TWELVE ROOMS
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CEDARLAND
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THE LONG WIND DOWN
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MISCELLANEOUS PRESS
BigYawn.net
Review of Twelve Rooms
View this review online here.
Right from the start, Palaxy Tracks gets some bonus points in my book for doing something that a lot of bands tend to overlook (at least those of the indie variety): including the song lyrics in the liner notes in large, easily readable print. Not that I’m necessarily a fan of the slobbering, Dashboard Confessional style sing along or anything, but it’s nice to know what the guy on stage is saying, so that you don’t accidentally pump your fist to a passage about killing babies or something (my apologies to the baby killing aficionados out there).
“Taking a page from Death Cab for Cutie” would be one way to start paragraph two of this review, though a more apt description might be “Having created an album that Ben Gibbard dreams about being able to create every night.” I mean that in a good way, though a Death Cab comparison is almost insulting to Palaxy Tracks. This album is storytelling at its absolute finest. From “Speech With Animals” we are given a small slice of life vignette, from the perspective of a man in the midst of a deteriorating marriage. The melancholy organ, piano and guitar accompaniment complements Brandon Durham’s melodic, droning tenor beautifully, up until “learn to rise above” escapes his lips, and the music moves to pure indie rock fanfare. “The Clarion Way” starts off with a hint of “Sultans of Swing” but quickly becomes another lover’s quarrel, eventually becoming contemplative and ending on a more upbeat note. “Camera” holds the slow tone, sounding like it could have come from the American Analog Set, until some chord changes and progression towards the end of the track move it deeper into the sort of bittersweet melody that seems par for the course on this release.
Though I keep bringing up the slower, melodic, droning aspects of the album, I should stress that Twelve Rooms is not without its share of standard rock tracks. “Lamplighter,” “Legs On The Ladder” and “Dead Language” should fulfill the rocking out craving you may be prone to while listening to this album. “Dead Language” in particular makes excellent use of some vocal and instrumental harmonies towards the end before churning out a spacey, uplifting guitar solo to finish out the song.
Overall verdict? The term “haunting” has been used frequently to describe this quartet, and with good reason. However, I think that may do them a giant disservice. Twelve Rooms doesn’t, as many albums of this style do, become a chore to listen to, despite the slower movement of a number of the songs. Two of the more uptempo tracks come at the very end of the album, which helps the pacing a bit, and gives it a more tangible feeling than we heard with Cedarland. I think it’s safe to say that Palaxy Tracks have found their niche on this release.
· Jeff
Prefix Mag
Review of Twelve Rooms
View this review online here.
Taking inspiration from Ramond Carver’s simple, revealing stories, Palaxy Tracks’ third full-length sees the band discovering the gas pedal while keeping everything bathed in the sepia tones of faded photographs. Four tracks here seep adrenaline. They’re competent, though not too powerfully hooky, and Brandon Durham’s falling-leaf vocals wander under distorted guitars and crashing cymbals. The album is more fulfilling (and unsettling) when everything remains floating in the dust of moonlight, as on “Speech With Animals,” “The Clarion Way” and “Camera.” These Twelve Rooms are pleasant enough for an overnight stay, but they’ll require a low-spirited mindset to invoke repeated visits.
· Adam Brent Houghtaling
Resonance
Review of Twelve Rooms
Analgesics sometimes come in the form of long-playing records, offering consolation in the face of the perpetual avalanche of pain and misery the besets most human lives. Some rock bands (Eels, Red House Painters, Radiohead) know how to make records like this and some (the entire neo-emo roster) don’t. Austin’s Palaxy Tracks understand this fine distinction. Twelve Rooms successfully navigates the minefields and potential pitfalls of solace-core rock, tip-toeing around the trap of maudlin self indulgence by making songs about other peoples’ foibles and struggles. Expansive songwriting yields a richness of sound and feeling that culminates in the gorgeous eight-minute title track. When called upon to do so, this crew is capable of working the rock out as well (“Up My Sleeve,” “Lamplighter”). In all, healthily consoling and mature.
· Matthew Stearns
Faces
Review of Twelve Rooms
Rarely ever have suicidal thoughts sounded so classy as on the second, furious album of the American group Palaxy Tracks! Songs that mix the playful distant-from-the-world gist of Mojave 3 with the lucid stubbornness of Sonic Youth. One wants to be eternally surrender to the attacks of pieces such as the meticously balanced “Grey Snake” – or the adorable “Me & You & Him,” that tells of feelings, that try to part themselves by three, in a way never heard before.
The Crutch
Review of Twelve Rooms
View this review online here.
Formed in Austin, Palaxy Tracks are now flourishing in Chicago, as evidenced by the release of their third album in five years (second since heading up North). While they might have abandoned the Lone Star State for cooler climes, there’s still a little bit of Texas in Palaxy Tracks. The gentle twang of the gee-tar sprinkled through Twelve Rooms serves as a subtle reminder of their Texan past.
The moody and somberly bittersweet songs on Twelve Rooms are partially inspired by the spare, elegiac short stories of Raymond Carver. The album also includes an intriguing Leonard Cohen cover (“Seems So Long Ago, Nancy”). The hallmark of a Palaxy Tracks record is, without question, Brandon Durham’s voice – oozing heartbreak, Durham vocalizes his sadness with a beautiful fragility. His songs have such a softness that Durham might be singing you to sleep with a lullaby instead of waxing lyrical about the dark side of domesticity. He is at once cajoling, plaintive, cautious, and forlorn. Twelve Rooms is further enhanced by the strumming of guitarist Brad Murph and bassist Keith Grap and the drums of Chicago’s own Chuck Harling, who, simply put, make beautiful music together.
Everything about this album is gorgeous and yet wrenching. The tracks are evocative of the feeling that occurs upon seeing an ex for the first time, post-breakup – that feeling as though someone has punched you in the gut and knocked the wind out of you, coupled with a painful longing for what once was your relationship and the realization that it’s over and done with. Firing on all cylinders, Twelve Rooms is cohesive and well-produced, marking the growth of an already impressive band. All the band’s cogs fit together into a finely tuned machine, the job of which is to tug your heartstrings and make you weepy. And darned if you won’t enjoy every moment of it.
· Megan Petty
Harp Magazine
Review of Twelve Rooms
Moving even further away from the cracked and crackling pop of Palaxy’s earlier releases, bandleader Brandon Durham has continued the course plotted on 2003’s Cedarland by making Twelve Rooms and even more emotionally pensive and sonically expansive disc. Although constructed in relatively basic fashion—only occasionally do instruments like a pump organ or a violin show up to augment the guitar-bass-drums setup—the sound this Chicago quartet generates is anything but simplistic. Sparse and melancholy for the most part (“Legs on the Ladder” is a surprising bit of energy near disc’s end), but with a penchant for atmospheric arrangements, Twelve Rooms is filled with rainy-day tunes about love and loss, as well as a healthy dose of pure lyrical abstraction. The inclusion of Leonard Cohen’s “Seems So Long Ago, Nancy” is a surprisingly good fit, which should give the uninitiated a pretty good idea where the group is coming from.
· Jason Ferguson
The Austin Chronicle
Review of Twelve Rooms
View this review online here.
After the moody Cedarland, this was to be Palaxy Tracks’ big rock album, a return to the masterful pedal-fests of 2001’s The Long Wind Down, before the band left Austin for Chicago. Not bloody likely. The rollicking drums of “Speech With Animals” are but a red herring, obscuring the opening chapter of Twelve Rooms, a loosely themed collection of musical short stories brave enough to bob heads. Main man Brandon Durham’s lyrical preoccupation with home – physical place vs. emotional space – hits new levels of articulation here. Twelve Rooms dwells both in an old empty house and well-worn relationships, in those make-or-break moments of intense emotional density. “I see your eyes, they’re telling me we’re done,” laments Durham on “Up My Sleeve,” musically taut, nervous, and fast-paced. In “Legs on the Ladder,” “Lamplighter,” and “Dead Language,” Twelve Rooms is that big rock album, yet it’s also Palaxy Tracks’ most spare and intimate recording in spots, like funereal Leonard Cohen cover “Seems So Long Ago, Nancy” and the ornate, cello-laced “Me & You & Him.” Twelve Rooms is Palaxy Tracks’ most fully realized work yet, and hopefully the one that gets the word out about these Austin expats.
· Michael Chamy
Magnet
Review of Twelve Rooms
Sometimes beautiful things should just be content with being beautiful. Trying to prove their intelligence only leads to embarrassment, like when Miss America opens her mouth and a mangled attempt at political discourse falls out. Or when the third LP from Palaxy Tracks tries to transform the acerbic short stories of Raymond Carver into fresh-faced Britpop. Carver’s work flattens all emotion into hard little kernels of bitterness, and frontman Brandon Durham’s attempts at capturing this in his own lyrics comes across like childish jabs in the ribs. “Baby you’re driving me crazy / You cold little person / Just learning to hide, ” he sings on “The Clarion Way.” On “Legs On The Ladder,” he chides, “Your mouth is like a gun that turns out lies.” The Chicago foursome’s take on British-inspired pop is quite gorgeous (layer upon layer of gentle guitar lines atop feeble keyboards), but these overly harsh lyrics sound comical juxtaposed against it. Twelve Rooms only picks up when Durham’s sweet murmurs embed themselves in the mix, as on “Speech With Animals” and “Up My Sleeve.” Palaxy Tracks may want to discard Carver next time around and focus on material that better matches their sound. Like, say, the gushing prose of a romance novel.
· Tizzy Asher
PopMatters
Review of Twelve Rooms
View this review online here.
I want to let you in on a secret. I want to tell you about this amazing band from Austin via Chicago called Palaxy Tracks. I want to tell you their new record makes good on the promise of their most excellent sophomore effort and is entirely awesome. I even want to be tempted into telling you without any intended irony that it will change your life. Sadly I can’t say any of these things as Twelve Rooms just isn’t as good as I want it to be. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad; it’s really rather good. Still something is amiss making it not quite the masterwork I wanted.
If my expectations are at fault here then I redirect that charge back at the band for having set them so high. Cedarland remains a stunning shot out from the unknown as enchanting as it is unexpected. A smoldering haze of melancholy it dwells in an ethereal space of transcendent sadness where Belle & Sebastian invoke as much Ian Curtis as they do Nick Drake. Of course, now that any and every given emo band has appropriated Joy Division as their little black badge of authenticated anguish, it’s an unfortunate necessity that the distinction be drawn between this band and that sort of melodrama. While their aesthetic may dwell in dim spaces, Palaxy Tracks never lapse into ersatz emoting. With the same casual affability that defines Peek-A-Boo Records label-mates Black Lipstick, any angst is made much more palatable. That familiar intimacy nullifies any notion of eyeliner and imparts an undercurrent of warmth. Yet this asset also works against the band rendering what could have been captivating as only charming. Exacerbating this flaw is a lack of lyrical hooks and monochromatic production values making many songs indistinguishable. Minor at most, these few faults keep Cedarlandon the nigh side of greatness.
