sxsw: day 2 & 3

20+ shows in 2 days meant countless doormen checking my ID to make sure I was of age. The only one to notice I had a birthday coming up? The doorman at the Scandinavian Death Metal Showcase. More on that later.

Sine I passed out cold Thursday night and woke up late yesterday morning, I didn’t get the time to do a Thursday roundup. What I’ll do in lieu of that is summarize the best things I saw over the last two days.

Yancey already discussed the awesomeness that was Ponytail, but he left before he got to see Gowns. They were fantastic: two long songs stretched out over 30 minutes, grim and howling. Violins creaked and the vocalist wailed and moaned, and the whole thing brought a touch of darkness to an otherwise sunny afternoon.

The biggest problem with South By Southwest is resolving the “Stick or Move” problem. During the evening, most labels hold full showcases in a particular venue. If you stick, you may end up seeing a bunch of things you don’t like just to get to a few things you do. If you move, you may find yourself at the end of a long line (badge or no badge) when you come back. Thursday night at the Secretly Canadian showcase I chose “stick,” and — for once! — was not sorry I did.

SC & its associated labels are having a fairly phenomenal year so far, and Thursday’s showcase only underscored the range and power of the artists they’re working with. White Hinterland, whose debut is a favorite of mine, played a slightly-chaotic early evening set. Casey Dienel changes melodies on the fly, giving the songs a rambling, unmoored feel. It didn’t work for every song, but when it did, it was marvelous.

I’ve never been the biggest Jens Lekman fan, but seeing him live I felt like I understood the appeal a whole lot more. Jens is straight charming, beaming and rocking back and forth on stage. He was touring with a four-piece band, so the songs sounded as rich and sumptuous as they do on record. “The Opposite of Hallelujah” has been growing on me a lot lately, and the version they turned in was sweet and sweeping and spectacular.

Throw Me the Statue was a lot rougher than they are on album, which I liked — their songs were built around shouted choruses and hyperactive stage maneuvers. Equally hyperactive — and equally rewarding — were Parts & Labor. Opening with “Fractured Skies” from their terrific, underrated Mapmaker, the group heaved into a mind-blowing, sound-barrier-breaking set, where every song happened twice as fast and seemed inches away of burning up upon re-entry. P&L songs are all about drums, and Thursday night those drums were loud, loud, loud.

Which was the perfect setup for Black Mountain. This was the band I’d waited all night to see. They opened with a spot-on run through “Stormy High,” it’s galloping beat sounding downright apocalyptic. From there they sunk straight into “Angels” — my favorite song on In the Future by a mile. When they finally hit that snippet of symphonic keyboard near the end, I got goosebumps. It was as if they cherrypicked the songs on the record I loved and played them in order: next came “Wucan” and then “Queens Will Play.” Finally, vocalist Stephen McBean announced: “We’ve only got 10 minutes left, so we’re going to do our longest song.” That song, of course, is “Bright Lights,” fully hypnotic, creeping and full of black magic. I could feel my eyes turning into cartoon pinwheels with each repetition of “Bright lights, bright lights, bright lights, bright lights, bright lights.”

I don’t want to make this post insanely long, so a brief run through Friday:

Atlas Sound were best during the portions of their set given over to straight shoegaze. For most of the last half they kicked up terrific dust clouds of sound, Bradford Cox’s voice clawing through the fog to the surface. Times New Viking, who have received some of the most divisive eMusic user reviews I’ve ever seen, were charming and unhinged. Without the uber lo-fi production, the pop aspects of their songs come through loud and clear. Yeasayer were maybe no so much for me. I like the record a lot, but live it was a little bit too Relaxing With Nature.

I’m going to skip straight up to the Scandinavian Black Metal showcase, wryly titled: “It’s Grim Up North.” I had been desperate to see metal all week, so much so that I bolted over to the showcase after a terrific set from Wye Oak at the Merge party. I was not sorry I did: I arrived during the metal of a set by a band called Goat the Head (though they pronounced their own name simply as “Goat Head”), whose lead singer performed in what appeared to be a wolf’s pelt. I love this music, and I love it even more live where its insane power comes through extra-scary. Goat the Head was great, tight knots of sound shot out like giant BBs over and over and over. Avatar, whose name probably sounded a lot scarier before everyone had Facebook avatars, were just as terrifying. The vocalist had pitch black hair and searing eyes, and he pointed at me like 6 times, and every time I was convinced he was going to jump off the stage and kill me. They were a little thrashier, the sound circling like enormous tornadoes. The last band of the showcase was 1349, a minor legend in death metal circles. This was the first time I’d seen a band perform in corpsepaint, and it was surprisingly unsettling: because of the heat, the musician’s sweat was causing the makeup to drip and run and making their faces that much more terrifying. 1349 was not a band to screw around with: they were straight-up Satan, and the vocals were curdled and strangled and sickening. I’m fairly sure my jaw was hanging open the entire time.