Houston In The Blind

Athens, Ga., rock band Houston In The Blind is prepping new release Limbs on October 9 with single “All My Love.” A nice psychedelic burst in the song’s chorus provides an eerie juxtaposition with a deadpan vocal delivery, making “All My Love” an interesting and engaging indie-rock track. - Magnet Magazine

Sounding like something from a David Lynch film, Houston in the Blind‘s “On Your Side” offers nearly 5-minutes of hypnotic, dreamlike beauty, featuring reverb heavy guitars and breathy vocals. Its mysterious aura is perfect for sitting back and just unwinding for a few minutes and we’re pretty happy to be exclusively premiering if for all of you.

Fronted by singer/guitarist Charlie Garrett, the new band also features keyboardist John Watkins (Dead Confederate, Saint Pé), drummer Darren Dodd (Ponderosa, Butch Walker) and bassist Corinne Lee (Snowden).

Garrett explains the song:

“On Your Side” started with a guitar part that was eventually chopped up and used as the intro. The verse music is pretty basic, but I remember thinking that I had something worthwhile when I wrote the progression for the chorus.

Lyrically, it’s a personal song, but the general idea is inspired by the need or want to stand by/support someone you love through the dark times, even when it takes a toll on you. Sometimes the self-preservation instinct kicks in, and you know you need to step away from the situation, but you just can’t.

I initially thought this was going to be the lowest song on the record—just incredibly depressing. When we went to Southern Tracks Studio in Atlanta to record the drums, that’s basically how it sounded. I remember drummer Darren Dodd asking me if I had any suggestions for a part on the song, and my answer was, “Just interpret it however you feel.” He then proceeded to blow everyone away with the surprisingly fast and tight beat he came up with. It really makes the song. - Bloody Disgusting

Fresh off being voted Best Local New Music Act by the readers of Creative Loading, Atlanta/Athens band Houston in the Blind has released their debut album, Limbs. Headed by ephemeral cosmonaut Charlie Garrett, the group has created a beautiful work from modest beginnings.

Originally conceived as a solo project, Garrett initially began fleshing out his songs with producer and longtime friend Kalen Nash of Ponderosa. However, the pair soon drifted towards deep waters in a jet-black night guided only by an air of confidence. The stand-alone songs became their lighthouse, beckoning ships on distant shores to take safe passage in their waterways. An imperial fleet of musicians soon gathered — drummer Darren Dodd (Butch Walker, Ponderosa), keyboardist John Watkins (Dead Confederate, Saint Pé) and singer/bassist Corinne Lee (Snowden) — and the armada eventually set sail for Southern Tracks. Together the band worked to construct the framework for Limbs with the added help of Nash’s wife Aslyn who added keyboard and piano to further enhance the sound palette. Southern Tracks co-owner Ben Holst also contributed, his sleek pedal steel lines floating like sea foam at the crest of a wave.

Limbs is dressed in a melancholy white linen pysch-pop gaze. From a distance it is elegant, but up close it shows signs of wear in its frayed collar and ragged cuffs. Opening track “On Your Side” speaks like a memory coasting on the peripheral of the mind’s eye on a sun-washed day. It’s a mesmerizing introduction to a theme that binds the continuity of the album — the unpredictable nature of the world. Both haunting and alluring, the vocals playfully claw at the cusp of your ear. The words saunter as if a smooth specter slipping in and out of the haze of radio waves culled the melodies from the lingering infection that dispatched it from the bonds of mortal existence. Although much of the album tends to free itself from gravity and the instrumentation feels as if its softly pleading to an unknown soul dressed in distress, the drums bear a strange weight. They attack the heart of the listener with the precise, driving strikes of heavy prayers that are intrinsically understood beyond all the boundaries of custom and language.

Meanwhile, songs like “All My Love” and “I Will Chase Your Ghost” conjure otherworldly extensions. These compositions portend to concerns beyond the everyday malaise of a desk job that fuels back-broken barroom banter and selective cirrhosis. Much as the NASA-born phrase their name suggests, the band, disconnected from convention, uses these songs to launch coded messages to loved ones here and gone with neither a thought of reception or hope of response. “All My Love” asks, “Are you a memory or a dream?” It’s a question that swims in the folds of the unseen, buried deep within the firmament of outer space. This inquisitive perspective links to similar thoughts on “I Will Chase Your Ghost” when Garett sings, “I can see your face/Watch as you drive away.” It frames an image of a human sitting beside themselves, perhaps in grief or lament, burying their face into an underexposed photograph that has taken on the form of a treasured artifact kept out of reach of close company.

