economy: texas new wave - john
Austin’s Economy describes themselves as “Texas New Wave” which is amazingly clever to me. Texas music scenes have taken a great deal of pride in their various flash-in-the-pan (and sometimes not) subcultures over the years. Texas hardcore, Screwston Rap, Texas Singer/Songwriter- all are recognized genres. The self-proclamation and embracing of “Texas New Wave” has very interesting connotations.
This implies that Economy is:
1aware of the often unnecessarily seriousness of musical classifications
2mocking the description itself because - when operating solely on clichés- the red state of Texas does not take kindly to Flock of Seagulls haircuts and overall postmodern pastiche.
There was a time when “new wave” was an interchangeable description for the term: “punk.” Record executives and radio programmers were afraid of the word “punk” because they had just come from a bad experience with the word “disco.” They were weary to jump so quickly onto a bandwagon of musical limitations so the term "new wave" was coined to classify bizarre new bands like Talking Heads, Devo and Television among others who didn’t fit nicely into the genre “rock.” This same mentality applies nicely to Economy- who evoke everything from Jimmy Tamborello’s (Postal Service) beats and glitches to Yoni Wolf’s (why?) spacing of vocal delivery. All of the electronic songs have punk aspects to them: sometimes in the vocals sometimes in the four-chord simplicity. The two-man band is politically minded and if you are not careful their music will stay in your head for days. Beware.
Here are some Mp3s from their 100% self made self released album “the Recovery”
The Fuel for Fight and Life - 
When at Last the Calm -
The Economy boys can be heard at economymusick.com and myspace.com/economy