Artists You Should Know: Houston in the Blind

Persevering past the daunting expanse of nine long years between their debut and eventual disintegration, Houston in the Blind is rallying toward a sophomore renewal on their forthcoming new album Hide The Glow. Arriving this summer, the three incandescent singles shared by the band’s singer/songwriter Charlie Garrett delve into his attempts to navigate the crumbling aftermath of a dream deferred.

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Houston in the Blind first emerged a decade ago in Atlanta with Limbs, a nine-track debut that seemed to guarantee the band had a future as a fledgling indie-rock favorite. The album is replete with resounding acoustic instrumentals and a sonorous, otherworldly aura that adds another layer of dreamy poignancy to Garrett’s windingly lovelorn lyricism. Tracks like the transcendentally glassy swirlings of “On Your Side” and hauntingly exigent “All My Love” underscore the band’s talent for conjuring enchanting and emotionally mercurial soundscapes.

The momentous success of the record and touring led Garrett to believe the band could survive his relocation to Los Angeles. “I felt like I would be able to have this life where I could fly back and forth from coast to coast to play shows and record with my band,” he explained. “But that’s not what happened.” Instead, Houston in the Blind fizzled out as life, depression, and doubt became obstacles too overwhelming to summit.

Fast forward nine years and Garrett has managed to resuscitate the project in a burst of hopeful defiance and lucid reflection. The psych-rock distortions that warble throughout “Drifting” exude a yearning but sobering acceptance of a past vision of life no longer possible. Glimmering with stretches of shoegaze and ebbing to rumbling sonics, it also reveals the grandiose transformations Houston in the Blind’s sound has undergone.

“This song is a mirror into the constant change and chaos that has been my life for the past decade,” Garrett says of the song. “Being in the moment and staying present is always the goal, but that can be difficult when everything is so fluid. I’ve realized that even the toughest of times had some really beautiful moments, and that’s what I tried to focus on.”

“On a Wire” deals more directly and painfully with the frightening sense that comes with feeling yourself becoming unmoored from the world around you. Its driving and folk-tracing melody grasps earnestly at stability and connection that is agonizingly just out of reach. Houston in the Blind’s most recent offering from Hide The Glow was divulged just this month in the form of “Thoughts Of You” — its surging contemplations of moments wasted and lost electrified into something deeply rousing via its riff-glowing crescendo.

Garrett reminisced on the track via Instagram: “I think it’s one of the best songs I’ve ever written. It’s definitely my favorite track on the album. The meaning behind it has become a bit hard for me to pin down. When it was conceived it meant something totally different to me than it does now, which is strange. Then again, songs hit different at various times in life.”

When Hide The Glow is finally shared for all the world to hear we expect it to enjoy the same triumphs as the band’s debut LP. Renewed and rejuvenated by the journey to this precipice, Garrett’s songs provide a resonant faith in enduring both life’s calamities and serendipities. Or as he puts it: “This album is the sobering moment of finally feeling awake and somewhat better. It’s a relief. It’s a bit of hope.”