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When the dust settles after the SXSW circus leaves Austin every March, the Texas town is left hanging in the wind after the latest, greatest and sometimes weirdest ride out into the sunset. Fortunately with bands like Voxtrot sticking around in their hometown for the rest of the year, Austin doesn’t need to wait for one week a year to celebrate great new music. Voxtrot, the city’s quintet darlings, have put their promise and potential into an immaculate debut album on the heels of last year’s terrific EP ‘Mother, Sisters, Daughters & Wives’ and single ‘Biggest Fan.’
From sweeping to sweet, their eponymous effort sounds more accomplished than you’d expect from such a young band. This collection of solid pop songs are laden with strings and ambition, but mastered with a calming and tempered hand. In less humble and skilful hands, songs like ‘Stephen’ – with its trad indie simplicity and jaunty piano – could be buried under its flourishes of dramatic strings, but Voxtrot fill their tunes with a pitch-perfect balance of calming melancholy.
Not that ‘Voxtrot’ is simply a breeze. In the mix is a certain edge, which rushes out of the gate in songs like ‘Brother In Conflict’ when singer Ramesh Srivastava – with a voice and presence that is deceptively soft and dreamy – proclaims "I wanna drown you in pool of blood". Voxtrot sounds like a lullaby, but there’s a lot more to their plans than simply lulling you off to sweet dreams. There’s an underlying bite in the complex and startlingly smart arrangements and composition, and it keeps them miles away from syrupy sweetness and innocence. ‘Kid Gloves’ is their finest bite, a dreamy pop gem with a storm brewing somewhere beneath its superficially easy surface.
Although, the easy gloss is just that – shiny surface material. The album’s biggest moment, the storming ‘Easy’, puts your dancing shoes on for you (as does most of Voxtrot’s catalogue), with thick and bold guitars leading the way to the dance floor. Midway through, Srivastava confesses "I wanna dance something caustic and real", while his band creates the soundtrack for his ambition. Rarely has caustic sounded so real and sublimely subtle. It’s enough to make you want to visit Austin and walk down its streets, with only the ghosts of SXSW to distract from the amazing local heroes that celebrate music’s latest and greatest in one solid debut.