Unfortunately Twelve Rooms finds Palaxy Tracks totally fucking with a formula that only needs fine-tuning. Variety is their ultimate undoing as the band incorporates an expanding assortment of instrumentation and arrangements. While this makes for more readily identifiable songs, it sometimes puts the band beyond their means. Unable to surpass or even match Cedarland, Twelve Rooms is nevertheless a beautiful failure and still well worth recommending.
Haunting both records is a luminous sense of descending dusk. Songs hover in precarious weightlessness as prone to angelic ascent as they are to despondent plunge. Evoking other prominent masters of that medium between light and dark, “Camera” finds the band at its most Stuart Murdoch ever and “Seems So Long Ago, Nancy” is an outright Leonard Cohen cover.
That last comparison seems particularly pertinent given the considered care with which the lyrics on Twelve Rooms are laid down in literary detail. Principal songwriter Brandon Durham impressively crafts the entire album out of one moment. Each song is an exacting assessment of that make-up-or-break-up instant when a couple must choose to “learn to die / or learn to rise above”. Opening as an estranged husband confronts his spouse with “it is time to decide / are we still man and wife”, the rest of the record remains right on the brink of everything either ending or starting over with each subsequent indication suggesting a different direction. Nothing could be better suited to the ephemeral grace inherent in these songs.
Adept as they may be, Durham’s lyrics are almost agreeably consumed by his commanding delivery. It’s a shame to lose lines like “the summer of ‘95 is nothing more than a lie” but Durham’s sonorous croon offsets the sacrifice. Suitably contradictory, his baritone rolls out smooth and strong yet fragile and floating. Mastering a substantial emotive range within restraining timbre, Durham sounds like nothing less than a cross between Leonard Cohen and Elliott Smith. The strongest songs are those allowing his voice to ascend and elevate the band beneath him.
Regrettably, songs like “Lamplighter” and “Up My Sleeve” rock onward with directed headiness that leaves Durham straining to catch up. His precisely ordered cadence could keep time for the whole group but sounds awkwardly languid as the band outpaces him.
Other missteps are also rooted in arrangements. The chamber pop of “Me & You & Him” deviates from the primary colors of alternately shimmering and stinging guitar tones that have thus far established the band’s identity. Similarly, the waltzing pump organ and percussion of “Seems So Long Ago, Nancy” would sound more at home on a Decemberists’ record than they do here. Lastly, the album ends with a whimper as they follow up their most successful synthesis of brooding twee and hard rocking with the directionless dreck of “Twelve Rooms”. (For future reference and the benefit of all bands everywhere, it should be noted that the concept and execution of “ambient soundtracks to unnamed films” is just as boring as it is pretentious and played-out; to put it another way, any impulse inspired by or involving “Eno” as an adjective should be shitcanned immediately.)
Beyond those errors, there’s some great musicianship on Twelve Rooms. The bass and drum breakdown and build-up of “Grey Snake” perfectly accentuates the line “I need to breath”. Adding some summery schmaltz, the lite FM guitar lead closing out “The Clarion Way” offers a much needed respite of buoyancy. The frenzied drumming and fuck-it-all guitar solos of “Dead Language” successfully contrast the album’s overall restraint and would have made for a hell of a closer if not for the unfortunate title track.
Still the ratio of good to bad here is stacked pretty heavily in favor of Palaxy Tracks and any listener lucky enough to discover them. Cedarland may be a better place to start, but Twelve Rooms is enjoyable on its own and suggests something even better may still be on the way. Though I hoped they would cross over with this release, Palaxy Tracks remains among the ranks of indie rockers who are good enough but not yet great.
I want to tell them to keep trying.
· Josh Berquist
Luister
Review of Twelve Rooms
View this review online here.
Every once in a while you come across an album that apparentely does everything in its power to remain unnoticed. Palaxy Tracks’ Twelve Rooms is one of those records. I tried searching Google for a review in Dutch, but there were no results to be shown. Even a search for an English review didn’t pruduce half as much as I would have thought. So, in a spirit of “every little bit helps” and “pearls before swine,” here’s my two cents. Because I happen to think it’s a wonderful record and worth every bit of media attention it can possibly grab.
Truth be told, they kinda got themselves to blame for it. If you’re making this kind of melancholic, delicate and modest guitar rock, full blown media exposure is hard to come by. There are however 12 pretty vacant rooms available in which it is good to dwell. Unlike Coldplay, who suffocate their songs in useless grandeur, Palaxy Tracks succeed in giving the songs room to breathe and glow with a gentle warmth. Let’s take “Grey Snake”, it starts off as a gentle rock song, almost grinding to a halt after about two minutes, before flaring out in a kind of post-rock finale.
Singer/songwriter Brandon Durham has got a pleasant voice which reminds me of Ben Gibbard’s phrasing, but in a Lou Barlow kinda way. It’s not the greatest voice you’ll ever hear, but it suits the music perfectly. Speaking of Death Cab for Cutie, “Lamplighter” wouldn’t be amiss on one of their albums. Other names that spring to mind are Unwed Sailor, Great Lake Swimmers (the quiet “Me & You & Him”), Tortoise (“Twelve Rooms”) or early R.E.M. There’s even room for the odd country twang (“Camera” and “The Clarion Way”) or civilised rock (“Up my sleeve”, “Legs On The Ladder” and “Dead Language”).
“Like a snapshot taken at twilight, their music is a photograph of a landscape caught at perpetual dusk.”, that’s what I found on the website of these guys. Combine that with references to the work of Raymond Carver, the excellent cover of Cohen’s “Seems So Long Ago, Nancy” and your once in a lifetime opportunity to be able to say “I was one of the first to discover this band” and you no longer have any excuse left why you don’t already own a copy of this album.
· Antheunis Geert
Tiny Mix Tapes
Review of Twelve Rooms
View this review online here.
A sound that puts me in a very mopey mood, I’m no stranger to the feel Twelve Rooms. It’s that gentle sort of melancholy that isn’t cathartic, but stately. Not wretched, but eloquent. It makes me feel like the miserable graceless troglodyte that I surely am. I wanted to like Belle and Sebastian, but the only song of theirs I can truly say I love is “Slow Graffiti” form the Acid House soundtrack. Listening to them, for me, is like pining for a different body. One that looks so skinny it could fold in on itself. I start wishing my hair were flatter and trendier and before I know it I’m in the full throes of the blandest, weak-kneedest sort of pretension one could imagine. Palaxy Tracks jangles and crash cymbals all that out from time to time (hard to mope to hard with yr toes tapping), but a lot of the time they just remind me of just how lacking in stateliness or eloquence I am.
It’s not their fault, of course. But as far as I’m concerned, weepy, mope music is just that. It doesn’t matter how literate, how novel, how Scottish — I can barely listen to The Bends any more because of how nauseous its consistent whining makes me. The same can be said for Palaxy Tracks; even though they are a solid sounding band with a confident, cemented kind of delivery, it’s really just more morose music. Even if its lyrics are evocative and stirring in their narratives, the forlorn patina simply drags the listener down after awhile. There is an ethereal edge to Sigur Ros’ equally wet-eyed () — as well as an air of mystery and cathartic release that’s noticeably absent on Twelve Rooms.
There is a rich bevy of instrumentation on this record. The singer’s voice is quite sweet, despite its somewhat bland predictability tone-wise. I love me some sad songs, but I feel like this album belies a snooty, resigned sort of moperock that I simply can’t relate to. As I’ve said before, the instrumentation intermittently picks up the pace. But the tone is always quietly, comfortably miserable. If you like Black Heart Procession or something similarly chained to its sad-sad-sad-can-I-get-any-more-sad-guess-not formula… Me, I can’t tell if I’m hanging my head in shame or nodding off.
· Willcoma
Junkmedia
Review of Twelve Rooms
View this review online here.
Palaxy Tracks’s Twelve Rooms is a stylish collection of a dozen indie rock songs, eminently tuneful and artfully arranged. Loping drums, economical guitars, and vocalist Brandon Durham’s understated delivery give “Speech with Animals” a dreamy cast. Occasionally, an early R.E.M. influence is perceptible, as on “The Clarion Way” and “Camera.” “Grey Snake” revels in layered rhythms, creating an appealingly syncopated surface. “Up My Sleeve” and “Lamplighter” prove that the band can rock out, in catchy, somewhat arty, fashion. “The Criminal Mind” adds spacey guitars to the mix.
The band covers the Leonard Cohen song, “Seems so Long Ago, Nancy.” Durham croons amiably, while Brad Murph’s atmospheric guitar melodies and Dave Max Crawford’s pump organ supply an appropriately Cohen-esque arrangement. Somewhat enigmatically, the album closes with an extended, ambling instrumental, “Twelve Rooms.” It is a lush, long denouement to a very satisfying record.
· Christian Carey
Illinois Entertainer
Interview
View this interview online here.
“I honestly don’t believe we could ever be financially successful at this. The music we make just isn’t catchy enough. It doesn’t reach out and grab you by the throat like, say, a Spoon record might.”
Brandon Durham is not pulling any punches. In his e-mail responses to questions about his band Palaxy Tracks, his influences as a songwriter, and his place in the music world, Durham is simply being honest.
“With us it takes some time to seep in, possibly multiple listens, and a lot of people don’t really give records that much of a chance. Hopefully I’ll be forced to eat my words some day — for us and our record label.”
Surprising sentiment from the frontman of a band whose past two efforts have been applauded by critics for their expansive, mood-setting indie rock. Palaxy Track’s latest, Twelve Rooms (Peek-A-Boo), goes a step further in defining that sound. However, Durham says the band, which also includes guitarist Brad Murph, bassist Keith Grap, and drummer Ben Kane, almost took a stab at something more like Spoon.
“The original idea behind this record was for it to be a rock record, but that concept fell apart quickly as songs like ‘Speech With Animals’ and ‘The Clarion Way’ started to surface. We liked these songs enough to abandon the idea of making a rock record. Thinking back on it now, the idea of us making a rock record just seems ludicrous.”
After hearing Twelve Rooms, with its intricate guitar work wrapped around Durham’s troubling vignettes, it’s easy to agree with the singer about the importance of this Chicago four-piece not changing its sound. Durham and crew seem quite content to make albums that explore certain themes and invoke certain moods, rather than collections of songs that sell records.
