The Authors
Austin, Texas, United States | SELF
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7. The Authors – Get Haunted
This band has been lurking below the surface in Austin for some time now, and with their debut full-length finally released, they were right on the money. They fulfilled all the promise early listens offered us, combining hooks and sharp guitar lines with seamless ease. It always makes us happy to see deserving bands make all our listening dreams come true. - Austin Town Hall
s you probably read on this very site, Saturday night had a lot of great shows. I was one of very few people who was on west 4th street for the Los Campesinos! show. I feel like that show wasn't promoted very well because there should have been WAAAYY more people there. However, I guess you have to factor in that there were lots of other good shows and La Zona Rosa is away from the Red River scene. For me, that's a very good reason to attend shows there but I understand other people's reluctance. In any case one of my favorite local bands, the Authors started things off. I feel like they fill a void in Austin's music scene. Their sound is reminiscent of Remy Zero, which is not a bad thing in my books. The song below is from their latest LP Get Haunted, you should probably buy it. - Austin Bloggy Limits
One of the best parts about having so many parties in different cities each month is the amount of quality new music we get turned onto from our partners and from the bands that play. While booking the November Rumble Austin party, we tripped over Austin’s THE AUTHORS, who just released an album called “Get Haunted” that is owning us currently. The record jingle-jangles, and it all seems unforced and easy.
“This album reminds me a lot of Surfer Blood’s album from earlier in the year. Like that album, it is a sharp and high speed chase from start to finish, but The Authors prove their distinctive sound with clearer vocals, all while staying inside the garage rock jangle that is Get Haunted; a true trip back to those blissful summer days.” – Austin Town Hall
SONG OF THE DAY: The Authors “Never Know“ - Future Sounds
It’s easy to see why The Authors named their debut full-length album Get Haunted. The songs are fast-tracked and slick but the wide-open production and the quaver in lead singer Justin Prater’s voice gives a spooky finish on all of the material.
The Authors’ sound is based off Prater’s aggressive, chippy guitar playing. “Timebomb,” the first track, has Prater slapping out a riff that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Queens of the Stone Age record if it wasn’t so clean-toned. The stripped-down, non-distorted tone contrasts with Prater’s Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist-esque vocals and second guitarist Ben Meza’s fuzzy lead work. Drummer Angela Stroud pounds out a crisp high hat pattern and bassist Jon Haben burbles in time underneath Prater. It’s a forceful quartet right from the start.
The next song, “Never Know,” inverts the arrangement and shows the group’s versatility. While it’s not a complete switch of approach – The Authors fully embrace the modern alt/indie sound of angular guitars and post-punk arrangements – Prater’s voice shows a melodious underside to the Hives-esque yelling he did on “Timebomb.” Here he sounds closer to Peter Gabriel. Meza’s guitar is the jaunty one this time round, and he double-tracks with some swelling synths that elevate the chorus.. Prater’s scraping rhythm work (non-distorted again) wrangles with the side-stepping rhythm section.
The tone becomes increasingly harrowed from this point on. “Feels Like Running,” “Battles” and “Halo” are all jittery songs that seem on edge until their cathartic choruses. Prater coos and chirps in falsetto on “Halo” to a shimmering tambourine before breaking into a screechy chord solo.
The influence of Bloc Party can be heard in The Authors’ guitar attack and careening momentum. But Stroud’s drumming is more restrained and the band overall is more compact in even their loudest moments. “Get Haunted,” one of the most successful songs on the record, brings a spooky keyboard drone in under the ping-ponging bluesy guitar licks. The care-free vibe of “Lonely Ways” is quickly undercut by a leering bass line and self-deflecting lyric.
“Ashes” has the same “singing into a canyon” effect Kings of Leon use on their songs, but luckily it doesn’t go further in embracing cock rock. The memorable quasi-Keef middle eight is wicked. “Look Back” turns up the Bloc Party influence even more on its needling verse and accelerated chorus.
