The trip was simultaneously the shortest and longest imagineable, but became all worth while when I pulled into the parking lot and peered over the large concrete wall which separated the awestruck spectators from the giddy surfers who threw on wetsuits like young children rush into whatever clothes they can find on their bedroom floor on Christmas morning. Unfortunately, the waves were six to eight feet tall which resulted in me packing a few essentials and heading down 89 for three hours to Hampton, NH. For some reason though, I decided to increase my self-inflicted misery and checked the surf report for my local surf area in Hampton, NH. I woke up Thursday morning with a groggy head and started to head right to the shower. Last Thursday I ventured out and by stomping down hard on life, I made my footprint. These lives are generic and boring in every aspect of the word.
With Alter Alert, Austin Sirch has struck a most elusive balance: refined entropy.One can make a complete run through life without making a difference, leaving a footprint or even drawing outside the lines. But that disorganized anxiety arguably serves as his greatest asset on record. In concert, Sirch displays a nervous, boyish charm that almost threatens to derail his performances. It’s a perfect complement to his fractured, wistful lyricism.
His airy tenor lilts weightlessly over a surprisingly complex bed of guitars and occasional atmospheric bowed strings. Sirch offers one deceptively fragile gem after another from start to finish on this disc. It’s a credit both to the producer’s painstaking precision and the musician’s crystalline but subtly substantial compositions. Power’s influence is apparent throughout, but never, ahem, overpowers Sirch. The guy has simply never recorded a bad song, which is remarkable when you consider how far he tends to paint outside the musical lines. The album was recorded and produced by Burlington indie impresario Ryan Power, who knows a thing or two about striking a balance between experimental melioration and deft musical prowess. With Alter Alert, Sirch delivers on the enormous promise exhibited by his curiously delightful first album the record retains a youthful, wide-eyed innocence, but is buoyed by purposeful musicianship and songwriting. In the two-and-a-half years since, it appears the tunesmith has honed his considerable-but-scattered anti-folk talents. Sirch’s sophomore outing picks up where his 2005 self-titled debut left off. Second, and most importantly, when the album in question is Alter Alert from Burlington songwriter Austin Sirch, “rules,” farcical or otherwise, should simply be checked at the door. First of all, though there was some truth behind it, the whole “rules” bit was a farce - and a rather obvious one at that. I received a few emails about that one in particular, most pointing out the seeming hypocrisy of stating a ground rule and proceeding to break it by writing about the offending artist’s album. The first: Don’t drop off a CD on a Monday morning hoping to get it reviewed in that Wednesday’s paper. Though my “rules” pertained specifically to Seven Days, they are fairly universally accepted guidelines in the wacky world of music journalism. In a recent “Soundbites” column, I outlined a few basic dos and don’ts for trying to get your band some press.