“Cedarland [the band’s last album] is really just about making friends with the ghosts of your past, and in this case it was the ghosts that inhabit my hometown of Cedar Park and Austin, Texas,” Durham explains. “Twelve Rooms, on the other hand, is more about communication, or the lack thereof, and the dynamic between people in love.”
It’s a theme close to the work of one of Durham’s major influences, Raymond Carver, one of the most influential short story writers of the last half of the 20th century. Carver often wrote about relationships, especially domestic interaction, but Durham says he was not trying to mimic Carver’s every word on Twelve Rooms.
“I was really going more for the general mood of his writing than I was trying to get inspiration from specific stories. ‘Quiet desperation’ is a term often applied to Raymond Carver’s stories, and that’s something I tried really hard to convey in the songs on this record.”
Durham cites “Dead Language” as the only song directly influenced by one of Carver’s stories. The rest are plucked from Durham’s life and “fictionalized beyond recognition.”
“I’ve had a habit in the past of being almost too candid with my lyrics and have in turn hurt some feelings,” Durham admits. “I’m still not sure there’s anything wrong with being so candid, per se, but I’m not really out to hurt anyone. So, since the album is essentially 12 different stories, I thought it was only natural — and the perfect opportunity — to fictionalize the actual facts a bit so as to make them unrecognizable to the actual subject of that story. There’s only one song on the whole record where I didn’t change the facts at all, and the person that it’s about will surely recognize it the moment they hear it. Believe me, they deserve it!”
Thankfully for Durham, it’s mostly fiction, considering the majority of the album is about murder and death, longing and despair. Durham admits he’s not always writing about these themes literally and points to his childhood for some of those influences.
“My mother died when I was very young, and ever since then I’ve had these dreams where it becomes my job to either save people’s lives or to help hide the evidence after someone else has committed a particularly gruesome murder. People tell me these are guilt dreams. I don’t know, but they play a large part in some of the songs.”
Not all of Twelve Rooms belongs to Durham. The band chose to cover Leonard Cohen’s “Seems So Long Ago, Nancy.” Durham says the song fits nicely on the album, and the fact that it came from Cohen’s Songs From A Room was just a “happy accident” the band didn’t realize until later.
“Recording this song was easily one of the most memorable moments for us during the whole process,” Durham says, “Clava/4Dueces, the studio we recorded in, has this beautiful 19th-century pump organ, so we asked Max Crawford (Archer Prewitt, Poi Dog Pondering) to come out and add some organ to the song, and he did an amazing job. The day we finished it in the studio we decided it needed something more, so we set up a stereo pair of microphones in the middle of a large room, hit record, and walked around the room grabbing whatever we could and shook it, hit it, and threw it around. It’s now one of my favorite elements on the whole record.”
Along with Crawford, a handful of guest musicians appear on Twelve Rooms, including Tim Rutili (Califone) and Ted Cho (Poi Dog), who also helped produce the album. It’s a similar move to Cedarland, which featured musicians from Okkervil River and Shearwater, two Austin-based bands. Durham expressed the importance of finding camaraderie among other musicians and staying attached to the band’s Austin roots, despite the fact Palaxy Tracks left Texas in 2001.
“In all honesty, we still consider ourselves an Austin band, even though we’ve been gone for over four years now. Peek-A-Boo [Records] feels the same way, fortunately, which was a surprise to us considering Travis, the owner, only releases Austin music.
“It’s strange, but all the years we played around Austin we couldn’t really find our audience there. That is until we announced we were leaving town. It was posted in one of the local papers, and all of the sudden we had crowds. The last handful of shows we played there were pretty well-attended, and now every time we go back we do pretty well. It’s always so nice to go back and see the same old familiar faces looking back at us. It’s enough to make us want to keep going, really.”
It’s understandable if Durham sounds a little discouraged, even if he knows his music is not instantly accessible. His band has paid its dues, regrouping after moving to a new city, going through lineup changes, and still releasing critically successful albums. The band is still waiting for Chicago to really start paying attention.
“Chicago has treated us pretty well. It’s been a pretty slow go of it, though. I mean, we’ve been here over four years now and we’re just now starting to see people come out to our shows. We’ve always done well critically, but it’s never really translated into large audiences. Maybe we should announce we’re leaving Chicago and see if that helps?”
It might be worth a shot, but it’s doubtful Durham would do that. It just wouldn’t be honest.
· Joseph Simek
The Onion
Review of Twelve Rooms
View this review online here.
Chicago (via Austin) drone artist Palaxy Tracks shrugs off some of the frilliness of its previous records on Twelve Rooms (Peek-A-Boo), which sticks more to spare, quiet songs like the six-minute lullaby “Grey Snake.” The mumble and hush of tracks like “Me & You & Him” makes the rare uptempo songs—like the electrifying “Legs On The Ladder” and the roaring “Dead Language”—stand out like hills in a Midwestern landscape.
· Noel Murray
Splendid
Review of Twelve Rooms
View this review online here.
You are a stoic. You live in a world where you couldn’t find the money and the literacy to read this if you didn’t know how to deal with at least a little pressure. You are comfortable in situations that hurt. You are well versed in awkward pauses and shit traffic.
Palaxy Tracks make music as technically immaculate as it is comfortable as it is somber as it is tense. Twelve Rooms strikes such a delicate balance that you may worry, as you listen, that if you listen too closely, you’ll break the songs. But thanks to the band’s bulletproof songcraft, a subtle hand, and in large part to Ben Kane’s intensely focused drumming, if you’re not listening to these songs closely, you’re simply not hearing them.
It’s easy to miss just how much Kane is doing in many of these songs, but his effect on the album’s mood cannot be exaggerated. It’s common for drummers to go without sufficient credit for their contributions — we hardly even talked about Jeremiah Green ‘til he left Modest Mouse, but now his unique style is rightly described as a bedrock in their sound — but this will forever be the case for Kane. His tight rhythm, his range, and his terse style do more to inform the general feeling of comfortable suffering that dominates Twelve Rooms than any other single element of the band’s sound. He does a lot of work below the radar in opener “Speech With Animals”, adding an almost subliminal flutter to the song’s key dramatic moments and a brassy glitter to much of the rest.
Standout “Grey Snake” presents him at his most dominant, and, in a demonstration of his prowess, he transforms what might otherwise have been an interminable four minute instrumental addendum into a powerful, achingly beautiful crescendo. His stuttering manipulation of the cymbal keeps the increasingly ethereal instrumentation in that grounded, comfortable place that defines Palaxy Tracks.
The band started out in Texas, so it’s no surprise that there’s a pleasant twang to much of their work — particularly the cheerfully bitter “The Clarion Way” and eerie album highlight “Camera”. This almost-sunny bit of personality in their guitars makes the consistent cool detachment of vocalist and songwriter Brandon Durham all the more eerie. When the guitars wax more toward the feedback-laden, cacophonous Hot Water Music end of the spectrum, as in “Legs on the Ladder” and “Dead Language”, he’s still crooning steadily, and by then it’s a little creepy.
But that subtle creepiness, that disconnect, works just fine for the songs’ lyrical subject matter. “Me & You & Him”, which drips with emotion, rendered as it is in piano, nylon guitar and heartbroken cello, makes the point most clearly. Durham is almost cheerful as he liltingly sings such sharp lyrics as, “I drown in a sea of willingness / To change my life for you. / I know we’re not our friends / But maybe we could learn to / Become them / And maybe you are holding on too tight dear. .. / The night the death of us transpired / A heavy fog did fall / The same old story told / Time and time again / Yeah / We retell it.” How can he smile at such things? Durham is a stoic. If you can handle the disintegration of a relationship you believed in, you can probably handle anything this life has in store for you.
Just in case that wasn’t enough to prove that Palaxy Tracks can pretty much do whatever they want, they include a gorgeous cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Seems So Long Ago, Nancy” and close the album with the titular “Twelve Rooms”, a minimalist composition as inscrutable as it is satisfying.
You should look askance at self-professed music lovers who use “comfortable” as an insult, and Twelve Rooms shows exactly why. We value comfort, and with good reason. Besides, there’s nothing to say that a place in which you feel exactly right cannot also be intense. You’d hope you were comfortable with your most recent lover. You’d hope that what you had together was still extremely intense. Palaxy Tracks are comfortable like that.
· Mike Meginnis
Indieworkshop.com
Review of Twelve Rooms
View this review online here.
Seeing that conferences, meetings, and summits are all the rage these days, indieworkshop descended upon a secret location last week to hear a few musician’s takes on the latest album from Palaxy Tracks. How we descended on a secret location is another secret (it’s a cyclical thing, give us a break).
Jim Ward accepted the invitation. He’s all about yelling into microphones so this summit would provide the perfect opportunity while him and band mates Sparta took some time off. Lou Barlow, still angry that he got kicked out of Dinosaur, decided it was good to come and perhaps vent a little. Besides, there was a Dinosaur reunion in the works and he figured he could plug that little. Thom Yorke thought he was going to a summit on fair trade, but he decided to stay when he found out the summit was for a band. Stephen Malkmus declined the invitation, citing map problems. He couldn’t find ‘Secret Location’ on Mapquest and thus took the Jicks out for sushi and Japanese beer before heading off to see a Flower Travellin’ Band Reunion show. Six Parts Seven only made a brief appearance, but their advice was both stunning and moving.
Leonard Cohen was invited as a special guest lecturer. Seeing that public engagements are both rare and bothersome for Cohen, he declined the invitation, but he was gracious enough to provide a written statement regarding the cover of ‘Seems So Long Ago, Nancy’ on the album. In his statement, he writes: ‘there’s a door at the end of the tunnel and roses were not a girl’s best friend, but rather the somber glow of diamonds”. No one knew what the fuck he was talking about, so the statement was auctioned off on ebay.
Summit leader and showman extraordinaire Ryan Adams was the man behind the conference. No one knew what the hell Adams had to do with the album and most were sure, he had nothing at all to do with it, but rather than record yet another album and have it bomb, he decided to put a summit together and Palaxy Tracks seemed like a good band to start with.
Ryan Adams: “I wanna thank everyone for coming to the summit for ‘12 Tracks’. We’re going…..”
Jim Ward: “You see that booklet! Their booklet is the same as ours, where’s the justice in that?”
Lou Barlow: “At least its not your sound they’re stealing. Have you heard ‘Up My Sleeve’. That’s Harmacy-era Sebadoh”
Ryan Adams: “Gentleman, I was going to start with an opening statement that a speech writer has prepared and then move into a question and…”
Jim Ward: “I like that album. In fact, it could be your best”.
Lou Barlow: “Bullshit! ‘Smash Your Head Against the Punk Rock’ was easily our..”
