SXSW - The Wednesday Report

12pm, Sean: Once again, as the only Austin member of The A.V. Club, I have a distinct advantage over my far-flung friends—the heart of the beast is only a couple of blocks from my house, so I get first stab. One note before I get started: Last year there was a lot of bitching and conspiracy theorizing about the SXSW committee’s “crackdown” on day parties. While I haven’t seen a noticeable slackening in the number of free, non-showcase things taking place, there is one new rule that I swear I’ve never seen before: The card you sign when registering for your badge declares that putting any other laminates on your badge lanyard will invalidate it. Seems a little childish, doesn’t it?

12:15pm, Sean: The Austinist/Gothamist party at the Mohawk is where I started the week off last year and it’s nice to be back. Free beer, free barbecue, free bands—this is what everybody comes for, isn’t it? I catch L.A.’s Nico Vega, a painfully hip trio dressed in tatters of designer black. I looked over the band’s press before I came and noticed most of it centered around the Karen O-esque stage presence of its comely lead singer, Aja Volkman, a comparison she apparently took to heart and ran with. She’s rocking black leggings and running around the semi-empty patio barefoot, her husky voice alternating between bruised and bellowing. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs comparisons end there; Nico Vega lacks any dynamics, remaining stuck in overdrive all the way through its set. I have a feeling I’d like them more if it wasn’t only a hair past noon.

12:45pm, Josh: As usual, the flight from Chicago to Austin is filled with rockers, with a few confused Texans wondering what the hell is going on. Road cases, guitars, and haircuts abound.

1:50pm, Sean: After nearly 20 minutes of awkward delays and soundchecks, These New Puritans takes the Emo’s stage for its first ever North American appearance. Jack Barnett is dressed in an odd gold chain mail uniform that highlights his sickly British pallor; he looks like Heliogabalus or some other wan, possibly perverted boy emperor. The band’s Fall-like attack—heavy rhythms, angular guitar, Barnett’s monotone chants—works better on record than it does here, as it seems like the band is still overcoming jet lag. Nevertheless, the band hits its mark on “Elvis” and kicks off the week’s first round of indie white boy dancing (marked by lots of bouncing, occasional finger-pointing).

2:10pm, Sean: YACHT’s Jona Bechtolt is an energetic fellow, barely contained by the lip of the stage. He and his female cohort—possibly a member of The Blow, although I’m far too tired to look it up to confirm—certainly have plenty of room to move with no instruments on the stage. “We don’t have a drummer,” he tells the soundman. “Let’s just start.” And with a click on his iBook, the duo launches into a set of bass-heavy electro. What the hell; it’s fun.

2:35pm, Sean: Here’s one of those things that only happens during SXSW: I run into my friend Dan from the indispensable showlistaustin.com, and he says, “Hey, you want to go see The Sword play Faith No More’s The Real Thing front to back?” Why yes. Yes I do.

2:15pm (Mountain Daylight Time), Marc: It makes sense that my first-ever flight on Southwest Airlines is taking me to South By Southwest, but I'm not sure if that whole general-admission seating thing makes quite as much sense. I keep getting stuck in the middle seat, though this leg from Denver to Austin comes with an unexpected gift: The woman next to me gives up her window seat for some mixed nuts (or whatever it is Southwest gives to people willing to be bumped from an oversold flight), which allows me to see that the airline has put its website address on the wing. Is that normal? It reminds me of the first few times I saw bands listing websites inside their CDs, which prompted me to think back then: "Well, that will sure look silly in a few years when this whole Internet fad is over."

3:15pm, Josh: Austin is beautiful in March, especially coming from the most unrelenting Chicago winter in recent memory. I'll take 72 and sunny. (Projected high on Friday, 92!)

3:20, Sean: Members of The Sword—aided by Those Peabodys’ Adam Hatley and a keyboard player who’s the spitting image of a modern-day Mike Patton—take the Red 7 stage with music stands in hand, as lead singer J.D. Cronise says, “We’re gonna set the wayback machine for 1989.” As expected it’s a guitar-heavy set and somewhat heavy on the irony, but when the keyboardist nails the piano coda to “Epic” those smirks turn to wistful smiles.

3:40pm, Sean: Back at the inside room of Emo’s, Let’s Go To War is wrapping up its set. Backed by two DJs with CD scratchers (one of them looks a lot like Kanye West, the other is a skinny white dude in a T-shirt reading, “I smoke weed and drink syrup all day”), the imposing lead singer rips through his hip-hop/electro hybrid with all the bravado of a professional wrestler. “I know it’s the middle of the fucking day, but let’s burn down the disco!” he shouts—and yeah, fuck, it’s cheesy, but I buy it. The crowd eats it up too. My friend Matt pretty much sums it up best: “Ghostland Observatory should hire Zack De La Rocha and then maybe they could be cool as these guys.” When the set’s over, the singer places a stack of their CDs at the edge of the stage and there’s a crush to grab one—now that’s a band who made its mark.