It would be a lie to say that most of these are classic tracks, but The Authors keep things lively and the songs are not bloated or self-indulgent. A truly memorable melody comes out on “By a Thread” though, which combines the guttural special effects of Joy Division with the stop-start sonic landscapes of early U2. The chorus worms out some deep melancholy while losing none of the track’s vigor.
Get Haunted has a strong closing set of songs. “Put It On” is dance floor-ready and gets a leg up from well-executed harmony vocals. The Authors should do those more often. Prater scat-sings with his guitar riff at the end of the chorus to nice effect. Franz Ferdinand is present in the alternating guitars – although The Authors’ strings are more serrated – and Prater briefly does his best Matt Berninger impression after the instrumental middle section.
“The Night” is a suitably eerie ending to an album that has a touch of ghostliness about it. The closing song is one of the highlights, using all of The Authors’ signature sounds for a lonely heart travelogue that could be used as a single. Each section of the song flows naturally from the last and there is none of the reaching that holds other cuts back. An unexpected keyboard-and-electronic ambient coda closes the album on a surprising but satisfying note.
The Authors will be playing Los Campesinos this Saturday, October 23rd. I bet they’re incredible live; there’s a lot of room to explore in these songs and the four member sound in tune with what they’re trying to do. Get Haunted is not a classic album but it’s a start for a local band that shows more promise than most.
Final Grade: ****½ (out of five) - Austin Music + Entertainment Magazine
Even with only an earlier EP under their belt, The Authors' first full length release Get Haunted is a formidable thirty-eight minute force. The album was tracked at Elmwood Recording Studio in Dallas with Grammy winning producer/engineer Stuart Sikes at the helm, and, out just in time for Halloween, Get Haunted scares up some quality tunes.
"Timebomb" kicks off Get Haunted with punkish vocals over fuzzed out guitars set in a quick two-minute surf rock style. Drawing comparisons to Surfer Blood, the variations in The Authors songs break out of the standard garage band set. Most notably, "Feels Like Running" takes it up a notch with a different reverb feel that leaves you wanting more. Although the lead singer Justin Prater's vocals sound a bit strained with some of the higher notes, it's undeniable that there are many very catchy moments with well-driven melodies.
Rounding out the album, "The Night" concludes the experience with a more traditional indie rock feel. This song feels like the perfect blissed out track for cool early fall evenings. As with all of Get Haunted, there are hints of greatness that point towards the potentially big things that The Authors will accomplish. Be sure to catch a glimpse of this while these Austinites are still working their way up the music ladder. The Authors appropriately play The Ghost Room on Saturday night with fellow local Austin bands She Sir and Saints of Valory. Get Haunted is available now on iTunes and all major online music providers. - The Austinist
“Get Haunted.” It’s a helluva an imperative for a debut LP, and one that that’s not entirely misdirected. For the Authors, it certainly seems less an invitation than a demand, a necessity. For listeners, it’s a useful point of entry for digging into the sound the local quartet excavates. In retrospect, the Authors 2009 debut EP is a fitting build up to their initial full-length – that disc delivered heavy on potential but was somewhat quelled by both a want of edge and focus. Those are certainly not problems for Get Haunted, but chasing ghosts opens an entirely different sort of challenges. And there are a lot of ghosts swirling throughout the album, flashpoints in sound that make the Authors’ seem eerily familiar, yet still uncannily unique.
And isn’t that what getting haunted is all about? That sense of something past and still lingering in consciousness, yet displaced enough and with enough shock to grab our attention, to not entirely fit in. If their eponymous EP got somewhat lost in its innocuous polish, that haunted sound of influence fading too easily into the background as to disappear, then their full-length forces itself back to the surface, demanding attention even if it’s just through the peripheral glance of something moving just beyond our awareness - something edgy enough to put us on edge.
