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Austin-based Monahans performs "We Tremble" LIVE in the Refueled magazine creative lab/studio, Dallas, Texas.

The journey to this point spans ten years, two bands, and five prior releases. You don't need to know that to enjoy Dim the Aurora by Austin's Monahans, but it certainly helps to appreciate its achievement. As the follow up to their promising debut Low Pining, Dim the Aurora represents a dynamic landmark for the band's slow burning evolution.

The collaboration of Greg Vanderpool and bandmate Roberto Sánchez began in 1999 as the driving force behind Milton Mapes (named for Vanderpool's grandfather). Nebraska-era Springsteen roots eventually gave way to Crazy-Horse grandeur with the addition of Britton Beisenherz and Jim Fredley. In 2006, after releasing three full-length albums and performing countless shows (with the likes of Willie Nelson, Cowboy Junkies and Magnolia Electric Co.), Milton Mapes regrouped and changed their songwriting process to a more collaborative effort, allowing the different talents of all of its members to emerge. Wordless soundtracks loaded with Sanchez' heavy rhythmic intensity and Fredley's signature guitar stylings soon took on the feel of early U2, R.E.M., and Califone, peeling back the alt-country tag to reveal a more diverse set of influences. They realized that what they were doing warranted a new beginning, and Monahans was born.

Monahans' first album, Low Pining (Undertow, 2007) straddles the line between rural West Texas detachment and thundering high-seas unrest, drenched in Cold-War Era urgency and highlighted by the sweeping, glossy pop anthem "Undiscovered". Clearly the standout track, "Undiscovered" epitomized the band's new vision and provided a general blueprint for their second album, Dim The Aurora.

In late 2007, with Beisenherz acting as the band's engineer, Monahans once again threw their collective weight at new melodic sketches and Vanderpool's lyrical ideas. With the album nearing completion and the promise of their rough mixes glowing from the speakers, Monahans were signed to Misra Records.

Dim The Aurora opens with the potently hopeful "It's Enough To Leave You..." which, along with the pulsating title track and the heavy handed "Slow Burn", showcases Monahans engaged in the moment, embracing the cause. In order to give these anthemic pop vistas the space they need, the band has once again balanced the album with a number of instrumental soundtracks (including the twenty-plus-minute exploration "Terrene") where human ambition and Nature collide somewhere in the murky spiritual realm.

The achievement of Dim the Aurora is instantly audible. The band isn't a pop machine or a hit factory. In this era of 15-minute buzz bands, it's inspiring to hear a career rock band take a quantum leap forward through reexamining who they are and what they want out of the music they play. Their scope has transformed them, for these eleven songs, into the lords of everything. This isn't one band making two choices in terms of its sound-- It's one band making one choice 11 different ways in terms of its vision.

- Monahans (not "The Monahans) is named after an area of white sandhills in West Texas