Austin’s musical identity often feels like a tug-of-war between its cosmic past and a polished future, but The Discount Pills seem perfectly content wandering the desert space in between. Their latest four-track EP, ‘Land of the Lost’, is a 16-minute excursion into what the husband-and-wife duo of James Kasprzyk and Julie Slattery call "Cowboy Lounge Dream Pop." It is a record that feels less like a studio product and more like a collection of stories told on a porch during the height of a sweltering Texas afternoon.
Recorded in Manor, Texas, with engineer Bryan Nelson, the EP grew from a casual summer session into a cohesive project. As Slattery notes, Nelson "suggested that we'd want to do more than one song and he was right." This organic growth is audible in the arrangements. The opening track, ‘Honey You Can Go’, sets the stage with a rockabilly-tinged drawl. It is a slow-burning introduction where Boozer Justice’s clawhammer banjo provides "tiny little pings of sweetness" against Jenny de Wulf’s plaintive violin. While the song is rooted in folk, the production keeps it atmospheric rather than strictly traditional.
The band isn’t afraid to lean into the melancholy. ‘Morning Light’, a remake of an earlier piece, provides a melodic anchor for the EP, while ‘Ode to a Hat’ introduces a rustic charm through AJ Montrose’s warm harmonica and Jon Sanchez’s bar-room piano. These "simple nuggets," as the band describes them, benefit from the space Nelson’s engineering affords them. It’s folk-rock with a psychedelic hangover, maintaining a lonesome air that never feels too heavy.
The title track, ‘Land of the Lost’, is where the "Cowboy Lounge" tag truly makes sense. It carries a high, lonesome sound—bolstered again by Sanchez’s guitar work—that captures a specific sense of displacement. The vocals are sun-kissed and distant, drifting over George Duron’s steady, driving percussion. If there is a critique to be made, it is that the EP ends just as the listener fully acclimates to its hazy temperature. However, as a snapshot of South Austin’s enduring spirit, it is a balanced, evocative piece of work.
With the new EP, The Discount Pills have managed to bottle the stillness of the desert and the grit of the city in one go. Catch their latest updates and desert-tinted dispatches by tracking their journey across Instagram, Facebook, and Bandcamp.