Get Haunted is saturated with sonic cues conjuring the past. Most blatant is the effectively channeled 80’s, post new-wave pop, which rises clearest in the clipped guitar licks and undeniable influence of the Police on “Never Know.” The tune might not have worked without the raggedly jittered opener “Timebomb”, though, a song that would follow more in the wake of the Jam and immediately sets things in intense physical motion. Likewise, “Feels Like Running” follows with the dark and gloomily drenched vocals that would gesture more towards Echo & the Bunnyman or even the Cure – in other words, haunted, but with as much a familiar pop edge as a doomed morbidity. “And I feel you coming round again,” Justin Prater wails as the guitars begin to strafe with increased intensity.
Add to these instances the rest of the album’s topside tracks that shoot in equally resonating, but divergent directions. “Battles” fights itself out of the Eighties into a chorus that is late Nineties’ NYC, a joining forces of the Police and Interpol. “Halo” then pumps a guitar line from Ben Meza that could have been lifted straight from Sonic Youth’s Rather Ripped. By the time we get to the synth-buzzing title track, then, it seems the Authors have been all over the musical map.
Yet picking at these at the sonic foundations doesn’t do justice to what the Authors have put together. It’s easy to glean these moments that pique a familiar sound, but in all these tunes, those elements remain just that - elusive moments that settle for a moment only to dart off in the Authors’ own self-determined direction. And moreover, as a whole, the first half of the album propels itself well, keeping the listener guessing and engaged.
The backside of the album proves equally compelling and deceptively dance-floor inducing, even if that initial focus begins to wane. “Ashes” rises to falsetto against a solid bass groove courtesy Jon Haben, and indeed much of the second half of the album is more heavily propelled by the rhythm section, through “Look Back” and “By a Thread.” It’s a good balance as the vocals begin to fluctuate more and more uneasily, even to the point of drifting too far afield on tunes like “Put it On.” But for the most part, the solidified rhythm works to keep heads bopping despite the vocal contortions.
While the Authors’ debut LP want blow any minds, it is a smart album and proves the band is worth the local attention they’re beginning to get. They’ve come back from their EP with something that stands out, that simultaneously hits familiar musical cornerstones while building well on top of it. The next move will be determined by whether the band can continue to exorcise their hauntedness enough for more of themselves to emerge. But of course the beauty of ghosts is that you can still look through them to what lies ahead. - Austin Sound
A few weeks into fall, cooler temperatures are surprisingly here and you feel lost in the jumble of work or school, missing those summer days that are not so far gone. What better way to fall back into the relaxing mood of summer than to listen to music that feels like sunshine and ocean waves? With only an EP released prior to this, The Authors look to establish themselves as experts of the beach-pop, summer feeling genre. With Get Haunted, they do just this.
“Timebomb” kicks off the album strong and fast right from the start. The guitars buzz away the background while slightly fuzzy lyrics float on top of all the other components of the song, swimming to the beat. Next comes “Never Know,” which is great in its vocals, almost a yelp, to the high pitched noise that blends in with the rest of the song, yet gives a “haunted” feeling, as does the raspy vocals at points.
But perhaps in all the jangly guitars and the hyper drum beats, Get Haunted would become banal, like some of the dog days of summer? False. “Feels Like Running,” an excellent song, starts with a hooking guitar rift that takes turns dominating with the vocals. The drums sit back in the spectrum of what the listener will notice, but they drive the whole of this song, as well as the album; simple, yet refined and precise enough to add en element of constant clarity. They then transition to slightly groovier tunes with “Battles” and “Lonely Ways.” The bass line is quite prominent in these songs, giving them the less washed out feel of previous songs and a more solid foundation, which is an enjoyable turn for this album to take as the band continues with their garage rhythms.
The Authors finish just as strong as they started with “The Night.” This brings the album full circle, from quick shadowy beats to a softer and less fuzzy end. They finally kind of slow down with the last few seconds of the song reserved to some ambient noises. Those melancholic ending notes the same as those final days before fall.
