Hear This Now: Ruiners + We Scare Coyotes + Neighbors + Waterparks

With all the talk of top-ten lists and whatnot in recent days — it being the start of the new year and all (and yes, our own pile of top-tens are on the way) — it occurs to me that we here at SCR haven’t pointed forwards a whole lot in recent days & months. Meaning that while we talk a lot about bands we love and adore, well, they’re largely bands you’ve already heard about, either here or somewhere else.

And yet, new bands pop up in our fair city all the damn time, and some of ’em happen to be freaking amazing, or at least seriously promising. We listen to ’em as we can and post about them when a show rolls around, and we’ll gladly review whatever they send us (if they can be patient with my slow ass, at least). But sadly, a lot of the time they get shuffled off to the side.

Therefore, starting now, we’re going to attempt to do a quasi-regular — monthly, most likely — “Hear This Now” rundown of a handful of new-ish local bands I’ve heard lately that we happen to think are cool, or good, or brilliant, or insane, or whatever else. We’ll include links to music/videos where I can, along with a quick blurb about the band or musician in question.

Okay, with that out of the way, here we go…

RUINERS:
Whoa. Where did that come from? Granted, these guys are really, really, really new, and they’re still honing their sound, but after stumbling across ’em recently, I’ve been unable to tear myself away. The handful of rough demos they’ve got online so far are raw and exuberant and ferociously catchy, like Surfer Blood minus the psych haze, Samiam minus the yelp, or maybe fellow Houstonians Young Mammals if they got drunk & loud more frequently. They’re currently working on their debut EP, for which the songs below are the early mixes, apparently, but damn, they’re pretty awesome as they are now, at least to my ears. Trust me: watch this band. And, um, listen to them right now:

 

WE SCARE COYOTES:
Yep, I know I’ve mentioned these guys before, but I figured they really deserve a little bit more than just a quick show-rundown shoutout, so I included them in this inaugural list. There’s quite a crop of instrumental (or mostly-instrumental) bands floating around town right now, but these guys have surged to near the top of my list after a really damn short time.

They’re somber and thoughtful, for the most part, although they shift between quiet, delicate movements and heavier, more bombastic stuff, and the whole thing’s drenched in outer-space-y delay and reverb (oh, and there’s a violin). The end result is something like Austin spacerockers My Education — given the violin, the comparison’s hard to avoid — only with a serious sense of urgency and tension, not to mention a prog-rock bent. Check ’em out:

We Scare Coyotes is playing 1/25/13 at BFE Rock Club.
 

NEIGHBORS:
This one truly came out of left field, for me; I’d never heard a thing about these guys ’til recently, and that’s a damn shame, because I’m truly digging the band’s rough-hewn, emo-tinged rock. Jack Flanagan‘s cigarette-scratched vocals bring to mind “Bastards of Young”-era Paul Westerberg, with a little bit of Cain Marko on the side, and the guitars rumble and growl along beneath like the best damn things Silkworm ever did or Grifters’ “Dead Already.” Check out debut EP Scenic Nostalgia, below:

 

WATERPARKS:
To tell the truth, I’ve been listening to these guys for a little while now, but I’m damn impressed with their in-your-face, unapologetically melodic brand of poppy emo-rock, and I couldn’t resist including ’em here. On their debut EP, Airplane Conversations (released last April), Waterparks burn brightly, roaring along like the sadly-departed Thee Armada and Stadium both used to and damn near demanding you throw your fists to the sky. It’s gloriously addictive stuff, I swear:

Waterparks is playing 3/9/13 at Numbers.
 

There you go. More to come, I promise…