The album concludes with a transitory, film-worthy lullaby, “Sleeping Pill.” A lone piano warbles under the warmth of reel-to-reel accompanied only by the flowerless yet graceful fronds of Garett’s falsetto. The song is a momentary downshift in voltage that acts like a poetic volta for Limbs. The rest of the album looks outward whereas this track looks inward, holding possible outcomes to self-responsibility. Garett croons, “Every choice that binds me will have to take the cost/innocence is lost,” and attempts to resolve his existential dilemma with a mantra: “but I try and I try and I try…”

Limbs is a flesh-bound engine. It is powered by its willingness to marinate in both the temporal snapshots of a publicly sober mother sucking off the dregs of a Listerine bottle sub rosa during her nightly bath and Siddhartha moments before reaching Om by the river banks. - Immersive Atlanta

Athens, GA’s Houston in the Blind are preparing to release their debut album, Limbs on October 9th. Surviving the Golden Age is excited to premiere the album’s latest single “Run With Me.” With a West Coast psychedelic feel, the track sounds somewhere between The Shins and Woods. Its gorgeous sun-soaked pop for an endless summer. - Surviving The Golden Age

As singer/guitarist Charlie Garrett headed into record a solo album with Ponderosa's Kalen Nash as his producer, he never expected it to become a full band project. Yet that's exactly what happened. Working with a strong backing group that also includes drummer Darren Dodd (Butch Walker, Ponderosa), keyboardist John Watkins (Dead Confederate, St. Pe) and singer/bassist Corinne Lee (Snowden), the group instantly felt a dynamic creative connection. The result is not only the formation of Houston in the Blind, but the band's first record as well. We're excited to premiere the moody "Where Did You Go" today.

"This song is extremely personal for me," Garrett says. "It’s about someone whom I care about deeply, and who is no longer with us. I’d known her since high school. We parted on good terms, and while we mostly lost touch, through the years I’d see her from time to time. I was always very fond of her and thought she was a beautiful person.

About two years ago, I found out she’d passed away. Needless to say, this rocked me. A few days later, 'Where Did You Go' came to me very quickly. It's somewhat of a letter to her—wishing her peace, but at the same time wondering if there was something I could have done to change the way things turned out."

Limbs will be released on October 9. You can pre-order the album here. - Pure Volume

Hey Athens, Georgia – please spread the wealth… of bands that is. The college city holds no shortage of original rock music at the highest quality, but here we go again,add Houston in the Blind to the fold. Fronted by singer/guitarist Charlie Garrett, the band also features keyboardist John Watkins (Dead Confederate, Saint Pé), drummer Darren Dodd (Butch Walker, Ponderosa) and bassist Corinne Lee (Snowden). Their debut LP, Limbs—produced by Ponderosa’s Kalen Nash—is out Oct. 9.

The making of Limbs and the emergence of Houston in the Blind represent a phoenix-style rebirth for Garrett, who after more than a decade paying his dues on the bar-band circuit finally allowed the music he was creating to catch up with his muse. “I found myself with a batch of songs that were very different from anything I’d written before,” he says. “I’d been playing for years, and even though I’d grown as a person, I was still playing the kind of music I was listening to at 15 years old. It just didn’t reflect where I was at in my life. So I had to rethink everything. I wanted to challenge myself.

No longer caring whether he pleased the drunken college-town barroom crowd, Garrett began creating songs for himself and his own enjoyment, enlisting longtime friend Nash to help him make sense of the bold new music he was writing. “Kalen and I have actually known each other since kindergarten,” Garrett says, “so there was a lot of trust there. He took a hatchet to the songs—chopped them all up. I can’t say enough about what an amazing job he did steering the ship.”

The initial sessions for Limbs took place in August 2013. Between Garrett and Nash, they had enough studio gear to put together a mobile rig, and spent a week recording at Athens venue Normaltown Hall. There, they tracked three songs—“I Will Chase Your Ghost,” “Who Are You” and “Fire.” “From the beginning with this record, there was a mood and a vibe,” Garrett says. “We treated it like we were painting. We weren’t trying to chase perfection—the approach was, ‘Let’s do first takes on everything. No punch-ins. Just do a take—if it’s not good enough, we’ll do another.’”

