The performances from our SXSW Day Party continue today — here’s Grass Widow performing the excellent “Lulu’s Lips”!

One of both the strange upsides and unfortunate downsides of South by Southwest is that it seems to take place in a vacuum — for a week straight, the world is reduced to the intersection of 6th Street and Red River in Austin, and it’s easy to pretend there is little happening outside it. Occasionally, though, reality intervenes: This year’s festival happened in the shadow of global catastrophe — the tsunami and subsequent nuclear instability in Japan, outbreaks of violence in Yemen and, finally, the military intervention in Libya, all of which goes a long way to make a music festival in Austin — no matter the scope — seem insignificant.

Continue reading SXSW 2011: Days 3 and 4 Report

By the time they took the stage at Emo’s Thursday afternoon, the members of the New Hampshire band Trap Them had driven 14 hours, most of it in heavy traffic. Needless to say, they were more than a little agitated. “We’re Trap Them, and this is a shitshow,” said vocalist Ryan McKenney. “So let’s get shitty.” And then, with a howl, he led his band through a blistering 40-minute set, full of split-second metal songs that arrived with fangs bared and claws sharpened. The bulk of their set at Emo’s was comprised of material from their upcoming Darker Handcraft, and it found the band leavening their tornado-style grindcore with slower, doomier passages. With his wild, menacing stare and rigid, confrontational posture — he spent much of the set on an amp, glaring at the crowd — McKenney embodies the group’s songs. He took the stage in a T-shirt and a ripped pair of astonishingly small jean shorts, as if daring someone to tell him he looked silly. Unsurprisingly, no one did.

Continue reading SXSW 2011: Day 2 Report

Now well into its second decade, the days during which South By Southwest — and the bands it attracts — could count novelty as a chief draw are long over. And with blogs and social media sites having likewise moved from fad to institution, the odds that anyone would be hearing a band for the first time in Austin is also significantly reduced. And so the thousands of bands looking to make an impression at South By Southwest this year have had to return to more conventional means of attention-getting — none perhaps more crucial than enthusiasm.

Continue reading SXSW 2011: Day 1 Report

September Gurls with Susan Cowsill and the Watson Twins

Hey, long-time lurker, first time contributor to the mighty 17. This was also my first time at SXSW. I’ll just share one performance.

After four days (and nights) of carnivalesque goings on, the last show I caught at SXSW was a pretty forceful and moving return to reality. Alex Chilton, which you surely know by know, is gone, days before his scheduled performance with Big Star. The rest of the band chose to go on, with the help of a cast of friends.

Publicist Heather West began the set, reading a eulogy written by Chilton’s widow Laura. Then the current incarnation of the band, Jon Auer, Ken Stringfellow and Jody Stephens, launched into Back of a Car. The first guest up was Meat Puppet guitarist Curt Kirkwood joining on Don’t Lie to Me and In the Street. Then, reverting to a trio, came I am the Cosmos.

The pattern continued through the rest of the show, alternating between the trio and guests. There were a lot of rumors before the show about who might appear. In the end though the guest list was free from A-listers and scene stealers. Although a fan standing next to me had strong opinions on those worthy (original member Andy Hummel, Sondre Lerche) and those unworthy (Evan Dando, M Ward) of sharing the stage, to my ears everyone delivered for Alex and for the songs.

So much of SXSW feels fleeting. The temptation to limit even a really good show to half the set so you can check someone else out was, for me anyway, constant. Not this one. The truth of it is I am not a Big Star devotee, I don’t know all the songs by heart. But the force of the music was incredible. Heightened by the occasion it may have been, but I’ve never been in the presence of a greater cause for reverence.

I couldn’t figure out why the bartender was so resolute in ignoring me after the show- I’d gone the entire set without a beer and was really ready for one. Then I realized that it was after 2am. Over two hours had gone by and I’d spent nearly every second of it focused on the stage. Once or twice I looked around. Many were singing along. I caught a glance that seemed to say can you believe how fucking great this is?

Set list and featured singers:

1 Back of a Car (Jon Auer)
2 Don’t Lie to Me (Jon Auer)
3 In the Street (Curt Kirkwood)
4 I am the Cosmos (Jon Auer)
5 When My Baby’s Beside Me (Chris Stamey)
6 Big Black Car (M. Ward)
7 Way Out West (Jody Stephens vocal, Andy Hummel guitar)
8 Daisy Glaze (Ken Stringfellow)
9 Jesus Christ (Mike Mills)
10 For You (Jody Stephens)
11 I’m in Love with a Girl (John Doe)
12 The Ballad of El Goodo (Sondre Lerche)
13 Thirteen (Jon Auer)
14 Feel (Ken Stringfellow)
15 Thank You Friends (Chuck Prophet)
16 Nightime (Evan Dando solo)
17 Try Again (Amy Spease)
18 September Gurls (Susan Cowsill, Watson Twins)

As you may have heard, eMusic had a little showcase in Austin where we announced our new Access and Rewards program and also spotlighted our amazing Selects bands, Man/Miracle and Hurray for the Riff Raff. To say that they were great would be an understatement. Man/Miracle’s brand of hyperactive post-punk blew minds. I wasn’t sure they’d be able to pull off the Afropop-inspired interlocking guitar lines live but, man oh man, was I ever wrong. You can see their phenomenal version of “Up” above.

