About
Alice Austin's psychedelic retro rock has taken her from her native Vermont to her adoptive Los Angeles--and nearly every place in between. In addition to writing, recording, and performing her unique songs as a solo act, Austin fronts Black Sabbitch and plays and sings in the acoustic vocal trio, Home Again Home Again. Both in heavy rock and retro pop, this classic sounding female vocalist showcases her versatility both live and in the studio.
Her latest album, "Break The Spell”, (a collaboration with producer and musician David Drouin) is very much a reflection of what has always been Austin’s forte: whimsically shedding her genre identity for a fresh new sound.
On the heels of her 2022 full length soft rock album, "Goodnight Euphoria", Austin has experimented her way into a retro synth pop moment in her most recent album released in July of 2023. She has effortlessly made a hairpin turn from heady psychedelic indie rock to a cotton candy-sweet pop reminiscent of a first date at the county fair in 1985.
All ten tracks from Break the Spell could be the missing songs from the Top Gun soundtrack. While the production on the album brings you right into a familiar world of 80s nostalgia, the songs evoke a present moment authenticity that are deeply personal to Alice's outlook on relationships and closing the gap between the loneliness of coming of age and the loss of innocence in adulthood.
Material she recorded and co-wrote with previous groups such as Boston incarnation The Lavas (2006-2009) and Vermont’s earliest all-female 90s powerhouse Zola Turn (Brick Red Records, 2000-2002) draws on a vast corpus including retro garage icons such as Shocking Blue and Jefferson Airplane, a peppering of 90s indie rock artist PJ Harvey and the twangy delights of vintage country queen Wanda Jackson.
And so too her solo work: Austin’s self-produced and self-engineered first full length album, “To A Star in the Yard”, followed by “Left One in the Rain” (an EP produced by Patrick Avalon), “Cowboy Summer”, “Dirt and Helicopters” (both produced by Robb Torres), and her two most recent singles, “Cirrus” and “Lookout Mountain” (self-produced) all move from country to indie to rock and back again.
Mythical Heartland
2022’s full-length album, "Goodnight Euphoria", yet another blend of multiple ingredients, is no less worthy of praise than any of her previous work. It's an experimental take on classic soft rock, adding a darker twist. And, somehow, as Austin purrs through the lyrics, she also expertly infuses this grounding of some mythical heartland into an ethereal, surfy sound. Austin herself describes the first single released, The Ward, as “a product of the beach at night, drawing inspiration from “the starry rhythm of the tides.” It is also an Austin that many of her newest fans might not even recognize.
A Complex Creative Agenda
These fans know her as the lead singer of Black Sabbitch - a band with exactly one musical influence but a complex creative agenda: to embody the authenticity of formative 1970s metal, making blatant it’s latent feminine swagger by crowning themselves “the all female Black Sabbath”. Black Sabbitch is, according to The New Times, "redefining the cover band."While Black Sabbitch brings Alice Austin all over North America and Europe to express the most extroverted and raucous aspects of her personality, her solo career continues to satisfy an intimate artistic expression that has only deepened through the polarity of her experiences. In short, her new album, “Goodnight Euphoria”, is classic Austin, that is to say a piece which flies expertly across genres to create a tantalizing listen.
