Once again Austin delivers, this time with the recent release of The Lovely Sparrows‘ Pulling Up Floors, Pouring On (New) Paint on Abandoned Love Records. And with this five-song debut EP, the Texas town continues to pump out quality artists. The Lovely Sparrows take folk music in a new direction, adding a unique abundance of percussion and a few non-traditional instruments, like the flute. I raved about “Chemicals Change” when I wrote the feature article on The Lovely Sparrows, and the rest of the EP continues with more cymbal heavy, …

Written by Fense
I recently joined Jon Rooney on a trip to a record convention in which we perused piles and piles of albums in various collections. On this journey I snagged two 7” singles, one by The Wedding Present and one by The Smiths. As we hit Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood where Rooney resides, he mentioned he had a few albums for me, two of which were Morning Spy (MySpace) releases.

Written by Fense
The Lovely Sparrows (MySpace) embark on an exciting journey with Bury The Cynics, and while they loose much of the excessive percussion I loved so much on their EP, they replace it with heightened production value and an array of additional instruments. Or, rather, the additional instruments are brought to the foreground and allowed to shine.

Each Ball Of Wax compilation has a theme behind it and this one is the thirteenth quarterly comp that Seattle artist Levi Fuller has done. What Fuller does is concoct a theme (at least on some… several have no theme other than being “music to enjoy”) then gather a mass of (usually) local Pacific Northwest artists, who all write and record an exclusive song for the release. This was my first time seeing several of the performers on the list, from St Rainbow (the folks behind Hollow Earth …

Written by Fense
Spin recently took the exclusive debut of The Lovely Sparrows’ (MySpace) video for “Year Of The Dog” and I initially found it astonishing that they related the Sparrows to Neutral Milk Hotel—I mean, The Lovely Sparrows are distinctly folk-pop and while NMH included some of these traits in their music, the emphasis was almost always on the pop.