4:05pm, Sean: Spazzy electro-punk duo The Death Set brings four or five random hipsters on stage with them, ostensibly to dance—forgetting, of course, that hipsters don’t dance, so most of them stand there looking embarrassed or just sort of jump around awkwardly. The group has a fuck-it-all air that’s appealing, but it starts to grate after the third or fourth round of gibbering over hyper-distorted guitars; I definitely couldn’t stand a whole album of this. And the snatches of Prince, Dizzee Rascal, and INXS that fill the gaps between songs? Dudes, that’s totally cheating.

4:40pm, Kyle: A group of guys I assume are in the band Autovaughn walk down Sixth Street and paste flyers onto light posts. Flyers at SXSW have a lifespan that makes fruit flies look immortal, so the band is probably hoping just a few people notice before they're covered up or taken down. But SXSW is all promotional noise, all the time. Standing out in the din is difficult, and some black-and-white flyers on lampposts aren't gonna do the trick.

4:41pm, Marc: Grabbing my first coffee of the day in the Austin airport, I'm treated to the first of many, many bands this week. They sound pretty good, but one hopes that this isn't their only SXSW gig…

4:45pm, Sean: Panther becomes the third act in a row today to substitute an iBook for live instruments (save the new drummer, of course). Charlie Salas-Humara is preceded by his reputation for wild dancing and bizarre showmanship, but—while the slightly warped electro (yes, again) from his new CD 14kt God is intoxicating by itself—he’s mostly too concerned with twiddling knobs to do much else.

4:48pm, Josh: Our first encounter with a live band, one of the many set up in 6th Street storefronts. Don't know who they are, and they're probably playing a classic-rock cover. It's just a passing noise, but nonetheless a welcome to four days of non-stop rock.

4:50pm, Kyle: …well how about wacky outfits then? Three dudes in yellow, red, and silver unitards patrol Sixth Street basking in the fleeting attention of passersby. They're not handing anything out or seemingly promoting something, so maybe this is just Austin's supposed "weirdness" on display.

4:53pm, Josh: The first band I see on purpose is Panther, whose two-man, multi-laptop-plus-drums setup feels like the future, and not necessarily in a good way. Charlie Salas-Humara did the right thing by adding a drummer—he used to just spazz out alone—and this year's 14kt God has some amazing moments. Only one of the songs really clicks live, but it's a doozy called "Puerto Rican Jukebox," and it rings like !!!.

4:55pm, Kyle: There's something soulless about watching a guy hunched over his laptop howling into a microphone. Panther frontman Charlie Salas-Humara tries to compensate by flailing around on stage, but it doesn't really help.

5:15pm, Josh: Next it's across the street from Panther to catch The Wedding Present, a band that I've described as my favorite in the world on more than one occasion. The British's group's only SXSW appearance is at a day party for IODA, a digital-music service whose purpose I'm not sure of. I'm gonna go look it up! (But not right now.) The Wedding Present play as an electric duo with no drums—just bass and guitar—which isn't really advisable for anyone. A few new songs—from an album just recorded in Chicago with Steve Albini—sound, sadly, awful (not the material, just the setup). But old chestnuts like "My Favorite Dress" and "Crawl" (a song I've described as my favorite in the world on more than one occasion) are still pretty terrific. I'd rather see the full band, of course, and chief WP lothario David Gedge promised a tour in the fall. My friend Tim says to me later, "I think it was terrible, but I loved it." Or something to that effect.

5:15pm, Kyle: The Wedding Present at Emo's Annex represents a growing band demographic at SXSW: the prestige act. Each year a growing number of long-in-the-tooth rockers comes to Austin to bask in the adulation and usually drum up interest in an upcoming "return to form" album. Last year, the big one was The Stooges; this year it's undoubtedly R.E.M., who are playing later on tonight. A quick scan of the crowd at the Annex doesn't return anyone who looks under 30.

5:30pm, Marc: Within a few seconds of entering the convention center to pick up my badge, I spot J Mascis and former Spinanes leader Rebecca Gates. Despite their different places in rock history, both seem equally important to those around me—as in, nobody seems to notice.

6:51pm, Marc: In the hotel room, looking through the big book of SXSW panels taking place over the next few days, it's obvious that I'm not the only one who didn't see this whole digital-revolution thing coming. There's also a panel about some magazine that apparently invented rock writing, which I suddenly feel obligated to check out. Well, as long as it doesn't interfere with me meeting Rachael Ray. More about that later.

7pm, Sean: Here’s where the SXSW caste system gets tricky: I have a badge, but my wife doesn’t, which means that if we’re going to get her into R.E.M we should probably go ahead and get in line at Stubb’s. There’s a healthy amount of people waiting outside already, but joke’s on us—the place never really reaches capacity, only coming close right before R.E.M.’s midnight slot. In case you’re counting, that’s nearly five hours of sitting around, biding our time. Beer helps.