Thom Yorke: “Gentlemen, let’s not allow this summit to veer off course. We have an album to discuss”
Six Parts Seven (SPS): “Uh, why the fuck were we invited to this thing in the first place?”
Ryan Adams: “You seemed like a good band and rumors were swirling that you’re good to party with.”
SPS: “Fair enough, but we’re leaving. The bar’s empty and we’ve got a show to play. The band is poetic enough, but perhaps they lean on mid-90s indie flavor a little too heavily.”
Lou Barlow: “Look, fact of the matter is, this album sounds like a construction of a few Sebadoh albums, some of that Kid A era Radiohead stuff, and then a little more Sebadoh but its more like Sebadoh on half-speed. Does that make sense to anyone?”
Ryan Adams: “Well said Lou, I like what you say. Let’s open the floor up to anyone else.”
Jim Ward: “You see that booklet?! That’s our idea, our fucking idea!”
It was at this point that the summit got out of hand. Jim Ward had raised a real shit storm over the booklet and Ryan Adams’ temper got the best of him. Luckily riot police were on hand, but instead of stopping protesters (there were none), they had to use their riot skills on the summit participants.
As the conference drew to a close and Thom Yorke raised a real ruckus over not having any Beck’s beer on hand, a few things were clear: no one knew what the Palaxy Tracks sounded like, no one knew who was paying for the dinner, and lastly, no one knew what the hell ‘palaxy’ meant in the first place, yet no one was going to admit it.
As for the music, well suffice to say, it’s all over the place. There are hints of this and hints of that, but in reality, it’s more a stew of what makes good music good and bad music bad. So, like every summit before this one, we’ve accomplished little and left the world with a little less paper and a lot more confusion.
· Darren Susin
All Music Guide
Review of Twelve Rooms
View this review online here.
Palaxy Tracks’ cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Seems So Long Ago, Nancy” suggests the band is reaching for something outside its own sleepy indie rock, though really, it’s just one melancholy section that finds its home with the rest of Twelve Rooms. Inspired by the short stories of Raymond Carver, the band’s third record is lyrically dreary, as Brandon Durham has an interest in ghosts, murder, loss, and other such tragic things. His voice is a splendid vehicle for this, and even when the band turns up the volume on guitar and drums (“Up My Sleeve,” “Legs on the Ladder”), he’s still calm and collected. The instrumentation is patient and unobtrusive, with French horn, various keyboards, and even handclaps providing the backdrop. Ending with the eight-minute title track, Palaxy Tracks branch into an ethereal instrumental that allows them to slowly drift away into other territories. It probably won’t inspire a lot of people to write short stories themselves and it’s not as haunting as it wants to be, but Twelve Rooms does hold a certain degree of drama that unfolds with closer examination.
· Kenyon Hopkin
Babysue.com
Review of Twelve Rooms
View this review online here.
Some might categorize this band as emo…but we won’t…because we don’t use that obnoxious word. Rather and instead, we would prefer to abuse and overuse italics. These guys make great music. Really great. But what we really appreciate are the lyrics. Instead of the usual crummy thoughtless idiotic lines one usually hears…these fellows manage to come up with intelligent words that actually mean something. And that is rare these days. Rare indeed. Because you see, dear readers, most people can’t write anything that matters. Writing things that matter isn’t easy. And neither is anything else. For you see, in this world nothing is easy. Which brings us back to 12 Rooms. Soft. Pensive. Soothing. Smart. All of these are proper descriptive words for Palaxy Tracks. And so much more insightful and honest than emo (which all thinking people do, of course, find to be an incredibly obnoxious word). This album is an exercise in subtlety. An intricately prepared lyric book is included so that one can easily contemplate the meaning of the lyrics. Dreamy, insightful, and solid…12 Rooms is a cool and wonderfully inviting album. Features twelve tracks, including “Speech With Animals,” “Grey Snake,” “Lamplighter,” “The Criminal Mind,” and “Twelve Rooms.” Excellent stuff. Different. (Rating: 5+)
30Music.com
Review of Twelve Rooms
View this review online here.
Palaxy Tracks’ third release, Twelve Rooms, is a gentle and warm album. Brandon Durham’s murmuring voice speaks his lyrics with tenderness, and the music engulfs the listener in a warm embrace. It is bit heavier on the sweet and melancholy compared to the previous discs. Heavily inspired by the writings of Raymond Carver this album is meant to be a collection of stories played out in song. So brush up on your Carver and take a listen.
The instrumentation on this album is not nearly as poignant as on the previous records. The prominence in the mix is the same as before and there are some spectacular moments that can be attributed to particular instruments, but the music as a whole is played with such reservation. Not necessarily demure but just very subtle. This comes across as pleasant in some songs and lackadaisical in others. And in songs like “Grey Snake” the rumination bends and weaves as beautifully as anything Palaxy Tracks have done. And with just a few guitar notes played “The Clarion Way” the song becomes expansive. The music is very numbing, in a good way.
Yet the subtleness may play out at the expense of catchiness. The movements of the songs are so delicately placed that if one is not apt to giving this record their undivided attention it may be easier for the culprit to dismiss the beauty of Twelve Rooms. In one way, it’s a very traditional record. Palaxy Tracks used vintage analog instruments and have composed the record with conventional four-piece band arrangement. Yet Palaxy Tracks have always had a unique style that is hard to qualify, and here it is especially hard to nail down even as its presence is felt every where.
“Camera” and “The Clarion Way” have an alt-country feel to them with the former’s pitter patter drums and the latter’s lead guitar on heavy reverb. The rocking songs - “Lamplighter,” “Legs on the Ladder,” and “Dead Language” – seem somewhat out of place amongst the tenderness of the other songs. They are nice tunes, “Dead Language” being spectacular, but their appearance breaks the groove of Twelve Rooms. The Twelve Rooms ends with an ambient piece that harkens back to the titular track of Cedarland. Overall, this is a stunningly sweet record. The challenge will be for the listener to have the patience for its affect to take hold.
· Ryan Phillips
Derives
Review of Cedarland
View this review online here.
On the second album from this Austin, Texas quartet, now based in Chicago and with a new drummer, Palaxy Tracks is led by Brandon Durham and benefits from appearances by members of Sea and Cake, Archer Prewitt, Poi Dog Pondering, Okkervil River, and Shearwater - lots of people, but they achieve great results.
‘Cedarland’ is not the kind of disc that imposes itself on you directly; it’s too discreet, too complex, too rich in nuanced ambiances to fully reveal itself on the first listen - you must return to it again and again. If I had to compare the group, the names Bedhead, Pedro The Lion, Trembling Blue Stars, American Analog Set, Galaxie 500, or Yo La Tengo would come to mind, but none of these comparisons really define Palaxy Tracks.
Palaxy Tracks has created an album that is mostly sombre, melancholy, and nocturnal, but at the same time fundamentally warm, comfortable, and profoundly beautiful. This disc is not for everyone, for it demands close attention, patience, and a certain goodwill in order to find the key to its marvels. One cannot fully appreciate this album after five listens, it would take at least ten to grasp its hints and references. The solemn voice of Brandon Durham seduces, distilling a melancholy sense of well-being rich in nuances that one perceives little by little.
Somewhat like the Mines’ first album, to listen to ‘Cedarland’ is to discover a complete universe that entraps you in its disorienting totality.
The album opens with the stupifying ‘The Sediment’, which suggests a Bedhead in which the tension is replaced by a feeling of blissful dreaminess. Guitars, bass, drums, wurlitzer and keyboard mesh to form a beautiful result, creating the tender sensation of a fresh breeze that brings a hot sticky day to a close, rustling the treetops. ‘The Wasp’ seems to have escaped from an old Pedro The Lion disk, with its propulsive and addictive melody, and its melodic melancholy - absolutely superb.
‘Walking backwards’ brings to mind the Smiths, but with strong hints of American indie pop and slowcore. Another sweeping song, it continues where ‘Girls on bikes’ leaves off, with even more enthusiasm and indie pop guitar.
‘Posthumous’ is like an uptempo Bedhead, with guitar, slide, drums, and piano, all with a complexity that approaches that of the masters of this genre, Carissa’s Wierd. The title track is instrumental, a melancholy strung-out guitar. It’s also a welcome breathing space in the middle of the album.
‘Aim for Providence’ makes me think of Mines or Aveo, for its way of revitalizing a certain kind of melodic pop not often heard these days; but the production and the arrangements chosen here are modern. ‘To the Chicago Abyss’ is a melodic pearl somewhere between Seam and Behead. Nonchalant vocals over a guitar melody are dynamic and forceful, and the track evokes the feeling of approaching a destination by car, with mounting excitement and a feeling of euphoria.
Then there is the superbly instrumental ‘Good Morning Nurse’, the only track not marked with Brandon Durham’s stamp, but defined rather by Brad Murph (usually on guitar), who plays melancholy piano over field recordings and a ‘lap steel’ (I have no idea what a ‘lap steel’ is - some sort of instrument? ). It’s moving and nostalgic, and it transports you to the middle of a city park, between ponds where duck swim, with weeping willows, shady groves, and lovers lounging on the grass.
A good way in which to listen to the eight minutes of ‘The Awful Truth’ is to relax, sinking into a soft enchanting drowsiness where you watch white clouds stretch across an azure sky, your soul detaching after a few minutes and your body almost spinning, seized by dizziness. The disc finishes with ‘Song About a Ghost’, with banjo and more central vocals that bring to mind early Lullaby for the Working Class or Lambchop albums.
A good disc from a group that does not have the recognition it deserves.
· Didier
CMJ New Music Monthy
Review of Cedarland
Out of the silence, an organ gently swells. Moments later a ride cymbal washes over the mix, as the rhythm section falls into a pillowy groove. Guitars chime together in bittersweet harmony, and you’ve arrived. This is Cedarland: It’s a quaint and quiet community set underneath permanent cloud cover. Chance of rain: 100 percent. Your tour guide will be Palaxy Tracks’ singer/songwriter Brandon Durham, whose perfectly even baritone encompasses the essence of life in this town — calming, largely disaffected and remotely British. Taking a cue or two from influences like Joy Division and The Smiths, Durham then applies a post-rock aesthetic and ends up with distinctive aural architecture that places Cedarland, Palaxy Tracks’ second LP, somewhere between Chicago and London. The prominent vibe throughout these 11 tracks is one of wistful longing. Song titles like “Posthumous,” “The Awful Truth” and “Song About A Ghost” are justified with a moody production that features droning lap steel, singing saws and weeping Wurlitzers among other lush adournments. The vibe is so thick that even it’s most rocking, distorted moments come dipped in cough syrup. So while it’s certainly not the right place for a wild weekend getaway, it’s a great place to curl up with a good book, sip your afternoon tea or just take a nap.