And Alynda, as always, was spellbinding. Working through a combination of songs from both her Selects album Young Blood Blues as well as its predecessor, It Don’t Mean I Don’t Love You, her voice raised gooseflesh and her banjo playing was hypnotic. A video of “Slow Walk” is below.

For more performances from our showcase, be sure to visit our YouTube page.

(Hurray for the Riff Raff, “Slow Walk,” Live at eMusic Lunch in Austin)

My final day at SXSW had me seeing more music than ever, with more nice surprises. And since I’m racing check-out time as I write this, we’re gonna say to hell with through-narrative on this one and just do a blow-by-blow.

The day started with all-you-can-eat pancakes and the Danish post-rock band Slaraffenland at the Hometapes showcase. Unlike many of their Scandinavian counterparts, Slaraffenland roundly eschew melody in favor of blank-verse songs which they augment with steadily swelling brass. They avoid using the extra instrumentation to provide cheap crescendos: instead, the music was stubborn, the guitars tracing punch-drunk curlicues while waiting for the brass to rise like morning mist.

Brooklyn’s Liturgy have no time for dawdling: their self-branded “transcendental black metal” is all race and push, chaotic drumming and thick, yearning guitars. I’ll cop: the first time I saw these guys, I didn’t get it – it felt to me like New York kids trying to glom on to another culture’s music and appropriate the sonics without really getting any of the (evil) spirit. It felt like they were trying to make metal OK for indie rockers. I realized yesterday that’s not what they’re about at all – that they are, in fact, a breed apart from Mayhem and Bathory. Those bands used metal’s force to create chaos and drill a deep hole into hell, but Liturgy seem to be all about rising above. There was something ecstatic about those waves of sound and the formless, pre-verbal vocals that seemed like the band was trying to use this phenomenal force to rise to a higher state. Once it all clicked with me, I was hooked.

From there, things stayed just as loud, but got a little more tuneful. Ty Segall, about whose upcoming record on the fantastic Goner label I’m hearing great things, pulled off the perfect combination of bratty attitude, pop hooks and greaser bomp. I was in love with these songs from the get-go – he’s an enthusiastic performer, and his reckless songs work their way into your heart almost immediately.

The same is true of CoCoComa, one of the few bands I’ve seen in my life whose drummer is the singer. CoCoComa hang out around the intersection where the 60s beat groups started giving way to punk rock: their songs boasted scuzzy, racing riffs, but also had airtight harmonies and enough bomp-bomp-bomp panache to appeal to children of the ’50s as well as their upstart kids.

The day’s one disappointment, unfortunately, came from the band I was most excited to see: Magic Kids. Their single “Hey Boy” is phenomenal, but they’re not quite there yet live. It’s hard to pull of their mix of cheery Spector-baiting in a dive bar, but the harmonies were wobbly and the band seemed, at times, a bit directionless. And while the two songs floating around the universe seem to fall square in the 60s, much of the set skewed (weirdly) ’80s New Romantic – owing mostly to the singer’s pouty delivery. I still believe in these guys, but a little more focus would serve them well.

Warpaint on the other hand, were truly majestic. Playing in a parking lot for maybe 20 people, they brought to mind a more relaxed Pylon, owing mainly, perhaps to the darting guitar lines and laconic female vocals. They spun beautiful webs of guitar, and by their second song I was transfixed: truly hypnotic and beautiful.

There was lots more in between (including a lovely performance at a horrible space by the excellent, folky Peasant and a second Titus Andronicus show, because there was no way I was leaving Austin without seeing them one more time), but I’ll close with the last spectacular thing I saw: Junius. I’ve been obsessed with this band for a while now, we did a breaking artist feature on them for eMusic, Jayson recently reviewed their album for Pitchfork, and last night reaffirmed my dedication to their music. The guitars are metal-loud and slashing, but the vocals are beautiful – a baleful goth ache that’s directly in the lineage of Morrissey and David Gahan and Robert Smith. They drew mostly from their excellent Martyrdom of a Catastrophist, but played one new song that was truly stunning, and indicated that they’re just now beginning to hit their stride (over the course of their performance, three different people asked me, ‘Yo, who is this band??’) It was an absolutely triumphant end to a spectacular weekend, and going on 1 in the morning, exhausted from too much walking, too much standing and a bit too much drinking, yelling out an ecstatic chorus of “Wake up! Wake up!” while thrusting my fist in the air turned out to be exactly what I needed. God bless you, Junius.

