Here’s a quick-hit recap of my last two days in Austin, including a case for why you need to see Ponytail right now. Oh, and again, lots of pictures here.

On my final day at SXSW: I meet Mingering Mike, hear a great band in a bike shop parking lot and finally see High Places.

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.

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.

For lots of my SXSW photos, go here.
Forget bias, I’m gonna say it outright: the eMusic showcase last night at Maggie Mae’s was ridiculously amazing. Seriously. The highlights: Delorean (one of the best sets I have ever seen), Day for Night and Frightened Rabbit. I have never been so proud to be an eMu’r.

Day One South by Southwest was full of the familiar. I ended up seeing bands I’d either loved for years or seen before – owing both to strange scheduling or odd geography. By day’s end I was hoarse, slightly sunburned, and I couldn’t feel anything from my ankles down.
Needless to say, I’m ready to do [...]

Hey everyone. So I will be hopping on a plane to Austin for SXSW here shortly, but I wanted to point out that the second installment of eMusic Selects is LIVE. The two picks are Susu, a mathy Brooklyn band, and Hands on Heads, this exuberant London art-punk band. We like the two records quite [...]

With SXSW fast approaching, Yancey and I needed help navigating the festival’s hectic schedule. There was only one place to turn: Amishi. Over the course of a spirited 15-minute (or so) conversation, Amishi cuts a straight path through this year’s overcrowded Austin lineup. Click through for the carnage.

01 Stephen Malkmus‘ performance was really, really good. As has been well-documented (check my 20 Best Pavement Songs Ever list), I am a rabid Pavement fan, and Malk’s (mostly) solo set was tremendous. It was sloppy and rough and all over the place, aka perfection considering the source. Even if ex-Pavement drummer Bob Nastanovich hadn’t [...]

Photo by Johnny Blood
Here are the nine best albums to hit eMusic this week, with an embedded YouTube clip for almost all of them. Have at it.

 
Atlanta’s The Black Lips are getting quite a bit of much-deserved attention. And it’s not just the 14 shows they played in 3 days that’s prompted the New York Times to anoint them “the hardest-working band at SXSW,” it’s their seemingly endless font of energy. And frankly, that moniker is a little misleading, since “hardest-working” [...]

There’s a lot to love about SXSW, and way too much to experience. This was my second time heading down, and I enjoyed the vast majority of it. Saw good shows, etc., etc. I wanted to wrap up my posting about South By with a collection of some photos that I took that, for me [...]

The last time Les Savy Fav played SXSW was almost 10 years ago, in 1998, right before the Black Eyed Peas (pre-Fergie, of course)…strange bedfellows indeed. So, it’s no surprise that last Wednesday night’s showcase brought out fans old and new alike, creating a line 50 deep a full two hours before the band’s scheduled [...]

if you go to bed every day at 3:30 am, wake up at 9, subsist on beer and barbecue, stand in the sun, yell over bands, walk for more than ten hours straight and live by the dictum “just one more show,” eventually your body is going to get very, very angry with you.
trust me.

Saturday was far and away the best day for me this SXSW. The weather was perfect, the music was good and I was finally ready to be impressed and surprised by someone: it’s amazing how even the slightest foul mood can spoil your perceptions, making the great seem mediocre. Of course, the reverse is true [...]

Four days of walking for fifteen hours a day takes a toll, and right now I’m feeling fairly fried. But I couldn’t go to bed without saying something about the highlight of my week: meeting Ghostface.

On Saturday, the fourth and last day of SXSW, I saw Ghostface Killah, Rakim, a Japanese noise band called Green Milk from the Planet Orange, Portland post-hardcore bros 31 Knots, Tall Firs, Summer Hymns, the Affair, Kings of Leon, Spoon and the reunited Stooges. One of these shows was the best thing I saw all [...]

Everyone seems to be having one less-than-successful day at SXSW, so I guess yesterday was mine. It seemed like I spent most of the day waiting for bands to set up, or rushing in as bands were finishing their final song. There were a few bright spots, but it mostly felt like a misadventure.

After struggling to crawl out of bed this morning, I headed back to Emo’s for the big Pitchfork shindig featuring a number of P’fork (and eMusic) favorites. I arrived in time to see Marnie Stern, who I was pumped about if for no other reason than I’d get to see Hella’s Zach Hill drum — [...]

(This Moment in Black History)
Lesson #1 for bands playing SXSW: say your name as much as possible. It’s a tough thing to learn as there’s certainly ego involved in having to re-introduce yourself repeatedly (“you should know me already!”), but people drift in and out of venues so frequently it is very common to catch [...]