“I always have a tough time writing about happiness and I guess that emotion generally doesn’t move me to write,” says Garrett. “That being said, on March 9, 2013 my daughter was born. I had written the guitar part, or intro piece, around that same time. I kept trying to figure out how to use it, but nothing was working. One day, when my daughter was still only months old, we were at home alone, I picked up the guitar to play for her. After awhile I started playing the intro piece to the song. The phrase “Good morning blue eyes, rise and shine,” came out during this and I finished the song later that evening when I had some time to myself.”

“When we recorded it, we started with just an acoustic track and layered things,” adds Garrett. “I came back and put the slide parts on it. [Producer] Kalen Nash [of Ponderosa] played bass and Darren Dodd [Butch Walker, Ponderosa] tracked the drums. At some point I started hearing some sort descending piano part happening during the instrumental section of the song. Then Kalen’s wife, Aslyn, came in after I explained what I was hearing, and she just nailed it. I love the way this song turned out.” - Glide Magazine

Houston in the Blind is a brand new group featuring members of Dead Confederate, Ponderosa and Snowden. As you can probably imagine, their sound is a sweet, subtle combination of Dead Confederate’s more alternative country songs, with Snowden’s indie rock aesthetic. Singer Charlie Garrett brings them all together on their latest track “Who Are You,” premiering for the first time here on mxdwn.

This song is an absolute soundscape of slow, moody country with cooing, gentle vocals. The electric guitar warbles with a strong indie edge over a stripped-down backbone of strumming acoustics and a simple snare flick. By far the stand-out of this straightforward song is Garrett’s soaring vocals and emotional lyrics. The harmonies on the chorus ring out with a beautiful clarity as he sings, “Wanna talk it over? Who are you? Who are you? Are you the one that sets me free?” Clocking in at seven and a half minutes, this is an opus of an alt country song, yet its mood digs in such a groove from the start that it’s easy to listen through to the end. “Who Are You” is the song you want playing in the background first thing in the morning, or as you contemplate your love life alone in a bar over stiff whiskey.

Featuring Garrett on vocals and guitar, John Watkins from Dead Confederate on keyboards, Darren Dodd from Ponderosa on drums and Corinne Lee from Snowden on bass, this supergroup of sorts have already announced their debut album for release next month. Their upcoming album Limbs is set for an October 9 release, and includes production work by Kalen Nash of Ponderosa.

Before you pigeonhole Houston in the Blind as just another pieced-together supergroup, Garrett says,

“From the first show we played together, I realized pretty quickly that this was going to be a band, not just some dude playing acoustic guitar with a bunch of hired guns.”
While Limbs is the first release for this group, they actually started work on the album about two years ago. Its upcoming release is a culmination of their hard work over the past few years. You can pre-order the album right here. - mxdwn.com

New Athens/Atlanta four-piece band Houston in the Blind is building some nice buzz in advance of its debut album, Limbs, out Oct. 9 and available to pre-order on Bandcamp. Today, we're pleased to give y'all a taste of the record in the form of "Sleeping Pill," Limbs' heartfelt, minimalist closing number.

Though the record incorporates elements of shoegaze, dream-pop and motorik psychedelia, "Sleeping Pill" centers on bandleader Charlie Garrett, who sings plaintively over a simple piano movement. The two-and-a-half-minute song encapsulates Garrett's vision for the album, which he says "deals in some way with human relationships—not just romantic, but also family and friends."

Along with Garrett, HITB features members of Dead Confederate, Ponderosa and Snowden. Limbs was partially recorded in Athens at Normaltown Hall, and was produced by Ponderosa's Kalen Nash. - Flagpole Magazine

Lackadaisical Athens, GA-based outfit Houston in the Blind won't be releasing their debut album Limbs until October 9, but to get the anticipation building, Exclaim! is premiering the band's brand new single "Fire."

Self-described as a Southern version of Beck's Sea Change, the forthcoming full-length features a hypnotic blend of shoegaze-y pop and psychedelic rock. Starting out as a solo project from singer and guitarist Charlie Garrett, the sessions soon spiralled into a collaborative effort with band members Darren Dodd on drums (Butch Walker), John Watkins on keys (Dead Confederate) and Corinne Lee on bass and backing vocals (Snowden).

"I enjoyed making this record so much," Garrett said in a statement about the recording process. "For the first time in my life, I was bummed out when the sessions were over. I've never been around such a positive vibe in the studio. The whole process pushed me and helped me tear down the musical walls I'd built around myself."

The results of the positive experience can be heard on the album's lead single "Fire." It's a laidback, slowburning, alt-country jam with some spirited Southern twang to it. Check out the band's upcoming tour dates here, pre-order the record here and give "Fire" its first spin in the player below. - Exclaim