Some bands make a virtue of precision and accuracy, but the best bands I saw on my third day in Austin hid their songs deep in haze. This started early with Holly Miranda, whose solo debut, The Magician’s Private Library, culled the best elements of classic 4AD and pared them down into lean, mysterious songs. This formula worked even better live: Miranda’s songs curved and dove, her black cherry voice at times recalling Kristin Hirsh. The songs were measured and slow, and Miranda and her guitarist often locked into repeated, surging guitar patterns as gentle and foamy as water lapping the beach.

Active Child, from Los Angeles, also spins a shroud in which to swaddle their songs, but they do so with synthesizers. There are elements of 80s electro goth in their music (particularly the stunning single “She Was a Vision,” which they inexplicably opted not to play), but Pat Grossi subverts the formula by switching repeatedly from deep blue baritone to a creamy falsetto. Their songs weren’t especially well-suited to their venue – an outdoor backyard bar in early evening – but they fully committed anyway, diving headfirst into the music’s high drama.

The unGoogleable Weekend delivered haze at high volume; playing the first set of the night long Gorilla Vs. Bear party, the group strummed long, expansive chords that trembled and swelled, filling up the room with sound. The group built again and again to thunderous crescendos, and if their music seemed at times to lack character, it compensated with texture.

Better was Pearl Harbor, whose songs seemed at times held together by Scotch tape. Piper Kaplan commits deeply to her band’s music, threading her warm alto up the center of sparkling guitars. They’re dreamy and distant on their recordings, but live they felt insistent – the moments when the twin guitars locked in briefly and then spun out in different directions hinted at the band they could become. They’re not there yet – a few of the songs felt characterless, and there’s a fine line between deliberate haze and haphazard lack of focus – but there were glimpses in their brief set of the band they could be: swirling clouds of sound anchored in warm-honey singing.

Tamryn, in some ways, are like Pearl Harbor all grown up. Unabashedly Goth and stunningly determined, Tamaryn turned in an update on early Siouxsie Sioux. Theirs was the kind of fog that sets in around midnight, during a full moon. Their guitars were knifelike and menacing and lead vocalist Tamaryn Brown stalked the stage and heaved her body into each ominous howl. At times, it almost felt a little too professional – a band perhaps a little too self-aware and self-satisfied at such an early stage in their career – but the music was so majestic it was hard to hold that against them.

Real Estate were content to smear the edges of classic rock, taking typical song forms and smudging them until they became new creations. In the past it felt like they pulled heavily from American Southern Rock of the early 70s, but last night their influences were strictly New Zealand (specifically, the solo records by Clean member David Kilgour). Vocals appeared briefly, but the better portions of the songs were given over to long, tangled guitar leads, each of which glimmered against the backing drone like a pin on black felt. When Real Estate is in the center of a song, it’s easy to wish they’d never end: they peel off guitar leads so effortlessly it seems as if they’re constantly finding new passageways in the music, and every left turn reveals a hundred melodic options that are just as beguiling.

Memory Tapes cleared the haze with thumping, synth-driven dance music which was pleasant if somewhat colorless. From there, I managed to squeeze my way in to see the Pains of Being Pure at Heart play an exuberant set for an over-packed room (I went out to get a drink at one point, and thus eliminated my chances of ever getting back in). We’re all biased, but it’s clear why people love this band: huge hooks delivered with charm and determination. The new songs they played indicate that they have plenty more of those to come.

If day two of my SXSW had a theme, that theme would be ‘Singular Voices.’ Although I didn’t get to see quite as many bands as I wanted to (every SXSW has one day like that, and apparently yesterday was mine), what I did see was stunning, sometimes to the point of speechlessness.

That all started with our eMusic lunch and our two amazing Selects bands, Man/Miracle and Hurray for the Riff Raff. I knew they would be good, but I didn’t quite realize how good. Man/Miracle exploded on stage, nailing perfectly the dazzling, interlocking guitar patterns that fill the songs on their first record, pulling those start/stop hairpin turns and generally leaving everyone in the room speechless. Ditto for the amazing Alynda Lee, whose hushed set served to draw out the aching melodies at the center of her songs. She drew mostly from Young Blood Blues, but did reach back to It Don’t Mean I Don’t Love You for a delicate reading of “Daniella,” giving new life to an old favorite. I couldn’t have been prouder of being even remotely associated with these two towering talents.

That great start was followed by a lot of wandering until I ended up at Nneka‘s evening set at the Parish. Though the set was brief, it showcased Nneka’s vision in full: her voice is even more powerful live, full of determination and heartbreak. She leapfrogged up the octave and delivered notes in short, staccato bursts, more like mission statements that pop songs. There was a ferocity to her delivery that made her songs feel urgent, and her set was a compact ball of fire, blazing and powerful.

