ponytail, hands on heads

For all of my SXSW photos, go here.

Thursday in Austin was a bit of a wash. I saw a fair amount of stuff, but not a lot of it stuck. Best of the day by far was Ponytail, from Baltimore.

Ponytail are a bizarre group: three dudes playing melodic noise stuff – mathy/proggy – while a little sister-type girl does bizarre ritual dancing in the front and “sings” animal sounds and syllables, sorta like a mix of Yoko Ono, Ari Up, Bjork and that woman from Life Without Buildings. My friends who were further back from the stage hated it, but up close it was hard not to just jump in feet first – the energy they had was so genuine and bright I just had to love it.

Also caught: Earl Greyhound, who are very talented musicians but whose music doesn’t do much for me, two songs of High Places, which was great, a whole bunch of bands at the Secretly Canadian showcase, the best of which was Bodies of Water, and – bummer of bummers! – longtime fave Think About Life from Montreal, whose set is just best left not discussed. Boo.

Also met: Hands on Heads! They run Upset the Rhythm, this London music collective that puts out records and puts on shows, and I stopped by their party. Talked to Luke for a long time, which was awesome. He’s actually an eMusic subscriber, and described the whole thing as being quite surreal. Good times. We’re going to meet up again tonight.

Also on the horizon for today: the Pitchfork party, Santogold and at 5pm EST I will be appearing live on DirectTV (channel 101) to talk about eMusic an Dizzee Rascal. I’m nervous as hell about this, so tune in if you can.