Photo: Dave Creaney
DREAM POP MELODIES...
...studied in “the dream of the ‘90s…”
Ethereal rock. Hints of shoegaze in the guitar work. Earworm rhythms. Austin, TX-based indie pop band March and Beauty will sound familiar to well-traveled listeners, though you’ll never be able to quite put your finger on why their sounds warm the center of your chest with nostalgia for unrequited loves and that time before innocence lost.
Husband and wife duo Tim and Terri Dittmar have created music in multiple bands which found a comfortable home and airplay on college radio during the previous 2 decades. But only after combining forces with multi-instrumentalists Paul Stautinger and Justin Bocanegra did March and Beauty root up through the soil to become something greater than the garden-variety indie rock super group. March and Beauty’s members are close friends, first and foremost. If their melodic indie pop sounds familiar, it’s likely because you’ve seen March and Beauty's various members creating the feels and sounds of some of Austin’s most beloved bands from the 1990s and 2000s: bo bud greene, Desafinado, Sweet Pea, annabella, Murdocks, and countless others.
Despite the member’s indie rock credentials within Austin’s world-renown music scene, March and Beauty’s secret weapon is vocalist, Terri Dittmar. Ever wonder what happened to that one high school cheerleader with the girl-next-door charm and charisma? The one that was friends with the kids in the marching band, the goth kids dressed in all black, and everyone in between? In this case, she took her multi-instrument playing skills (on flute, piano/Fender Rhodes, and bass guitar), overcame a little shyness about singing heartfelt lyrics in front of an audience, and grew into the front person that sings like a bird with a seemingly preternatural note-perfect voice, while also playing bass guitar…all the while painting poetic lyrical pictures about feelings and emotions that you thought you’d never quite find the right words to describe.
A band bio might be required, but March and Beauty’s music speaks for itself. File under closed eyes, rainy day-clouds-parting-into-sunshine indie pop for the cool kids and the masses…