Brand New Hearts (CD Release) * A Sundae Drive * The Ex-Optimists

Rudyard’s presents Brand New Hearts (CD Release) * A Sundae Drive * The Ex-Optimists.

Brand New Hearts (Houston, TX)
https://www.facebook.com/BrandNewHearts

“One was a quartet of guys from the teeny little town of Magnolia who called themselves Ultramagg. They were one of the best damn emo(-ish) bands this city had seen, in my humble opinion, and they played every show like they were destroying the stage at some arena-sized show in front of a jam-packed crowd of crazed fans. They were heavy, they were melodic, and they were awesome. Frontman/guitaristNathan Parsons wrote the kind of songs I wished I could’ve written, and it killed me when they stepped out of the limelight and put down the guitars and drumsticks.

Then there was Ben Murphy, who fronted or played with a slew of bands back in those days, from Pop Deflation to We’ve Got Airplanesand up through Panic in Detroit and Lucky Motors and beyond (and who most recently worked his magic in the sadly-defunct Bright Men of Learning). I can vividly remember watching Ben play guitar at one We’ve Got Airplanes show and feeling my jaw literally drop as I tried to figure how he was making the sounds that were coming out of the speaker.

Back in those early band days, we — like every band in this town — had trouble finding and keeping a drummer. We auditioned a ton of ‘em, honestly, and one of the few that utterly bowled me over was a guy named Jeff Senske.

The man played like a hard-hitting metronome and was one of the best, tightest drummers I’ve heard before or since, up there with Sugar’s Malcolm Travis or Superchunk’s Jon Wurster. (Plus, he makes the best Drummer Faces ever.) Luckily for him, he came to his senses and demurred when we asked him to join the band, but we went on to be in damn near every good band that came after, including Trompedo and the aforementioned Bright Men of Learning.

Last but not least, there was Bring Back The Guns, aka Groceries, aka Gandhi in Evags, aka at least three or four more names I can’t recall. At one point, I’d pinned my hopes on BTTG to be The Band, the one who’d finally make the Music World At Large sit up and pay attention. The band’s skewed-yet-addictive brand of indie-rock was fun as hell but weird enough to make you scratch your head; in a lot of ways, looking back, they were about five years ahead of their time. And after releasing an EP, an album, and a couple of 7?s, they called it quits and went their separate ways, leaving myself and a bunch of other devoted fans sad and disappointed.

I say all this, by the way, both to set the stage somewhat and explain why I was so freaking excited to get word of the existence of Brand New Hearts a month or so back. I’d heard from Nathan Parsons back in the fall, when he nonchalantly mentioned he was trying to get a band together, and a couple of months later, BNH appeared, a band that boasted Parsons, Murphy, Senske, and Ryan Hull of Bring Back The Guns. It was damn-near perfect, at least on paper.

And, happily, from the snippets I’ve been able to hear so far, it’s damn-near perfect in reality, as well. The band comes off like the best elements of all the component bands/musicians, all mashed together into a glorious, rough-edged, insanely catchy whole, and I can’t wait to see ‘em live.” – Space City Rock

A Sundae Drive (Houston, TX)
http://www.facebook.com/asundaedrivemusic?sk=info#!/asundaedrivemusic

For most of the band’s debut EP, You’re Gonna Get Me, it feels like A Sundae Drive just rolls hazily along, serene smiles across the band members’ faces as the music unwinds itself to whatever its eventual destination’s going to be. They nod and sway like they’ve done it forever, but they’re not dreampop (or shoegaze, or whatever you want to call it), not exactly, but they’ve taken pieces of that sound and made ‘em their own. Take the driving bass at the start of “…And See the World,” for one example — it bumps its way speedily through, Britpop-style, but over the top there’re wavery, watery guitars that bring to mind Teenage Fanclub (or maybe Surfer Blood), as well as some sweetly drifting harmony vocals.

On the other end of the spectrum, “I’m a Poster” is right-angled and math-y, with defiant, J. Robbins-like vocals, spiraling guitars, and a jagged, almost stop-start structure. And despite the differences, it all sounds like the same band, which is no mean feat in itself. Then there’s “Buenos Aires, Manny Pacquiao,” a soft-voiced look backwards at childhood that makes me think of Austinites Meryll more than anything else; both bands craft songs that are intensely personal and reference events that happened when the singer was a kid but still feel utterly relevant to the listener, right here in the present.

There’s also a resemblance to Copeland’s gently-rocking post-emo pop, both on “Buenos Aires” or on the steadily-building “So Sleep.” What’s really interesting about the EP, though, is that A Sundae Drive sound like a pop band that doesn’t really realize it is a pop band. They’ve got all the indie-rock influences poking out from beneath their sleeves, sure, and it’s obvious they love a lot of sharper-edged stuff — the Pixies-esque guitar drone in the background on “Alone Bad, Friends Good” gives that away, not to mention that nice “walking” melody — but the actual songs they’re writing are warm and fuzzy ’round the edges, nodding in a friendly way when you walk in the door.

At the EP’s end, when the band turns down for the up-close, slow-stepping rumble of “I’m Gonna Miss You Like Crazy,” with the droney, half-distorted, Seam-like guitar line and frontman Zeek Garcia’s deliberate, quiet vocals whispering in my ear, it hits me: I really, really like this band. A Sundae Drive don’t need to bash you over the head with how good they are; they’d much rather stand in the corner, plug in, and play until your brain catches up to what your ears already know. – Space City Rock

The Ex-Optimists (College Station, TX)
https://www.facebook.com/theexoptimists

“I’m honestly kicking myself now for not listening to this sooner. College Station band The Ex-Optimists have been on repeat in my headphones for a while now, drowning me in a turbulent squall of Sonic Youth guitars, driving ’90s indie-drone-rock melodies, and hazy, softspoken vocals, and I’m enjoying the hell out of it.

On “Nitemare City,” the guitars are watery and sharp-edged in equal measure, drifting around you like psychically-controlled knives that periodically dart in to gouge out a chunk of your flesh. In the meantime, frontman Kelly Minnis serenely murmurs and croons like he’s already lost in the swirling murk; that is, until the whole damn thing explodes in a ball of fury partway through before coalescing back into its more stable previous state. The closest thing I can come up with is Houston’s own Muhammad Ali, except that this quartet sounds like they’re fueled less by beer and more by green, leafy substances.

Then there’s B-side “February,” which dives sideways into nearly Dinosaur Jr., quick-stepping along through an insanely-catchy melody while the overfuzzed guitars set fire to the scenery. Occasionally feels like I’m listening to a rougher-edged Silversun Pickups — there’s definitely a hazy, shoegaze quality to it, beneath the out-and-out noise. “- Space City Rock