Weird Weeds

Austin’s the Weird Weeds are a band that play a lot like weeds — their strangely live yet dire sprouts of earthy instrumentation growing out tangentially, erratically and stiflingly. There is a haunting drama to their songs, a dark tension burning at their starry core that threatens to make them burst into flames, but which always seems to subside again into some sense of peace, or at least contentment. This is an album filled with dark corners and lurking shadows, feeling like a guilty and tormented conscience. The three members of the band are certainly experienced in the arenas of these dark musical torments — drummer and vocalist Nick Hennies has performed with Jandek, Arnold Dreyblatt and Castanets to name a few, guitarist and vocalist Sandy Ewen records with Charalambides’ Tom Carter in Spiderwebs, and guitarist Aaron Russell rolls with the Cherry Blossoms and joined members of Deerhoof in THETEETHE. Weird Feelings leaves you with just those, and will definitely appeal to fans of heavily emotive and cathartic music, such as Cat Power (think her Myra Lee album) and Xiu Xiu (Jamie Stewart is a big supporter of the band), will eat these weeds up for dinner and ask for seconds.