This album reminds me a lot of Surfer Blood’s album from earlier in the year. Like that album, it is a sharp and high speed chase from start to finish, but The Authors prove their distinctive sound with clearer vocals, all while staying inside the garage rock jangle that is Get Haunted; a true trip back to those blissful summer days. - Austin Town Hall
The Authors' recent CD release, Get Haunted, is the soundtrack of every summer. Sporting a California-styled, beach-rock, New Wave sound, The Authors first full length record since their debut EP rolls riffs like waves of music into your ear holes. The sound of Get Haunted is something that falls between The Police, Dick Dale, at times Flock Of Seagulls, and something all their own, without having that awkward kind of acquired-taste sort of sound that such a hybrid would usually warrant. In fact, every song is catchy, toe-tapping, and addictive while still maintaining individuality among songs without dragging along like many first full-albums seem to do. The first track, "Timebomb", stands apart as something special. A slightly garage-grungier, harder rocking song compared to the offerings of the rest of the album, while being at the forefront to set the tone, while the following songs descend more and more into New Wave. The entire album is a gradient of genre, really, going from that grungier rock all the way to Hawaii Five-O styled guitar licks near the later songs of the album, showing a kind of range and variety paired with great confidence, all of which is rarely present in a first album. Though they are Austin darlings through and through, Get Haunted takes your head-space to Venice Beach during a summer sunset, without having to worry about all the reasons Austinites abhor California. Solid tunes, from a solid band, and at only $12, the album is more than worth the dollar per song.
Get Haunted debuted Sept. 7th. The Authors will be at End of an Ear Records today (Sept. 10th), at 6pm, sporting free beer for fans.
--Mitchell Mazurek - The Deli Magazine
"The Authors' eponymous debut continues the trend of locals polishing 1980s New Wave into indie rock. Opener "Lions" sounds 12 steps of recovery removed from the Strokes, with Justin Prater's assured croon and staggering guitar lines grounding the more upbeat "Put It On.""
-Austin Powell - The Austin Chronicle
" Some are quick to call them indie-pop, but The Authors are quick to refute such a confining label and warn that their sound doesn’t end there. We tend to agree. "
-Ryan Ray - Austin Town Hall
Discography
LP: Get Haunted. September 7, 2010
Tracks: Timebomb, Never Know, Feels Like Running, Battles, Halo, Get Haunted, Lonely Ways, Ashes, Look Back, By A Thread, Put It On, The Night
EP: April 14, 2009
Tracks: Lions, Tonight, Put It On, Dig A Hole
Singles: 2009
Tracks: Battles, Feels Like Running
Photos
Bio
Singer/guitarist Justin Prater writes lyrics with social a conscious and a wounded heart, while guitarist/keyboardist Ben Meza weaves a sonic tapestry of reverb drenched guitars and haunting keys. With a mix of danceable beats supplied by drummer Angela Stroud and bass heavy melodies by Jon Haben, The Authors have created a sound that they can call their own.
While The Authors eponymous 2009 debut "EP" was born in a sweaty garage, the band's debut release "Get Haunted" found it's home in the Elmwood Recording Studio located in Dallas, TX. While staying focused on it's tight, beat driven backbone, the band set out to capture the feel of the live performance, enlisting the expertise of Grammy Award winning producer/engineer Stuart Sikes (Cat Power, The Walkmen, White Stripes, Lorretta Lynn) at his Elmwood Recordings studio in Dallas, TX. Get Haunted fuses new wave with a raw garage rock sound, tempting disco beats, while fleshing out new melodies at every turn.
Clocking in at just over 30 min, Get Haunted sets a furious pace of raucous beats and hooks, taking you from the fuzzed out surf garage opening track "Timebomb" through 12 garage-y, dance inducing tracks that end up in the lush, dreamy comforts of closing number "The Night".
Radio:
"Lions" & "Feels Like Running" on 101X Next Big Thing, Daily Dose & "Lions" on WOXY internet radio.
Links