Is it a tribute to Houston Texas' professional baseball team the Astros? Could be. Its cover and title suggest it, but I have a feeling these are more mood-setters than anything. A lazy nostalgic memory more like it; like the baseball team your older brother use to play for, or a discontinued brand of soda you use to beg your parents for when you were a kid. The music on this little extended play feels like it wants to evoke those qualities, through two burners that coarsely wail a desert dipped flame of psychedelic NOT NOT rock.
Over the past few years, Cameron Stallones' work as Sun Araw has always had a quality distinctly his own; a hazy lo-fi take on psych-rock with whirling guitars and tribal undertones. Houston Abstros follows that, but holds more of an emotional quality and alternative influence than past recordings. His indecipherable chants sound like scattered memories here, versus just rhythmic cues. Plus easy-going guitar lines give both tracks a condensed, barely-there feeling. These qualities break his usual mold of sweltering psych-rock into more an alternative rock parallel.
Altogether Houston Abstros is criminally held back by its short length, because both of its tracks work so fluently together. "Bump Up" builds up into a slow jam of retrospective chants and guitar feedback, while "December" has an almost Sonic Youth quality to its whirling soundscape, yet both segue way effortlessly. It would have been really interesting to hear what he could have done with a full album's worth of material, but nonetheless it's an outstanding little EP. One that continually reveals itself more and more with repeated listens, despite what little time it's given.
[Sun Araw Website]
[Buy the Houston Abstros 7" from Monofonus Press]
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