· Jason Kundrath
EvilSponge
Review of Cedarland
View this review online here.
Like several of my other recent reviews, I’ve held on to the most recent release for Chicago’s Palaxy Tracks while I figured out what to say about it. The first thing I discovered long ago is that Cedarland is a very good album. But that doesn’t tell you much about them. What type of music do Palaxy Tracks play? What do they resemble musically? And, finally, what makes this album special?
Original;y from Austin, Texas, Palaxy Tracks relocated to Chicago a couple of years ago. I haven’t heard any of their earlier material, but I can suggest that Cedarland manages to combine the sensibility of both their old and new locales. Although each song on the album could be analyzed in detail, a discussion of a few of the tracks ought to explain my meaning. For instance, the first song, The Sediment, begins with the slightly complex rhythmic drumming that seems to be a hallmark of The Chicago Sound. However, over this a somewhat chorused guitar plays a simple but catchy guitar riff that evokes the same dreamlike quality of a Texas band like Knife in the Water. Then after a while, the vocals of Brandon Durham come to the forefront. Still the song turns out to be very mellow and the simplicity of the song suggests that there were fewer musicians than the 5 credited on the track.
After that comes my favorite song on Cedarland, The Wasp. Quicker-paced and more guitar-driven than The Sediment, The Wasp seems like a typical post-punk Indie Rock track. I especially like the way the rhythm guitar and drums combine into ostensibly one musical part. Driven again by the omnipresent drums, this song could easily be performed by one of those other Chicago bands I’ve recently reviewed, like Taking Pictures. I suspect I see this resemblance because both bands have the same musical mixture of driving drums with effects-laden stringed instrument.
In contrast, the third track harkens back to the Knife in the Water comparison. More energetic than the songs of that Texas band, the soft country-influenced melody of Walking Backwards also is reminiscent of early Wedding Present or perhaps a band like Red House Painters. It’s a nice background track that’s very impressive, with a particularly sweet guitar part in the middle, which then flows into a standout piece on the violin. It’s not a very heavy sound, but again it does invoke a sense isolation in its musical landscape.
Another standout track on Cedarland is Posthumous. With the near martial, tom-and-snare heavy drumming of Joe Rowsey again at the forefront, the song can’t be called alt.country by any means, despite the presence of dueling slide guitars. Instead, like the time I saw Carissa’s Weird in concert, the slide guitar is played like a real guitar instead of as a country accent. This gives Posthumous a slightly haunted feel, which is increased by the backing guitar rhythm. Nevertheless, the combination of the drumming and instrumentation and the focus on the guitar invokes the chilliness of their Chicago brethren and recalls more a band like Midstates as opposed to a Southern band like Bedhead.
Finally, the last outstanding track on Cedarland, The Awful Truth, begins again in a slow tone. For once, the drums aren’t my central focus; rather, the chorused guitars reflect the vocal melody and bring everything together. More importantly, as The Awful Truth moves into its instrumental middle, more and more instruments enter into the song. These remain under-stated and not prominent but still present as the music begins to swell. Then the original melody is carried by these numerous other instruments, so that the lack of Durham’s vocals aren’t even noticeable as the song continues out to its over 8 minute length. This is the one song that particularly emphasizes to me the wintriness which colors Palaxy Tracks’ music. The sheer isolation and slightly-melancholy feel invokes the stark beauty of the Midwest in winter, as the snow covers everything and there is little life in sight as you look out over the barren fields.
When I first got a copy of Cedarland, I had a hard time figuring out what to make of the Palaxy Tracks, mainly because it’s not the harder garage rock I normally adore. However, as I continued to listen to the album, I realized that it has everything that I do like: it’s got a compelling vocalist, some simply beautiful guitar work with under-stated effects, and everything’s all held together by the drumming (which seems to be the glue of so many Chicago bands). Furthermore, because of its more mellow moments, it’s easy to overlook how perfectly crafted the music and melodies are. However, with repeated listening and further reflection, I’ve come to the conclusion that Cedarland is a near-perfect Indie Pop album.
· Tracers
PopMatters
Review of Cedarland
View this review online here.
Throw Radiohead on my card table and I’ll raise you Palaxy Tracks. This cheeky, Britpop-infected band out of Austin, Texas delivers the ghost-themed tunes on its latest release, Cedarland, with a kind of gentle complacency rarely seen in latter-day pop. The album is a deliriously confident mix of eerie instrumentals and spooky songs fusing modern pop beats with more traditional country jams via mandolins, a banjo, a lap steel, and (believe it or not) a musical saw. It all blends superbly to create a rare, sophisticated mood, with singer Brandon Durham’s vocals appropriately eloquent and brooding. The band’s first release since relocating to Chicago (their debut, The Long Wind Down, won the Austin Chronicle’s Best Texas Record award in 2000) works as a genuine standout of melancholy rock, not to mention as an awesome soundtrack to a fevered game of shadow tag.
· Nikki Tranter
Skyscraper
Review of Cedarland
Although only partly a concept album about ghosts in lyric, Cedarland, the second release from Palaxy Tracks, is completely haunting in sound. Even so, the form of supernaturality they create is not of the ghoulish sort, but founded more upon the erie unraveling of their reverberating soundscapes. Falling somewhere between shoegazer and chamber pop, their sound is hard to pin down but always tasteful, providing a constant contrast between tangible human frailty and meditative pastoral expanse. If anything, their aesthetic seems to be rooted in classic indie pop, with the chunky layered guitars of “Girls On Bikes” and the catchy “Aim For Providence” sounding like revisionist Brit-pop. Brandon Durham’s soft voice is the perfect foil for the collection of shimmering guitars, sweeping pedal steel, and humming organs, and provides and odd contrast to the more rustic singing saw and clucking banjo that pop up on the appropriately enchanting “Song About A Ghost.” In the end, nothing about the band will make an immense first impression; their charms are far more subtle. Most representative is the slight sway in the melody of “The Wasp,” the odd way that Durham’s voice becomes somewhat robotized on “Walking Backwards,” and the unpredictable changes in sonic texture and tempo with “Posthumous.” Overall, a complex album that continues to haunt long after you’ve left it’s presence.
· Matt Fink
Stuff
Review of Cedarland
THE BUZZ
With the help of the guys in The Sea & Cake, Palaxy’s second effort is a dreamy trip through the land of soft pop. For best results, play it on a rainy day.
DID YOU KNOW?
They formed in Austin, Texas, but relocated to Chicago for this album. If we ever go there, we’re going to catch a taping of Oprah. Then get some dinner!
WE SAY
Overall, the lyrics are strong, but the album’s stand-out song, “Cedarland,” has no lyrics. So we made some up: “Cedarland / You’re the album’s stand-out song / Get off my cloud!”
· Ryan
30Music.com
Review of Cedarland
View this review online here.
Impossibly endearing, Cedarland couldn’t begin on a better note; “The Sediment” inaugurates this ceremony of haunting, touching songs. And, where the previous release was marked by Brandon Durham’s monotone vocals over the instrumental workmanship, this release features Durham bending his tender, youthful voice to the whim of the music.
From the instrumental “Cedarland” to the catchy, straight-rocking “To the Chicago Abyss,” Palaxy Tracks sound more complete and focused. When the songs are soft and slow they are melancholy and mournful. When they are edgy and poppy they are catchy and captivating. On Cedarland there is less of the oddly quaint indie sound of before and more of a full sound marked by the insular creative process of a band with every means and desire to write and perform an excellent album.
I’m not player hating The Long Wind Down. I’m just telling you this one sounds a bit different; and, good in its difference, but not necessarily because of its difference. On this album, Palaxy Tracks sound a bit more brit pop, and less typical indie lo-fi.
A criticism of the new album is the same with the The Long Wind Down, however. A full-length release of their material seemingly drags on despite the good songs. The songs are never that distinct amongst the whole album; not seeing the forest for the trees of this Cedarland, I guess.
Cedarland is a good album with some great songs. Palaxy Tracks: where the median divides the left and right lanes - certainly not underachievers and not quite overachievers but there you have it, here it is, as it is.
· Ryan
Rockpile
Review of Cedarland
It’s quasi-religious ecstacy to stumble accross an amazing band I’ve never heard of and, not only that, and band formerly hailing from my hood, Austin, Texas. Brandon Durham’s voice has whiskey warmth equal parts head cold and coy boy croon. This is spectacular pop music, despite the faux Brit inflection. With piano, musical saws and lap steel, the music has this damp, churchy ambiance like Bark Psychosis or Radiohead if they were less of a dry hump.
· Terry Sawyer
Harp Magazine
Review of Cedarland
This is the problem with Austin: It breeds so many fantastic bands, but once they start to get really good and generate a buzz amongst the hip urbanites, they pack up and head to fairer shores. In the case of Palaxy Tracks, the relocation was Chicago, which seems to be agreeing quite well with singer-songwriter Brandon Durham’s muse. The foursome has crafted a beautiful, haunting, quietly energetic meditation on ghosts and love (of course), all set to light-fingered instrumentaion from the glimmery guitar down to the unobtrusive drums. The real star of the show, though, is Durham’s gorgeous voice, which is so soft and sonorous that you could spread it on a biscuit. All in all, Palaxy Tracks is making intelligent, gentle indie rock not heard since Galaxie 500’s brightest moments, but with a homey, Southern-fried feel courtesy of banjo, mandolin, lap steel, and musical saw.
· Melanie Haupt
Punk Planet
Review of Cedarland
Chicago-by-way-of-Austin quartet Palaxy Tracks gets the Ruler of My
Stereo Award this issue. They often get compared to moody 80s Brit pop
ala Joy Division, and to an extent, it’s a fair comparison. Gentle
dreamy melodies hearken back to a day when it was it was sexy for male
musicians to wear pirate blouses and tons of eyeliner. But to imply that
this is all to their appeal is a major disservice to the band’s
musicianship. Singer Brandon Durham’s vocals envelope the listener in a
warmth that lends itself well to the intimate nature of his lyrics.
Music arrangements are augmented with everything from Wurlitzers to
mandolins to lap steels, giving songs like my favorite track “The
Sediment” what can only be described as an aural luster. No wonder their
debut record The Long Wind Down was named Best Texas record by the
Austin Chronicle in 2000. Without a doubt, this record is going to be
one of my top picks for 2003. Don’t you dare miss out.
· Jennifer Dolan
Splendid E-Zine
Review of Cedarland
View this review online here.
There’s something about the Midwest that inspires beautiful and melancholy music. Whether it’s the endless stretches of hill-less highways or the blankets of corn swaying left to right, the Midwest seems to perpetuate music that’s either strangely angular or comfortably sad. Palaxy Tracks emulate the latter — so much so that they fled their Texas homes for the snowy streets of Chicago before recording Cedarland. And like the winter streets of Chicago, Cedarland aches.
