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Photographer(s): Chris Santiago (1,3,4), Chris Tourre (2)

Kris Racer plays sweet acoustic pop, the type of heartfelt music embraced by sensitive boys with shaky voices around the world. The obvious musical touchstone here would be Dashboard Confessional, but Racer mostly avoids that group's saccharine mewling. - The Onion AV Club Kris Racer's album, Has a Banner Year has quietly garnered a noticeable amount of praise recently, and we're pleased that he's stopping by this evening to play some songs for us. Sweet, shaky vocals and delicate acoustics define Racer's release, which will appeal to fans of early Built to Spill, Halo Benders, and, incidentally, dozens of other bands that play this type of purposefully off-kilter indie pop. Racer is perfect mixtape material for beginning an imperfect courtship: tender lyrics, sensitive (but mostly out of tune) harmonies, casual screw-ups and an alluring sort of underdog vibe leave their stamp boldly throughout all the songs. - Austinist.com Kris Racer plays a tasteful singer-songwriter stew of modern life filtered through the rubbish of office work and discontent. On this sleight album of six songs, we find a protagonist who is numbed and calloused from the unfulfilled romances and the soul-sucking drudgery of his job. These lyrics are sung in an unadorned straightforward manner, giving the words themselves more authenticity than if the singer's voice had been prettied up and triple-tracked and made to seem like a stadium filling crooner. Racer is more confessional and intimate than that. On one song, Racer lays out his albatross: "...I will sing about burdens: a twenty-something who has made not one difference cause he is biased and presuming," (Lesser Ways Of An Office)....Overall, Kris Racer shows a rich uniqueness with lyrical content and an interesting take on the modern singer-songwriter genre. - Culture Bunker Psych-pop noodles its way inside to this indie pop cleverly written composition. Tagged and dotted with songs about career life and ho-hum relationships, “...Has a Banner Year” is an ambitious self-look deep inside that is both inviting and encouraging. - Smother.net The songs (on Has a Banner Year) have a seriously Posies/Elliott Smith-ish pop bent, all jangly and nicely polished and slathered with beautiful harmonies, and Racer's voice meanders gently in and out of the guitar lines, mostly steady and calm but occasionally working up to a barely-concealed bit of bitter anger. Tracks like "Sharper Than Knives," with the delicate guitars and sweeping vocals, the minimalist, Sebadoh-ish "This Is Your Emergency," and "Lesser Ways of an Office," with it's somewhat speedier, countryish tone, amble into the room with a soft smile and a shrug and just do their thing, and for the most part, they do it right. - Space City Rock It's always a good bet that a stage name such as Kris Racer substitutes for a Scrabbletastic surname that would clutter a marquee. In this case, the Kris in question also answers to Narunatvanich. But it's fitting that someone with songs this immediately accessible would want to keep things simple. Like Chris Carabba, this former Tagline frontman made the move from punkier sounds to acoustic weepers, finding paradise by the Dashboard lite. As an added bonus, the shaggy-haired, bespectacled beanpole Racer sports neither a fauxhawk nor tattoos, allowing him to maintain his Napoleon Dynamite-style underdog appeal. AM - Portland Mercury Armed with just his acoustic guitar and voice, Kris Racer (aka Kris Narunatvanich) pushes the limits of coffeehouse pop on Time Spent On Airplanes (Adobo). "Hudson River Parkway" is a glowing slice of reminiscence with crisp finger-picking layered with chordal strumming. "Ual 7278" has a dusky, melancholy edge. The occasional off-key vocal notes add an endearing touch of authenticity and accent the fine performance. - Illinois Entertainer It’s amazing, the creativity that comes from thick-aired, dimly lit airport terminals, followed by the stale restlessness one gets while sitting in an airplane. Kris Racer, with his debut album Time Spent On Airplanes, is proof that moments spent between destinations and living out of a suitcase is not a total waste of time, but a way of getting somewhere--both literally and figuratively--in terms of his music career. With songs like “Hudson River Parkway” and “Coffee & Amphetamines,” reflections of thoughts like “I’ve never shown mental stability, after all these years of falling down, I am proud I have gotten this far” pour out and create an uninhibited self-disclosure. Though lyrics such as these may sound like he hails from a city like Los Angeles or New York, where jaded musicians seem to be made, he is actually a Midwestern native who was formerly in a Cleveland punk/pop band called Tagline. His music now is a bit different: this album is coffeehouse cool....maybe it’s his glasses and hip-geek look that is reminiscent of Weezer during their first album. This album is heavy in lyrics, light on production, and has just the right balance to be a road trip soundtrack. - Chopblock