Austin, Texas has turned out some heavy hitters over the years, but The Lovely Sparrows? Man, they’ve been flying under the radar for way too long. Two decades deep, and with their new single “Edge of the Collapse” — the opening salvo from the upcoming album I Still Picture You Running — they just proved that “avant-folk” can absolutely SCREAM when it wants to.
Let’s make one thing clear: this isn’t your Sunday morning, sipping-tea-with-your-cat kind of folk rock. This is fuzz-pedal-on-11, amp-cranking, late-night-staring-at-the-wall-with-a-whiskey kind of rock. Shawn Jones — the mastermind behind this whole operation — has spent twenty years building something that sounds delicate on the surface, but underneath? It’s pure tension.
“Edge of the Collapse” hits you like a slow-motion car crash. You feel it coming. You can’t look away. The rhythm section locks in like a heartbeat that’s about to flatline. Somebody in the studio clearly understood that stillness can be louder than noise. And when that final image lands — “the captain has lost the wheel” — you don’t simply hear it. You feel the goddamn ship drift.
Now, here’s where it gets interesting for the rock nerds: Robert Ellis. Yeah, that Robert Ellis. The guy spent years in The Lovely Sparrows’ lineup, slinging guitars and soaking up whatever weird, beautiful chemistry Jones was cooking up. And Jones produced Ellis’s debut album The Great Rearranger. These guys are musical lifers. You can hear that history in every bar of this track. It’s a handshake between two dudes who’ve been in the trenches together.
Lyrically, Jones ain’t yelling at you. He doesn’t need to. The dude writes like a novelist who traded his typewriter for a Telecaster. Ghosts, drifters, inside jokes, secret codes — his world is full of liminal weirdness. And on “Edge of the Collapse,” he’s watching America slip its moorings, not with a protest sign, but with a cold, hard stare. That’s more punk rock than any three-chord tantrum, if you ask me.
“Edge of the Collapse” is the sound of a band that refuses to ossify. Twenty years in, The Lovely Sparrows aren’t resting. They’re revving up.
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