Olof Arnalds, about whom I’ve already said tons, was just as evocative and compelling at half the volume. She commands the stage, a riveting performer with a rare gift, her gorgeous voice fluttering upwards repeatedly. In the middle of her set she performed and Arthur Russell cover (I wish I’d written down the name) that had me in tears. She is a God: truly blessed with a kind of supernatural talent, and seeing a room full of people, cross-legged on the floor, watching her, jaws open, was a truly beautiful thing.

And since Sean has already talked a bit about Titus Andronicus, all I can really do is echo: Oh My God. We both saw them a month or so ago play a very rocky set at the Bowery Ballroom, but last night they were a band transformed. Opening with the thundering “A More Perfect Union” from Best Album of the Year contender The Monitor, they turned out a marauding set comprised mostly of new material, including a blistering version of 14-minute album closer “The Battle of Hampton Roads, moving through each of the songs twisting segments with vital, vibrant force. This was a band determined, and by the time they hit the last run-through of album refrain “The enemy is everywhere!” I was hollering at the top of my lungs. This is a band to watch, and a band to see live as soon as you possibly can.

The end goal of South By Southwest is, essentially, to generate significant sound and fury. So it’s fitting that the batch of bands I saw on my first day in Austin seemed dedicated to making as big a racket as possible.

Sometimes, that noise came from unexpected places: on their studio records, the Fresh & Onlys are contained — even a little morose — but at a barnstorming set at Red 7 yesterday afternoon they barreled with all the power and ferocity of a garage band. The songs beefed up, grew beards and biceps and brawled, a welcome shock to the system that cast their grim compositions in a startling new light. It was as if Ian Curtis had gotten hold of the Nuggets box set.

Also plugging in and toughening up were A Sunny Day in Glasgow, who transformed from shrinking violets to full-on tomboy toughs. Their songs were stripped of the keyboard haze in which they’re typically steeped. Instead, they thrust guitars to the fore, and egged the songs on with giddy handclaps and vocal yelps. It was a startling — and welcome — transformation.

Brooklyn’s Suckers like power, too, but their songs take a while to generate it. Adorably shambling and ragtag, they seem to strike out in several directions at once until a melody finally coheres somewhere near the song’s end. There’s an ecstasy underpinning their songs — perhaps owing to the vocalist’s high-pitched, happy yipping, and no matter how chaotic a song began, it was safe to assume it would end somewhere bright and beguiling.

Ironically, Roky Erikson, an artist who built a career on the virtue of volume, struggled through his mid-afternoon set at the Galaxy Hut. Backed by Okkervil River, Erikson and his collaborators fought a bad vocal mix that buried his voice and rendered the tender compositions off their forthcoming album strangely inert. These are the first batch of shows for Erikson and Okkervil, so some rust is to be expected, and it’s likely by the end of the week, at a better venue, they’ll be a completely different band.

Strange Boys, who probably owe much of their career to Roky Ericson, opened the evening’s Rough Trade showcase with impish panache. Their songs are falling apart at the seams and they know it, but something about the vocalist’s bratty delivery and the weird, insistent saxophone lines (that instantly recall the best of late 70s post-punk) make the whole thing work, and work spectacularly. Theirs is kindergarten garage rock, a bunch of snotty toddlers throwing blocks at each other during playtime.

It was during the evening’s docket of metal bands where that force and power became — perhaps ironically — more controlled. Gates of Slumber, whose 2009 album Hymns of Blood & Thunder was severely underrated, turned out a grim, grinding, post-Sabbath stoner stomp. For a trio, the sound they produce is astonishing: big, tarry riffs that splatter and ooze while their vocalist — perfectly strained and desperate — issues dire proclamations over top. High on Fire take the same approach, only faster — it’s the moment when stoner metal discovers cocaine — and their late-night set was a showpiece for their stunning riffery.

But the best set of the day — by miles and miles and miles — was by Dillinger Escape Plan. Not so much a band as a force of nature, they exploded on to the outdoor stage at Emo’s Jr and proceed to unleash 45 minutes of perfectly controlled chaos. The band is a modern miracle: the players never stop moving for a second, and yet, as they’re hurling their bodies across the stage, they’re picking out astonishingly complex guitar patterns — I spent half the show watching fingers fly across fretboards, mouth agape. Their show, unsurprisingly, also boasted the most audience participation: within seconds o their first song, a member of the crowd had climbed the venue’s iron scaffolding and suspended himself upside down by his legs. The band made repeated trips into, and above, the crowd, and every song felt like a hail of bullets: tiny, compact clusters of sound fired with marksman’s precision, specifically designed to inflict maximum damage. It was, quite simply, a masterpiece of chaos, the work of an exceptional band operating at their peak. It was clear from the outset that nothing else could possibly compete.