After nothing has been heard a while from Texas? Weird Weeds, here?s a new album of rather inventive quirky indie-pop music in the real American college town tradition. For some reason I always have the feeling as if the United States are the only country where there?s a really great variety of lo-fi indie bands. The UK has a lot of great bands, but most of them are in the professional league. Germany for example has a lot of good bands and also has tons of non-professional bands in university towns, but most of them sound crap. Quite the opposite, the US have a lot of great local scenes in university towns. Chapel Hill, Omaha, Ann Arbor (for noise) or Providencen are just a few examples. One of the best scenes lies in Austin, TX, though, and that?s where the Weird Weeds come from.

The three piece consisting of Sandy Ewen, Nick Hennies and Aaron Russell has already released two prior albums and some EPs and singles. For their latest they moved to Autobus records, a rather unknown label so far. "I Miss This" is quite in the tradition of their last album on the Sounds Are Active label. It consists of 14 mostly short tunes, some sung by Ewen and some sung by the boys. None of the songs on the CD really sticks to mind or is in any way catchy. Nonetheless, the entire album is just pleasant to listen to from the first track to the last. Sometimes the Weeds rock out, but most of the album is rather slow and soft.

Why the Weird Weeds are often filed under "Free Folk" is a mystery to me. What they play is classic rather unusual indie pop roughly in the tradition of bands such as Pavement or Yo La Tengo even though they sound completely different than the two examples just randomly named. Weird Weeds songs never have a classic song structure, but are played in a real free-form manner which never repeals the listener though. One part of a song seemingly makes the transition to the next without the listener noticing instantly. Only after a few moments, you think "Didn?t they play something entirely different just 30 seconds ago??. All that?s left to say is that the latest Weird Weeds album can definitely cope with its predecessors and is well worth a listen. 7/10 -- Stephan Bauer (13 August, 2008)