Everybody’s favorite Berk is doing us the kind favor of bringing a shiny fresh and clean Austin band through town on their first tour.  The Great Nostalgic just dropped their first album, entitled The Great Nostalgic, but they sound like they’ve been at it awhile.  The quintet, including kids from Nashville, Chesapeake and Virginia Beach, has played in plenty bands before, but it seems like they’ve found a rare synthesis here.

Comparisons to early, folk-damaged Bowie and Arcade Fire are well-earned, not because anything on the album is slavish or imitative, but they have an impressive ability to perfectly accent slow, intimate numbers with creative instrumentation and then turn on a dime into big, dark, cavernous anthems.  They’ve also got plenty of that Bowiesque swagger that enlivened the recent work of David Vandervelde.

The Great Nostalgic will be at the Boot on Tuesday at 9pm.  For five bucks, its a great chance to see a band likely to get a lot bigger in the next few years at one of the best small venues in town.  Check them out before they hit that twilight zone of too big for bars but not big enough for the NorVa.  Actually, City of Norfolk, they might be a fine act for next year’s Discovery series.