There has always been something eerily precise yet oddly unbound in the music of The Lovely Sparrows. The Austin band’s newest release, I Still Picture You Running, is laced with nostalgia but propelled by motion and forward momentum.

Once grounded in an avant-folk sound, the band now layers ambient loops and ’60s minimalist touches, giving these longtime friends room to stretch and explore. Cerebral yet instinctive, this is music as mulch, migration, and memory.

Jones’s lyrics vividly animate spectral rodeo clowns, accidental tourists, and the vanished frontier. Their third LP moves through liminal spaces and objects out of time, building songs from secret codes and inside jokes. Richly orchestrated sound collages drift into ’70s prog odysseys, creating a loose album that breathes between movements. In the quiet after it ends, I Still Picture You Running seems to keep moving—music chasing its own echo across the wide field of memory, haunted and humane.

art by Derek Van Gieson