Honey and Salt

Damn. Just…damn. Listening to “All Static,” the A-side of this split-7″ from now-departed post-rock trio Sharks and Sailors, I can’t help but tear up a little bit, I swear. It’s a near-perfect encapsulation of everything I truly loved about the band, from the muscular-yet-smart guitars to bassist/vocalist Melissa Lonchambon-Ryan’s serene, serious voice to the brooding, drifting, atmospheric haze, all wrapped up in one neat, tidy package.

Which is fitting, I guess, considering that it’s the band’s last-ever release, but it kills me even still — I feel like I’ve just gotten a final “here, you left this behind” package from an ex-lover, that kind of door-closing-forever moment that means you’re never going to be able to go back to the way you were.

It’d be a disservice to the band to wallow, however; instead, I’m determined to just be happy as hell to get this one last song. And for that, it’s quite a song. Like I said, it brings together all those elements I liked about S&S’s music, but with an added edge to it — while the track does start off relatively quiet and restrained, Lonchambon-Ryan’s not content to just lay back and nod along this time out, instead howling out the chorus.

In a funny twist, what “All Static” reminds me of more than anything else is fellow-travelers Ume’s recent stuff, with both bands stepping further away from the all-out eardrum-crushing assault in favor of something more thoughtful and subtle. They definitely can crank it up and pummel you — and here, they definitely do, at times — but they don’t have to. On top of being a great song in itself, it’s also an intriguing, tantalizing glimpse of where Sharks and Sailors might’ve been headed if they’d soldiered on.

Given all that, I don’t envy Austinites Honey and Salt, whose “Cohere” sits on the other side of the record; they’ve got a tough act to follow. They make it work, however — downshifting somewhat, the band is low-key but complex, with neat, delicate, prog-y guitar lines winding in and out as the song meanders along. Honey and Salt make me think of a noodlier, jazzier, probably friendlier Fugazi, or maybe of those early-early emo bands, back before the blueprint really got set in stone.

The guitars are almost too deft and nimble for my tastes, honestly — I only have a limited attention span when it comes to the prog stuff — but then about two-thirds of the way through, the band throws caution to the winds and explode into a great, great bit of Cap’n Jazz/Promise Ring-sounding rock. And after that, I feel compelled to go back and listen to both sides of the record over and over again.

(Obligatory Full Disclosure Time: Former SCR contributor Danny Mee apparently plays drums in Honey and Salt, although I swear to God I had no idea that was the case ’til I finished writing up the 7″ and went looking for a band link for H&S. Hand on my heart, y’all.) - Jeremy Hart

The Husk (that space beside Khon’s) has turned into quite the hang-out for a certain nerdy music set (and I mean that in the best possible way). It’s the kind of place where Lance Higdon will tell you how he and a few other people are scoring a classic Greek play at the University of Houston later this year or where Paul Connolly will explain in detail how he used Wiimotes to control pitch and volume of sampled cellos on his Mac. The Resonant Interval sound series is another example of this with its celebration of all things experimental and jazzy. So it’s no surprise that shows at the Husk also tend to lean toward music where musicians challenge both themselves as well as their audience.

Saturday’s quadruple bill was no exception with Motion Turns It On, Golden Cities, Solanae, and Austin’s Honey and Salt. The bands had their differences in style but all seemed to be united by a similar sense of adventurousness. To give you some idea, let’s just compare the drummers and guitarists.

First the drums. Danny Mee of Honey and Salt (also of Houston’s The Jonx and a music writer whose work appears on 29-95 on occasion) approaches the drums with a kind of punk-rock Martin Scorsese-like thoughtfulness that made for a nice contrast with Golden Cities’ Lance Higdon whose approach is more of a wide-eyed François Truffaut; bursting with a youthful energy. Motion Turns It On’s Steve Smith? We’ll just say he was the Russ Meyer of the evening and let you figure it out.