Singer Brandon Durham breathes with a rarely shifting croon, placing bits of melody between winding guitars and intermittent pianos. Songs such as “The Sediment” and “Posthumous” offer a slow build and crescendo, moving and growing at a familiar and comfortable pace. In fact, “comfortable” may be the perfect description for Cedarland; the album feels like a place you’ve been before, like a setting you know all too well. It also seems, however, that beneath the guise of familiarity, something is brooding and manifesting. And maybe that’s the imminent bit of Midwest lurking below Cedarland’s surface. The entire disc perpetuates a mood — something airy and free — but also rides a line of tension, of something better or worse stashed behind the next corner. It’s music that pushes and pulls, that questions and reacts to itself.
More simply and importantly, it’s beautiful music. Perhaps Palaxy Tracks’s greatest accomplishment is recording an album that defies standard musical conversation and instead emulates a mood — because, at the core, isn’t that what many contemporary musicians are attempting to do? Beneath the instrumentation, the videos, the promo glossies and overdubbed guitar tracks, much of modern music wants to weave its way into our lives. It attaches to us through the television we watch and the videos we rent — or, more personally, through moments caught on camcorders or memories. What makes Cedarland so different is the way in which the listener instead weaves through it. Much like certain scents can trigger forgotten moments, Palaxy Tracks have uncovered music that incites memories — three minutes into your first listen.
· Tim Lockridge
All Music Guide
Review of Cedarland
View this review online here.
From the start of Cedarland, Palaxy Tracks fondness for gentle, airy instrumentation and caressing vocals by Brandon Durham is apparent. “The Sediment” starts off the disc with rich overtones and calmly blissful instrumentation. After that subdued opener, the band proves it’s not a one trick pony on the edgier “The Wasp.” By this point, the band has already laid its trap to draw the listener in with cleanly-executed guitars, steady bass and drums, casual vocals and poetic lyrics. In the three years since the release of their debut, The Long Wind Down, the band moved from Austin, Texas to Chicago, and the resulting Cedarland marks a heartfelt move to more experimentation and a generous amount of thoughtful revisions of the band’s sound. While tracks like “Walking Backwards” and “Posthumous” include depressed and mournful themes, the band’s penchant for beauty and delicate textures rises above the urge to lash out in an angst-ridden frenzy. The wave of sound on “To the Chicago Abyss” might very well be the album’s catchiest track, while the most ambitious artistic statement might be the piano-based splendor of the instrumental “Good Morning Nurse,” easily the riskiest song on the 11-song disc. The graceful “The Awful Truth,” about the mourning of a recently-departed loved one, provides a lush, radiant example of the grieving process. The album ends eloquently with the layered narrative “Song About a Ghost.” Not ones to favor convention, mellotron, mandolin and Wurlitzer organ were all used on Cedarland. Guests on the disc include members of Sea and Cake, Poi Dog Pondering and Shearwater. The album’s title point to Durham’s hometown of Cedar Park, Texas. Recorded mostly at Clava Studios in Chicago, Peek-a-Boo Records released the disc in 2003.
Note From Palaxy Tracks - Only the drums and the piano on “Good Morning, Nurse” were recorded at Clava Studios. Everything else was recorded in our home.
· Stephen Cramer
Outburn
Review of Cedarland
Noticing that the album comes without lyrics, it may be difficult to sniff out that Cedarland is a loosely-structured concept album revolving around the ghosts in frontman Brandon Durham’s hometown. The themes that underscore the concept, nostalgia and past versus future, however are readily apparent and cleverly conveyed. There are many bands that do what Palaxy Tracks do on Cedarland. This can most likely be attributed to the bulk of American youth listening to Joy Division albums and imagining themselves writing songs while looking out a rain-streaked window in London. Fortunately, Palaxy Tracks do the melancholy Brit thing better than most of their fellow Americans and, even better, it’s not the band’s only trick. “Girls On Bikes” and “To The Chicago Abyss” both crank up the volume and deliver memorable indie-rock riffs. Occasionally, as with the otherwise peacefully pleasant title track, the songs just kind of drone out. Durham is a compelling if not one-of-a-kind vocalist, and he’s also a compelling lyricist (“You said ‘I wish I were dead,’ but I wish you were more alive”). This renders the softer moments, like the gorgeously sprawling “The Awful Truth” near the album’s end, all the more effective.
· Adam McKibbin
The Austin Chronicle
Review of Cedarland
View this review online here.
Beneath the piano and cut-up drum tracks, creeps a low monotone: “A stranger in your own town; if everyone knew. …” The voice is Brandon Durham, who shepherded his band Palaxy Tracks to Chicago in 2001, uncertain of his and their place in Austin. “… the real you.” Oh, but we do. Those who soaked in the dewy screeches that radiated from the crummy PA at the Ritz Lounge know. So do those who bask in the warmth of their annual SXSW homecoming shows. Cedarland eliminates some of the starry electric effluvia of Palaxy Tracks’ 2000 masterwork, The Long Wind Down, spotlighting Durham, whose sensitive, Nick Drake-like sentiments and delivery are the stuff of dorm-room mopefests and teenage-girl sob sessions. An overwhelming sense of place, physical and emotional, pervades Cedarland, which still packs an effects-happy punch in the right places. The cheeky title “To the Chicago Abyss” adds an extra layer to this rumination on love, time, and the meaning of home. Brad Murph’s punchy riffs bounce off the well-timed electric wails of Durham, against a creamy backdrop of sculpted fuzztones that drop in and out of the mix. Ornate Pachelbel moments include opener “The Sediment,” unquestionably ripe wedding material, and “The Awful Truth,” an eight-minute mood-piece that breathes pastoral shoegaze. Cedarland expands Palaxy Tracks’ palette, balancing emotional Anglophiliac romps (“The Wasp,” “Girls on Bikes”) with gentle, otherworldly interludes (“Good Morning Nurse,” “Cedarland”). Palaxy Tracks’ real home? Your stereo.
· Michael Chamy
Exclaim!
Review of Cedarland
View this review online here.
You don’t fool me Palaxy Tracks, you bunch of bedroom rockers! You moved from Texas to Chicago to get closer to the Sea and Cake, you mix country, jazz and shoegazer fuzz to make breezy, gentle lullabies, but deep down, you’re a bunch of diehard R.E.M. fans who made your sophomore disc Cedarland in your parents’ basement! Even the heaviest, most ambitious track, “Girls on Bikes,” sounds like Elastica comprised entirely of momma’s boys. But to be honest, now I don’t leave my parents’ basement because I can’t stop listening to this beauty of an album. Thanks a lot.
· Andrew Steenberg
Las Vegas City Life
Review of Cedarland
View this review online here.
For those engrossed in the indie world, Cedarland is musically inventive, utilizing the odd musical saw and banjo here and there.
· Marco Brizuela
KindaMuzik.net
Review of Cedarland
View this review online here.
This is a loose translation from Dutch. The original review can be viewed online here. Thanks goes out to Janne Wolterbeek for the translation! If you spot a mistake, please feel free to notify us.
Imagine someone getting the idea to conceptually attach your record to the souls that used to wander around the central park (cedar park) of the village of birth (an unsightly tiny dot in the oil-state Texas). Brandon Durham, singer and songwriter of Palaxy Tracks, is someone like that. In the mean time he and his pals settled in Chicago, where he pretty soon got on the track of local heroes like Tortoise, The Sea and Cake and Archer Prewitt. During the recording of Cedarland, Palaxy Tracks could count on quite a bunch of guest-musicians; members of Okkervil River, Shearwater and Poi Dog Pondering came to join. The crystal-clear guitarlines in the subtle opening song ‘The Sediment’ soon make room for the vicious ‘The Wasp’, in which the rhythm-section fanatically twists and turns thru various treacherous corners and twists. Same counts for ‘Girls On Bikes’ that is loaded with a spicy Dinosaur Jr. sauce. Cedarland -furthermore- especially makes itself noticable through the contribution of a wide assortment of non-trivial instruments like lap steel, mellotron, wurlitzer or mandolin. These give the record a complex diversity that most other contemporary bands often leave behind in the rehearsal cabin. ‘To the Chicago Abyss’ certainly belongs to the better songs on the record and interchanges on the right moments wholesome silence(s) with distinguished but forceful pull-outs. Some intelligently elaborated ideas will without a doubt make sure this record will sell (well) in the United States, but us Europeans do not really need to stay up for this record. Palaxy Tracks gets filed in our cd-archive under the G of Grey Mediocrity… if there’s still room in that section of course!
· Dieter Craeye
Orlando Weekly
Review of Cedarland
View this review online here.
Much has changed for Palaxy Tracks since the quartet released “The Long Wind Down” three years ago. They’ve migrated from Austin to Chicago, hooked up with a new label and changed guitarists. And, more relevantly, these days, singer/guitarist/songwriter Brandon Durham now drugs the Tracks’ moody rock with violins, mandolins, wurlitzers, accordions and musical saws. But as “Cedarland” shows, these changes haven’t greatly affected Durham’s songwriting style or the band’s overall sound. Durham still can’t resist adopting a fake English accent while blurring the line between bitter and sweet; he’s still ripping off Guided by Voices a bit too readily, and arty organ and/or guitar noise still fills the space behind his every wistful offering. These aren’t complaints. Infested with reverb and stop-start riffage, “To the Chicago Abyss” might be the catchiest song ever written about an imaginary hideaway for jaded adults. Initially a sleepy, snail-strummed attempt to accept the death of a loved one, “The Awful Truth” unravels into a glorious, sound-clogged sprawl. Even when Durham puts a kink in the vibe — singing through his teeth, Clinic-style, over the warm pop of “The Sediment” — “Cedarland” is a great place to waste an afternoon.
· Raymond Cummings
Yahoo!’s Launch.com
Review of Cedarland
View this review online here.
Important question: What do you do when you’re from Texas and the music you make sounds as if were recorded in a London flat? Answer: You move to Chicago. Palaxy Tracks—so named for the “giant man tracks” spotted in the limestone beds of the Paluxy River near Glen Rose, Texas, and since used by creationists to spoil evolutionary theory (whew!)—relocated to Mayor Daley’s promised land just so they could record a second album that would serve as a quasi-concept LP about their days in the hot old sun without getting beat up. And so they could record with guys not wearing cowboys hats, such as members of the Sea & Cake and Archer Prewitt, which is AGAINST THE LAW in Texas. Imagine the Trembling Blue Stars fronted by a singer who’s gotten over his ex-girlfriend. Imagine Galaxie 500 or Luna fronted by a band whose singer didn’t sound like he was dead. Now imagine voting reform in all major cities. Life is sweet.
