bands move to Bloomington.
BTEOT photo courtesy of Temporary Residence website
By The End Of Tonight, War Against Sleep, Death Wish @ Emo's
Doors at 8; show at 10
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Psst... Brooklyn is not in New England.
Um, Trance Syndicate was never based anywhere but Austin, ya hipster know-it-all.
Brooklyn is not in New England.
It isn't based anywhere now because it doesn't exist, ya semantic ne'er-do-well. OH SNAP! Tex, take it up with my proofreader.
The Black Angels are on a very small, very mediocre label based out of Seattle.
http://www.lightintheattic.net/
Brooklyn, much like Toronto and Dallas, is a Chicago suburb.
If Odam wasn't abandoning us, this error would have been quickly red-flagged and in all likelihood: exacerbated.
I take full responsibility for the geographical error found in this post.
Austin is where musicians come to die.
Well, there are other labels here that have a national reach via their distribution that seem to get ignored everytime some Austin band gets signed to a Temporary Residence or Secretly Canadian. Arclight Records has a great distribution deal with LumberJack Mordam Distribution, Australian Cattle God Records has a National reach through their exclusive ditribution w/ NAIL Distribution not to mention Emperor Jones & others.
These labels consistently sign Austin bands and help get them into a national forum and support national tours, publicity, marketing & promotion. Just because Pitchfork.com, et al, haven't bestowed indie-rock knighthood on the bands on those labels and propelled them into the hipster discourse from coast to coast doesn't mean that there aren't many labels here with more than just a local or regional scope that support Austin artists.
Misra Records (from Austin) just signed a partnership with Absolutely Kosher (home of the Wrens, among others) according to Pitchfork.
I didn't realize that Misra was that legit.
That's some good news for an Austin label!
Oh, and 12xu (12xu.net) which is the on and off home of Spoon, Silkworm, Sally Crewe, etc depending on which country you live in... is also based in Austin now.
As is the Matador midwest/nashville/whatever office.
Though, 12XU and Matador don't seem to sign Austin artists, so that's probably a moot point.
shout out to C-Side Records