Then we had the guitars. Honey and Salt’s guitarist, Wade Allen, would make these wonderfully fast melodic runs on his guitar juxtaposed with angular yet pretty chord changes. It was brainy and expressive but it also had the (I would say unintended) effect of making the vocals a mere afterthought. That’s in sharp contrast to Solanae where Meghan Hendley’s vocals and keyboards are front and center. Guitarist Mike Blackshear and bassist Jeff Price (of the very proggy, show-stopping Tambersauro) played a supporting role here where they would drive the music into the massive emotional crescendos without ever overshadowing Hendly. Golden Cities’ guitar duo of Marcus Gausepohl and Brian Smyth have grown into one of the best shoegaze duos in Houston. The two mesh together so well that at times it’s hard to tell where one guitarist ends and the other begins. My favorite thing is how the band has no bassist but you never ever miss it thanks to Gausepohl’s clever use of an octave divider to drop low notes when the songs call for a low-end oomph. It’s a band that, with the addition of percussionist Scott Ritter, has hit its stride and the result is a dual percussion/ dual guitar psych shoegaze trip that would stand side-by-side with many a Terrastock band.

Headliner, Motion Turns It On, featured the guitar work of Bill Kenny and, well, let’s just say that there is no doubt as to what the focus is when MITO plays; it’s Kenny. Like some crazed nut-job whose heart is about to burst from having ingested too much speed, Kenny hurls notes and flails like he’s Keith Moon behind six strings. It’s the kind of stuff the “too many notes” crowd hates but even they would have to say that it’s fun to watch if only because MITO is so gosh-darn weird! - Houston Chronicle

Spider House Ballroom is a pretty fucking weird venue when you get down to it. Like if that Twin Peaks reboot or sequel or whatever the fuck it is ever actually gets off the ground, they could set it in Austin and film a huge chunk of it at the Ballroom and that would make total sense. I don’t think enough bands embrace this, though. But from the looks of it, the relatively new Worthless Animals did. Ashley Bradley sent over like a billion frantic photos of them tearing the place up for their coming out party (which she also booked), yelling at the nonsensical disco ball, writhing around on the floor, screaming at the camera. It’s good shit and if the venue had better lights, there probably would have been some clearer shots of “Dad” hanging from the rafters, too. But alas, all you’ve got is what’s here, as well as a peek at our frequent buds Holy Smokes and their friends, Ex-Legionnaires and Honey & Salt. - Ovrld.com

SXSW 2015
Atmosphere / Kinky / Incubus / Speedy Ortiz / Various Artists
Austin, Texas
Wednesday, March 11th — Saturday, March 21st
SXSW made another grand standing ovation with a magnificent musical line-up including a variety of genres from cumbia-fusion to hip-hop to alternative rock. The assembly of music at SXSW was composed of bands from different cities across the United States and abroad. The bands constituted from a variety of local Austin and Texas bands, Mexican Spanish Rock, Minneapolis Hip-Hop, California Indie Rock, among many other genres. Overall, SXSW had a mix of musical genres to please anybody’s musical needs. - Medium.com

I first came across Honey and Salt by chance at a show I went to with a friend and was blown away by their technical skill and energy. Their sound was like all of the variety, meandering plucking and rolling drums of Don Caballero mixed with a pinch of the soft-spoken, emotional bits of American Football. The band is Wade Allen on guitars, Austin Sears on bass and Benjamin Sams on drums, and, for a three piece, the sound and presence they create is phenomenal. It’s like there are way more layers than just three with all that goes on, and that sound comes across perfectly with their latest full length release Seams of Value.

The main kind of Honey and Salt “formula” on Seams of Value-– which unjustly makes it sound like you can enumerate how their music works, but it helps to give you an idea of what goes on with them– is very clean, crisp guitar melodies, both on the low and high ends, that meander and pluck away at these clipping speeds, creating technical and varied melodies. This lies on top of drums that roll and crash and generally create this blend of flourishes that cohere into this complex backing beat that simultaneously acts as a layer of complexity all its own, beyond being just the backbone. It’s math rock at its finest, and with Allen’s cooing, breathy vocals adding a layer of lyricism and emotion to things, it completes their unique sound.



“Dress Shirts” shows this off pretty well. It starts as a kind of standard, speedy rock song, with jerking breaks of blasting power chords. This is broken, however, by a sudden quieting of things, with the guitars turning into this almost twinkling and sparkling flurry of plucked notes backed by subtle breakbeat-like percussion. This vibe alternates with a return to this kind of start-stop blasting of guitars and crashing drums, creating a quiet versus all out energy back and forth, all glued together, though, by Allen’s signature, breathy vocals.