· Rob O’Connor
Chartattack.com
Review of Cedarland
View this review online here.
Pull yourself out of bed on the next rainstormy morning to play Palaxy Tracks’ sophomore album, Cedarland. Snuggle into your duvet and wrap yourself in the warmth of this record. Pillowy pop melodies flutter gracefully as you drift in and out of dreamy slumber. From Texas, their relocation to Chicago is not surprising, considering their obvious kinship with such windy city luminaries as The Sea And Cake and Archer Prewitt. Cedarland moves like molasses and is just as sweet.
· Lauren Ferranti
Audio Galaxy
Review of The Long Wind Down
View this review online here.
One of the most frustrating things for me and my long-suffering compatriots in the thankless field of obscure rock criticism is how hard it gets to become excited about new indie rock releases. Great indie-rock albums like Guided by Voices’ Bee Thousand, Pavement’s Slanted and Enchanted, and Smog’s Wild Love are why people like me first felt compelled to start writing about rock music in the first place, but once we got settled into the routine of it and the thrill of getting paid for blathering about how good Bee Thousand was wore off, we gradually discovered a bland sameness in the releases of the bands we’re supposed to love. In secret, we began spending our paychecks on Al Green and Patsy Cline records and passing over the new release by this month’s New Big Indie Thing. Why? Because so many indie bands are just good enough to miss greatness and land instead in the realm of the terminally boring. Low-mixed, affectless vocals, meticulously tweaked guitar tone, and vaguely clever wordplay are all great, but too many indie rock bands coast by on their sound alone.
But not Palaxy Tracks. This Austin, TX quartet (soon to relocate to Chicago) delivers the classic indie rock sounds that sang us through college with a freshness and clarity that recalls the work of the best independent bands, who played with an urgency that had nothing to do with going through the requisite motions. Lead singer and songwriter Brandon Durham has an exquisite melodic sense, and his mannered, terminally wistful delivery marries the flat remove of indie-rockers like Ira Kaplan and Robert Pollard with the melancholic croon of every British pop band you ever cried your eyes out to. Get set to cry again, incidentally; it’s hard not to as those vocals float out over that tapestry of rainy-day strumming, understatedly melodic bass playing, and searing, Bedhead-esque starbursts of distorted guitar.
Palaxy Tracks’ The Long Wind Down, released last year, is a pop album of stunning beauty, one that catapults the group into the company of that small handful of newcomers, including Death Cab for Cutie, Grandaddy, and Modest Mouse, that play relatively straight-ahead indie rock but, with their energy, inventiveness, and passion, make it sound brand new again, in the process causing those who have fallen out of love with indie rock to slide back in irretrievably.
· Will Robinson Sheff
Pop Culture Press
SXSW 2002, Porchlight Studios Day Party
Before moving to Chicago last year, Palaxy Tracks built a devoted Austin following with their intensely personal buildup of grey clouds, with jagged, highly effective rhythmic shifts that combine the patient rhythm of Galaxie 500 or Bedhead with the kinetic energy of a Joy Division. Brandon Durham’s deep voice and stellar songcraft touches base with all three of these institutions as well, with a healthy heaping of Slowdive or Moose-style shoegazer added in as well. Durham, guitarist Brad Murph, and bassist Keith Grap (and new drummer Joe) never sounded better than at this Austin homecoming backyard party in front of Fivehead bassist Jeff Jones’ Porchlight Studios.
· Michael Chamy
All Music Guide
Review of The Long Wind Down
View this review online here.
With The Long Wind Down, this Austin quartet has clearly honed their skills to produce a tight, deeply layered collection of indie rock gems. Lap steel and slide guitars lend warmth to songs such as “A Million Things to Do” and “The Fountainhead”; pianos and keyboards fill out the sound on “From Royals,” “The Family Tree,” and “Me and the Weather.” Throughout the album, the rhythm section both guides the music and adds texture, while the guitars soar over the well-crafted melodies. In some instances, the album sounds like some sort of sprawling psychedelic country experiment, while at other times the group turns out tightly-wound pop songs like “I’m Swimming.” The entire album has a great deal to offer from track to track and takes many listenings to fully appreciate. A beautiful, many-textured collection.
· Brandon Gentry
Shredding Paper
Review of The Long Wind Down
A year ago I was bumming around Austin for a weekend when I met a really nice guy at a poorly-attended, but totally amazing Daniel Johnston show. He played in a band called the Palaxy Tracks and said they were all big fans of Bedhead. The next day I saw their 7 inch in a shop, bought it, and promptly lost it before listening to it. Back to the present… just got this CD in the mail, and must say it’s definitely a pleasant surprise (hope their having a nice guy for a drummer doesn’t taint my opinion too much). Math-rocky enough for the smarmy indie-rockers, but with great songs, subtle but creative production tricks, and most importantly, Good Songs(!), the Palaxys have a bright future ahead of them. For some reason, the singer’s phrasing strikes me as Swedish in nature (perhaps he’s got a soft spot for The Cardigans), and his plaintive (but not whiny!) voice is definitely the focal point here. I don’t think The Long Wind Down will turn your world on it’s ear, but it somehow makes the term ‘college rock’ seems welcome again.
· Matt
Salt For Slugs
Review of The Long Wind Down
People who know me are not going to believe this, but I actually like this record. This is due to a little secret that most people are not aware of… no matter what types of music you enjoy or for that matter, lifestyle, car or job you are burdened with, if you do it with style it shines through. When you grow some tomatoes in your pants and get the old aorta pumping, amazing things happen. Whether you’re into Rattus or KRS-One, you have to admit this is real music. It’s the way they translate their sound that is solid. Guided by Voices or Polvo fans won’t leave their rooms for weeks after buying this cd. Power-pop ethereal emo-core dark post-gothic industrial jungle hop, whatever, fuck labels. Let’s get down to what’s real and not real, and this is unreal.
· Grant
Pop Culture Press
Review of The Long Wind Down
View this review online here.
Introducing my fave new discovery of the millenium: the Palaxy Tracks. My first reaction to this Austin-based quartet’s national scale debut was to double check that the disc in my cd player did indeed go with the digipack it came in. It doesn’t sound a bit like American Music, and it’s a long way from the band’s original concept - an indie-rock cover combo playing old timey country tunes. The band’s “musical vision” owes little to country music, except maybe the prevalence of a nifty slide guitar. Their style ranges from the dreamy “A Million Things To Do”, and the driving pop of “This is the World” and “Malory is Dead” to the jangly brit-pop of “Cats for Drowning”. The lyrics might be depressing, but sure aren’t country, and the sound owes more to Leonard “laughing lenny” Cohen than Ray Price. The Long Wind Down’s sonic success can be attributed to bandleader (and general man-for-all-seasons) Brandon Durham and ex-guitarist Ted Cho for their production prowess, as well as the masterful mastering by recording genius and ex-Zeitgeist/Reiver John Croslin. Definitely look up The Long Wind Down. I can’t wait to hear what comes next!
· Pauline Vici
The Austin Chronicle
Review of The Long Wind Down
View this review online here.
Somewhere between the mellifluous lilt of Galaxie 500 and the home-made psych-out angularity of the Soft Boys, there’s a sweet spot for the odd, faraway jangle that maintains intimacy without compromising energy. On their second release, Austin’s Palaxy Tracks mine this spot in a highly disciplined manner that holds the listener’s attention long after less-focused bands have put you to sleep. The quartet succeeds because they combine their love of drone with an uncommonly sharp sense of pop songwriting. Opener “We Go Way Back” is a short, acoustic bout of bedroom philosophy that gives way to “I’m Swimming,” a driving, hook-laden tune that quickly decimates your initial conception of the band. Perhaps the most unique song is “A Million Things To Do,” which pits Brandon Durham’s Bedhead-style vocals against a perfectly placed lap steel solo by (former) guitarist Ted Cho. The warm tones and cornered melodies used in songs like “This is the World” and “Cats for Drowning” also contribute to the album’s engaging presence. Like any good pop song, The Long Wind Down will probably stick in your craw for a while.
· Greg Beets
Chicago Reader - Critic’s Choice
Show Recommendation
View this review online here.
On Twelve Rooms (Peek-a-Boo), local trio Palaxy Tracks accesses an even darker muse than the one that inspired its first two full-lengths, The Long Wind Down (2000) and Cedarland (2003); a cover of Leonard Cohen’s despairing 1969 gem “Seems So Long Ago, Nancy” only underscores the gloomy mood. Singer Brandon Durham has a mature and elegantly expressive croon that’s perfectly suited for these wounded rhapsodies and drizzly doomsday proclamations, whose lyrics were influenced by Raymond Carver’s finely etched short stories. The Austin expatriates are heavily indebted to the Smiths and other Blighty-based brooders, but Brad Murph’s spiky guitar lines on “Up My Sleeve” and “Lamplighter” give their lilting melancholia a jagged edge, while producer and Poi Dog Pondering guitarist Ted Cho develops a variety of intricate textures that were lacking on previous discs. A host of guests, including Califone’s Tim Rutili and Poi Dog members Frank Orrall, Alison Chesney, and Dave Max Crawford, also pitch in. The latter two will join the group onstage at this CD-release show. At the merch table you’ll find a limited-edition version of Twelve Rooms, which features different packaging and two bonus tracks.
· Bob Mehr
Visionaire
The fact that Palaxy Tracks hasn’t yet found a major audience or a major label is both unbelievable and incredibly sad. The band makes some of the most lushly beautiful indie-rock of any group out there, period, and in 2003 released one of the most gorgeous and heartbreaking records that nobody seemed to hear. That record is Cedarland, a plaintive little collection of songs that grows increasingly addictive the more times you listen to it. The band originated in Austin, Texas, and released The Long Wind Down in 2000 before pulling up stakes and relocating to Chicago. Brandon Durham, the group’s vocalist and principal songwriter, has a knowingness about his voice that inspires immediate trust, and songs that are deceptively simple and effortlessly catchy. The music on Cedarland ranges from the languid and countryesque to straightforward, wall-of-sound guitar rock, with a host of guitars, pianos, and vintage organs shimmering throughout. Evidence of this band’s greatness was made clear when, after seeing one too many aggresively fashionable bands tweak, twitter, and make formless noise at this year’s CMJ Music Marathon in New York, Palaxy Tracks came onstage to play a lovely and completely unaffected set of songs - a potent reminder of just what kind of beautiful sounds can be made by a couple of guys with guitars and someone who knows how to write a good tune. Like a snapshot taken at twilight, their music is a photograph of a landscape caught at perpetual dusk.
