"The Austin-based indie-pop band lived a whole life between 2005 and 2010. Singer, songwriter, and guitarist Ramesh Srivastava had gone off to college in Scotland and brought back UK influences that were still trendy in the wake of Belle & Sebastian and Camera Obscura: the Smiths, Orange Juice, the C86 tape, Sarah Records."
"The peak-twee EPs are redolent of their moment in micro-history but also transcend it, standing up as classics of their kind. Their 2007 self-titled debut album has a couple of great songs where they dare to be Coldplay, highlighting Srivastava's modestly ravishing singing, but overall, it sounds tentative and uncertain."
"The world that greets their second record, Dreamers in Exile, can be even crueler, with the human messiness of the 2000s mp3 blogs now replaced by data-driven, automated gatekeeping."
The 2000s featured rapid music trends driven by blogs and accessible platforms like Blogger, creating fleeting success for bands. Voxtrot exemplified this cycle: the Austin indie-pop band gained blog popularity through twee-influenced self-released EPs that captured their era while maintaining lasting quality. After signing to a Beggars Group subsidiary, their 2007 self-titled debut album disappointed with tentative production despite showcasing Srivastava's strong vocals. The band disbanded in 2010 following underperformance. Their return with Dreamers in Exile occurs in a transformed landscape dominated by data-driven algorithms rather than organic blog discovery.
Read at Pitchfork
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