“Broken Evidence” opens with a very fast, Midwest emo-sounding twinkly melody (a guitar sound that I absolutely love) that quickly introduces itself before basically becoming the song, as all things seem to be built around this phrasing, and osmose the guitars into this heavily layered piece of music. The rest of the song perpetuates this feeling, that quick melody driving all that happens, but drums will crash and roll and seem to have a mind of their own, occasionally dropping into a more standard beat before returning to their musings. Guitars will occasionally return to the core phrasing but will incorporate all sorts of in between transitional breaks and riffs that really turn the song into an aural organism all its own, moving and changing fluidly.



The focus of math rock is a lot of times on guitar and drums, I find, but I find it worth mentioning that Honey and Salt kind of throw this convention to the wind with their music, and “View from Nowhere” is the perfect example. The song is built around this meandering bass line that opens the track, and sounds so cool jogging around like the guitars do, and changing and morphing throughout the song. The song itself goes from this upbeat, rolling bassline to an almost droning shoegaze track, to transitioning into math-y guitar and bass bridges, then running into a full-on, one-two d-beat punk song. It’s so much variety in one song, which is so quintessentially math rock, but done in such a way that is so utterly unique to this band. It’s probably my favorite track of theirs.



Prior to this album, I’d heard a demo and an EP from these guys— along with the happenstance show, of course– all of which gave me insight into these concepts and ideas I’ve been talking about, but never quite solidified for me what was going on with the band. Seams of Value, however, is an absolutely impressive full-length release that brings together everything I dug about this band. It perfectly exemplifies these artists’ sound and talent, and presents it in an entirely fresh and cohesive way that I’d never heard before.

My conclusion: this album is a pretty sick addition to the math rock pool that was just not totally there before, but Honey and Salt put it together perfectly. The hybridized emo-meets-math-rock sound, the layered and entirely various songs-within-songs formatting, and the emphasis on all parts instrumentally make for a very interesting and fresh-sounding album, and one that shows a band that can go in a million directions and succeed at all of them. - Ovrld.com

What would emo mainstay American Football have sounded like if they'd expressed any emotion other than being perpetually bummed? Hard to say for sure, but Austin threepiece Honey and Salt come dang close to filling us in. A dash of early-Nineties' Northeast punk, traces of young Mike Kinsella's projects, and lots of mathy guitar make up Honey and Salt's brainy, startling debut full-length. An impassioned 12-track trek combining instrumental precision with ebullient frustration, Seams of Value tackles both the existential and political, lyrics waxing philosophical, particularly on its most dynamic cuts, "Pastures" and "Feed Them Common Sense." Wade Allen's off-kilter riffs anxiously punctuate and drive through existential crises, the wreckage from trains of thought derailing. The LP never allows a minute to breathe, but that's its Value.

**** - The Austin Chronicle

For the sake of convenience, Honey and Salt could be described as a math rock band, but the local trio reaches beyond the rhythmical complexities and experimental nature associated with the genre on their latest album, Seams of Value. Guitarist/vocalist Wade Allen, bassist/vocalist Austin Sears, and drummer Benjamin Sams prefer sidestepping those expectations and craft their approach in several different directions, leaving room for more variety and subtleties. You definitely feel the influence of ‘90s Chicago sounds (include brothers Tim and Mike Kinsella as major figures), and the richness of the progressive, avant-garde and jazz styles of the late ‘60s/early ‘70s Canterbury scene in the UK.

Honey and Salt’s new album comes out today, and that’s paired with a release party tonight at Beerland, 711 1/2 Red River. They share the bill with Gentlemen Rogues, Ballerino, and Trying Science. Doors open at 8 p.m., and the music starts at 9 p.m. Well worth catching them all. Recommended. - KUTX.ORG

Lemonade, it’s not just for drinking anymore. It’s a musical buzzword right now. No one better to break down that new release and many others than our buddy Patrick from Waterloo Records. Of course you can stop by Waterloo Records on North Lamar to pick up any of the new releases we’ve talked about today. Check them out at waterloorecords.com. - KXAN.com