Brandon Aguilar

Austin’s musician landscape itself plays out like a self-actualizing folk song. Creative gadabouts cyclically search for meaning and new beginnings (fulfilling projects and/or a fresh band), but along the way, end up losing themselves in love or better yet (for material sake); longing. And while Brandon Aguilar and Sarah Oermann have traversed the town with their art over the years, they may have finally found a home in their rootsy outfit, Tahoma.
Their debut EP, Honest Mark, doesn’t necessarily have a pinpointed theme, it does posses lyrically dense, sonically surveying, graceful expressions and reverberates with high-production value.
In “Dark as Coal”, Aguilar’s voice has an almost bemoaning timbre when singing the first few notes, yet once he starts exploring scales and octaves, his instrument turns a vibrant-hue. When Oermann’s haunting vocals converges with Aguilar’s, it makes for a rich auditory texture.

On the lush-toned “White Fog Beaches”, waves of harmonies awe-strike like a quotable line from an art-house film,and ebbs with picturesque prose flowing over you. The outro is marked with an memorable submarine-synthy sonar signal.
Hat-in-hand optimism and the wordless melodies of “Life I Couldn’t Lead” will incite toe-tapping and introspection-inspired grinning.
The most stirring number on the EP is its title track, “Honest Mark”. The slide guitar riffs gives a much needed dire quality to the piece and to the record as a whole. While “Polished Stone” has a homogenized feel due to the verses sounding noticeably similar to the rest of the record, it redeems itself with some nice slow-burning harmonica phrases and decibel dynamics towards the backend.

“On That Ride” is the hookiest cut of the bunch. The bombastic ode to the travels and tribulations of love displays the in-genre songwriting range and high ceiling-potential Tahoma posses.
Be sure to catch Tahoma on Saturday the 13th at the Whip In, the 27th for the Pecan Street Festival, and on Tuesday the 30th at the Empire Control Room. Visit tahomaband.com to get a physical copy of Honest Mark.

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Donny Rodriguez is an Austin-based writer by way of Chicago. Like any failed four-chord singer-songwriter in college, he’s channeled his passion for music into reviews. His resume ranges from Chicago Bulls beat writer, to Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader contributor, to multi-time comedic performer on WGN TV. Follow this jack of all creative trades, jester of some on twitter. - TourWorthy.com (Donny Rodriguez)