· T. Cole Rachel
The Austin Chronicle
Show Recommendation
View this review online here.
Home. A four-letter word as elusive as it is powerful. In many ways, the career of Palaxy Tracks, which formed in Austin in the late Nineties before relocating to Chicago in 2001, is an ongoing attempt to redefine the word. Their stirring 2000 debut, the recently reissued The Long Wind Down, built a loyal cadre of devotees behind the unique voice of Brandon Durham, whose smooth baritone is ensconced within a driving, effects-laden, dream-rock façade. Songs about discomfort and suffocation give the album a sense of losing touch with whatever it is that made Austin home. Durham says the band’s relocation to the Windy City, which happened after a triumphant last stand at SXSW 2001, was entirely personal. “I grew up in Austin,” says Durham. “I love it, it’s a great city, and I can’t wait to move back. But I could count on one hand the number of times I’d been out of Texas, so it was necessary in a way. And everybody else [bassist Keith Grap and guitarist/keyboardist Brad Murph] just kind of went along with it, except for [then-drummer] Nathan [Roberts], who wanted to stay around his family.” The Chicago era has produced a new drummer (Ben Kane), as well as an intimate new release, Cedarland, out on Austin’s Peek-a-Boo Records. The idyllic Cedarland is a homesick album, about “wanting to be back, wishing you wouldn’t have left,” says Durham, who named the disc after his true hometown of Cedar Park. Despite songs like “To the Chicago Abyss,” titled after a Ray Bradbury short, the band is by no means miserable in Chitown. “It’s not bad here,” offers Durham. “We all like it. It’s just total culture shock, coming from not only Austin, but growing up in the country.” Shocking as in finding out somebody was killed outside your own window, which happened at Durham’s seedy original Chicago residence. Make no mistake, when Palaxy Tracks follows labelmates Black Lipstick and the Octopus Project onstage at the former Mercury, they should quickly settle into the comfort zone that only comes with being home.
· Michael Chamy
The Austin Chronicle
South by Southwest 2003 - Friday Picks
View this review online here.
In the year since they’ve set foot on their former Austin home turf, Palaxy Tracks holed up in their Chicago studio and emerged with Cedarland, the follow-up to 2001’s brilliant The Long Wind Down. Cedarland, out next month on Peek-A-Boo Records, scales back the effects and sonic layers, emphasizing instead Brandon Durham’s deep, affecting vocals that recall Leonard Cohen, Joy Division, and Slowdive all at the same time.
· Michael Chamy
New City
Recommendation
I thought that Palaxy Tracks had fallen off the face of the Earth. But here they are and this Spring, they’ll finally release Cedarland, a follow-up to 2000’s The Long Wind Down. There must be something in the water in Texas. These one-time residents of Austin, now living in Chi-town, combine moody indie-pop with a psychedelic wash of sound, and spoonfuls of skewed American roots that should apease fans of noted Texas outfits Bedhead, Centro-Matic, and American Analog Set.
· Tony Barnett
The Austin Chronicle
SXSW 2002, Mercury Hall Day Party
View this review online here.
For one afternoon, this small, historic chapel off South First was the most special place in the world. Rows of faces were lined up in folding chairs, absolutely enthralled by a middle-aged man with a guitar confessing his sins, lamenting his regrets, and trying his best to make sense of the very mixed-up stew of religion and reality. The man was Nashville’s Tom House, whose slightly quirky folk style transcends his hometown and draws on the spirit of a more rustic, forgotten time of hard floors and hard living. “Jesus didn’t die for faggots like you,” sang House, telling a gay-bashing tale from the perspective of a guilty bystander who did nothing because, “I sure didn’t want them thinking nothing crazy about me.” His emotionally charged tales resonated throughout the rustic hall, wafting through the open doors and into the inviting spring air, serenading the folks who trickled in late to this poignant scene. The cheers were loud, and the claps came from the heart, as this late-blooming songwriter made converts out of the twenty- and thirtysomethings who came to see the ostensibly indie rock sounds of Centro-matic and Palaxy Tracks. Centro-matic’s ever-busy Will Johnson played it mellow early that morning to an appreciative throng of coffee-drinkers, but even by the time Palaxy Tracks came on around 2pm, folks were still nursing hangovers and munching on the pastries from La Mexicana, courtesy of sponsor Grey Flat Records. Palaxy Tracks, prodigal Austinites on their first trip back home after leaving for Chicago one year ago, played a loose, delicate, slide-guitar-heavy set that emphasized the pure songwriting and deep, distinctive voice of frontman Brandon Durham. Shearwater’s Jonathan Meiburg joined them on wurlitzer for the last song, “The Awful Truth,” shedding light on Palaxy Tracks’ unlikely beginnings as a trad country cover band. Then Austin’s Shearwater took the stage, backed by the local strings-and-piano chamber trio Cinders. Frontmen Meiburg and Will Sheff (both also of Okkervil River) played fleshed-out favorites off of 2001’s The Dissolving Room, and even a cover of a Tom House song. They then yielded to Cinders, whose rich, emotive blend veered from sublime to cacophonous, adventurous and old-world at the same time. It was another timeless moment on a truly special afternoon that will remain a part of everybody who was lucky enough to be there.
· Michael Chamy
The Austin Chronicle
SXSW 2002 ‘Picks and Sleepers’
View this review online here.
They used to be Austin’s best kept secret, now they’re Chicago’s. Frontman Brandon Durham writes songs as personal and memorable as Nick Drake’s, delivered with a distinctive voice equal parts Ian Curtis and Neal Halstead. Like Curtis’ Joy Division, Palaxy Tracks’ rhythm section extends the songs in all directions, as sharp slices of shoegazer waft in and out of the mix.
· Michael Chamy
The Austin Chronicle
‘Live Shots’ - The Red Eyed Fly, February 15, 2001
View this review online here.
On a rainy Thursday evening, as the storm blew in after midnight, you still couldn’t find a decent parking space in the Sixth Street/Red River corridor. Who the hell was out on a night like this? Thirty or so people in the Red Eyed Fly’s new lodge, that’s who. And the four guys in Palaxy Tracks. In fact, walking toward Waller Creek from a distance where shuttles should shuttle, you could hear the band’s Spiritualized wall of sound clear as rain. Was someone playing outside at Stubb’s next door? Nope. As you drew closer, it was obvious that the perfectly echoed ring was coming from out back of the Red Eyed Fly’s small storefront. No wonder the lady across the street kept calling the cops. Thing is, this is the spot Mayor Kirk Watson wanted to turn into the equivalent of San Antonio’s Riverwalk area — an entertainment district. While housing goes up all around the “entertainment district” on the other side of Congress — Austin Music Hall, Antone’s, La Zona Rosa — housing already exists at odds with the Sixth Street area; for years residents have complained about loud music. Sorry folks, you’re living at ground zero of Austin’s tourist trade. Loud music is the order of the night. Besides, this is downtown of a growing metropolis, not Round Rock. No wonder Palaxy Tracks is moving to Chicago — it’s a real metropolis. Judging from this, one of Palaxy Tracks’ last local shows (there’s this weekend’s show at the Ritz and South by Southwest), Austin is down another amenity. Playing the roomy stage on what used to be the Red Eyed Fly’s outdoor deck, the band ignored the flapping blue tarp tied across the high north wall of steel girders — atop which now sits a handsome new wooden roof that’s supported on the opposite side by an equally sturdy rec center-type wall — Palaxy Tracks’ tight, 45-minute set was as full-bodied and warm as its surroundings. Amidst the heater lamps, Christmas lights, and wooden deer head hung on the oak tree growing through the roof, the band filled out the atmospheric pop from last year’s promising The Long Wind Down with two guitars, burbling, spacey keyboards, and enough minor chords and up-tempos to drown out the rain now battering the roof. “I hope you’re all very drunk,” said singer Brandon Durham at one point. Sounding as good and confident as Palaxy Tracks did, you didn’t need be — the buzz was already there.
· Raoul Hernandez
The Onion
‘Sensory Overload’ - SXSW 2001
View this review online here.
Only sections mentioning Palaxy Tracks have been included here.
“A mishmash of signed and unsigned, big and small all played simultaneously, which meant attendees had to choose between, say, a crowded reunion of the legendary Soft Boys or one of many intriguing smaller acts, whether signed (Damien Jurado collaborator Rose Thomas) or unsigned (the compelling Austin band Palaxy Tracks).”
“Conversely, fire marshals had slashed the capacity of the coffee-house Ruta Maya to 49 shortly before SXSW — you could turn cartwheels with only 48 other people in there — so hundreds crushed against the entrance to get a look at Palaxy Tracks. This may be stating the obvious, but that probably didn’t create optimum safety conditions in the event of a fire.”
The Austin Chronicle
SXSW 2001 ‘Picks and Sleepers’
View this review online here.
Palaxy Tracks have marked SXSW as their final show as an Austin band. They’re heading to Chicago, toting with them last year’s The Long Wind Down, a hook-laden winner adorned with Brandon Durham’s Bedhead-y vocals and an invigorating sonic nuance. This town will truly be losing one of its finest bands.
· Michael Chamy
The Austin Chronicle
SXSW 2000 ‘Picks and Sleepers’
View this review online here.
Slowly, quietly, Palaxy Tracks has emerged as a force to be reckoned with. Mixing the understated pop genius of Yo la Tengo with a slo-fi nod to the dearly departed Bedhead, frontman Brandon Durham assembled a sparkling batch of wistful odes on the bands brand new full-length The Long Wind Down. Gerard Cosloys of the world, take note, because the Palaxy Tracks might just be headed in your direction.
· Michael Chamy
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LATEST
REVIEWS
BigYawn.net
“This album is storytelling at its absolute finest.”
Prefix Mag
“Palaxy Tracks’ third full-length sees the band discovering the gas pedal while keeping everything bathed in the sepia tones of faded photographs.”
Resonance
“Expansive songwriting yields a richness of sound and feeling that culminates in the gorgeous eight-minute title track.”
Faces
“One wants to be eternally surrender to the attacks of pieces such as the meticously balanced “Grey Snake”…”
The Crutch
“Everything about this album is gorgeous and yet wrenching. The tracks are evocative of the feeling that occurs upon seeing an ex for the first time, post-breakup…”
Harp Magazine
“Although constructed in relatively basic fashion—only occasionally do instruments like a pump organ or a violin show up to augment the guitar-bass-drums setup—the sound this Chicago quartet generates is anything but simplistic.”
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THE
NAME - EXPLAINED
Ever wonder where we got the name Palaxy Tracks?
Well now you don't have to wonder anymore. Go
here for the full, completely uninteresting
story. It involves dinosaurs, the occult, and creationist theories.
Mmmm... juicy. |
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