THE DELI

Men I Trust, the Canadian dream pop quintet, co-headlined with Turnover at Emos on Wednesday night. Emma Proulx stood center stage on guitar, wearing an oversized taupe trench coat and her blonde hair pulled back in a dutch braid. The rest of the band, all hip men, horseshoed around her. The crowd greets the band with a hardy Texas welcome, and Emma Proulx’s soft sweet canadian accent sounds almost too delicate and beautiful to exist.

The band is punctual and well-rehearsed, achieving a neat and clean sound that’s also sexy. Although the band is modestly dressed, their sound is as sensual as it is mellow. Songs like “Show Me How” could be the soundtrack to losing your virginity on prom night. But remember, this is dream pop, so this is dream prom (that isn’t lame) and the dream mood is scarves over lampshades and hot candle wax. The notes fall and linger while her words crawl up the back of your neck, “show me how you care/ tell me how you were loved before/ show me how you smile/ tell me why your hands are cold.”

Tunes like, “You Deserve This,” keep the mellow mood smooth and groovy, complemented by the soft disco dance undercurrents of the next song, “Tailwhip.” For this tune, Emma jams with Jessy on bass, their instruments facing each other and the sounds audibly bouncing off one another and throughout the venue. This is the intangible, intimate magic of music because at this point, duh, the audience lost it with hoots, hollers, and yelps. Someone even collapsed at the left side bar – woah, mad whammy skills.

As much as I wished they played hits like “Seven” or “Lauren”, I also admire them for not. It leaves me thirsty for more of their music, and it conveys their confidence as a band. They’re not limited to their hits. Their new release from this year, Once Jazz, boasts 24 songs, some new and old rerecorded. All of their music is self-released which gives this dream pop band a punk edge. 

– Mel Green

From one night to the other during Levitation, the scene at Empire tonight feels drastically different but also the same. It’s still dark but dark rock, instead of dark wave dance, as Empire hosts a ticket of Sargent House Presents.

Emma Ruth Rundle is the penultimate performance of the indoor stage. The psychedelic grayscale light illustrations blanket over her body and guitar while the autumn breeze blows in feathering her bangs. Her silhouette is reminiscent of a young Stevie Nicks but her sound is uniquely her own. While the other bands of the evening fall on the heavy side of the spectrum, Rundle finds herself between metal and ethereal. Her voice soars from her trachea like a free bird or prey as she plays the goth folk anthem, “Shadows of My Name.”

The vibe of the night pivots beneath an undercurrent of rock as the heavy pull of her guitar and the war drum cadence of “Fever Dreams” spellbinds the audience into an amorphous bobbing of heads and knocking of knees. The subsequent song “Darkhorse” from her 2018 album, On Dark Horses, closes the set and seals the venue in a new covenant. With fests every weekend in Austin, one might forget that this is fucking Levitation fest and not just a regular Friday night on 7^th street. The covenant of Emma Ruth Rundle makes this evening at Empire a timeless place of memory blessed by the deities of goth folk n roll in which we can return. Levitation isn’t every weekend, but you can still levitate daily and harness the residual energy and adrenaline of the festival.

-Mel Green

Kurt Vile takes the stage at Stubbs casually and cool. His presence is always welcome in Austin, looking like someone you might bump into at the grocery store in Hyde Park with his long dark hair in his face and disheveled plaid shirt. His last show in town was December 2018 at Moody Theatre. The set list is similar to the last show here, playing mostly songs off his 2018 album Bottle It In, but it’s always refreshing to float along with his on and on lyricism and dreamy chord progressions.

The band opens the show with “Loading Zones.” Vile stakes his position as “a mayor of some godforsaken town.” The song’s story builds up to a repeated mantra: “I park for free,” because, yes, parking for free is the defining perk and achievement of political office. Imagine parking for free in Austin…I wonder if you can. 

There’s not much chat between songs as the band mellowly eases into each song. Of course, the audience lost it and sang along when Vile played “Pretty Pimpin’,” the hit that earned him significant cred back in 2015.

“Wakin’ On a Pretty Day” – the 10 minute ballad of loafing and loving on a pretty day – would have been the highlight of the show if not for the encore featuring the guitar player of Dinosaur Jr. Clouds of smoke puff into the dark atmosphere above, and the audience bobs and sways as Vile’s mumbly articulation of the song draws you into a new state of day: “Wakin’ on a pretty day, don’t know why I ever go away. It’s hard to explain my love in this daze.” Try playing this song first thing in the morning and just see what happens – maybe you’ll have a pretty daze, whatever that looks like for you.

Vile and the band brought up J Mascis from Dinosaur Jr to encore with the song of “Hunchback,” from Vile’s 2009 album Childish Prodigy. It was a playful, dreamy song to close the weekend of shows at Stubbs, with both grown men singing about being hunchbacks “floppin an flippin around like fish on the street/floppin an flippin around like a fish along the sand.” 

The band exits the stage, the stage lights come on and the crew starts breaking down. Some of the crowd will go off to the last of the Levitation shows, but some will go home and get ready for a return to their subjective reality. Levitation is its own reality for scenes and subcultures of Austin, and the Fest was an excuse to show up, look hot, and hear great music.

– Mel Green