7:45pm, Marc: Finally on Sixth Street, I stop by a party at the super-fancy Driskill Hotel, which, despite numerous visits to Austin (including a couple of non-SXSW ones), I've never stepped inside of. The free drinks are great, but the guy at the piano is even better: It appears that he's quite a fan of Fleetwood Mac.

8:30pm, Josh: Even the upscale barbecue restaurant, Lamberts, has two stages of music going, making dinner conversation difficult. You can't escape the rock in Austin, even if you try.

8:45pm, Sean: The lead singer of Summer Birds In The Cellar obviously grew up taking voice lessons from R.E.M. albums, but the band’s music apparently only learned from Up. I hate falling back on the word “atmospheric”—especially when it’s just a fancy substitute for “empty and kinda boring”—but in this case it’ll have to do: Lots of delayed guitar, plodding tempos, and an interminable five-minute break of synthesizer loops during the last song while the singer struggles with his amp. After making everyone wait, he rewards us with another comatose number that definitely wasn’t worth it—although it does prompt my wife to start singing the chorus from the Sneaker Pimps’ “6 Underground,” which is at least good for a laugh.

9pm, Kyle: I think SXSW should incorporate a slogan a friend of mine uses to describe touring: hurry up and wait. For all of the festival's transcendent moments, there are hours of drudgery—standing around in the venue, waiting in long, confusing lines, and general tedium. Right now, it's the line outside La Zona Rosa for the Free Yr Radio showcase, featuring Times New Viking, Yeasayer, and Simian Mobile Disco. And, more pressing to me, food for supposed VIPs like myself. I've fooled them again!

9:05pm, Sean: According to my wife, country-rocker Johnathan Rice used to date Jenny Lewis, so at least he’s got that going for him. Unfortunately his music isn’t as noteworthy, blending every lyrical cliché—it seems as though every chorus falls back on the words “love,” “baby,” and “the road”—into a twangy frappe. “It’s a long, long way to the middle of the road,” he sings. Actually, I think we just found it.

9:16pm, Marc: My first official SXSW 2008 show is at the Central Presbyterian Church—yup, pews and all. The rather odd setting makes sense for the other shows I plan to see here (Retribution Gospel Choir and Mark Kozelek on Thursday, Jandek on Saturday), but Zookeeper lacks that certain something to make the whole thing feel as magical as it should. The new down-home band (in an indie rock sort of way, of course) fronted by Chris Simpson of Mineral and The Gloria Record fame also lacks the hooks to keep me interested.

9:35pm, Sean: During a text exchange, my friend Alex (who’s manning the sound over at Antone’s) chides me for being at Stubb’s, saying, “Sean sure does love the old man rock.” Looking around I notice there is indeed a heavy touch of grey at the R.E.M. show. Lots of paisley and bolo ties too. Then a ponytailed dude in a Gene Loves Jezebel shirt walks by. Holy shit, what year is this?

10:05pm, Sean: I run into Whitney Matheson, who runs the excellent Pop Candy blog. I tell her we often steal from her for Newswire, and she says it’s okay, because she links to us almost every day as well. This is my first “blog-ebrity” meet-up—and yes, I want to kick my own ass for using that word—and unfortunately I think I made her uncomfortable by asking about her many stalker-ish fans and whether she ever finds their adulation a little creepy (a common watercooler discussion around these parts). She affirms that, indeed, she occasionally gets creeped out…although that could have all been directed at me.

10:15pm, Josh: Hit and run! From a distance, we see a pickup smash a car, realize he did wrong, and hit the gas. The wronged, wrecked car gives chase. It's like the Wild West down here!

10:20pm, Sean: What do you call a band featuring someone who’s not really famous but her family is? Papercranes doesn’t exactly count as a “vanity project” because it’s Rain Phoenix’s main gig. Nonetheless, I sort of doubt she’d be sharing the R.E.M. stage if she wasn’t who she was. The band’s music is pleasant enough—sort of smokey, vaguely trip-hop in places—but it still feels like a secondhand copy of something that was done better the first time. Hey, kind of like O! (My wife, by the way, says it reminds her a lot of Shy, the band led by the female werewolf “Veruca” in Buffy The Vampire Slayer. I love my wife.)

10:34pm, Marc: Back down on Sixth, the Peter portion of Peter Bjorn And John is doing his solo thing at The Parish, which finds a string section backing him up. Peter Morén's singer-songwriter fare is pleasant enough, but man, strings always make everything sound so much better. I wonder if I'd actually like Tapes 'N Tapes if they started touring with a string section. In a sign of Scandinavian solidarity, the Shout Out Louds dude jumps onstage at the end to help out with an excellent cover of A-Ha's "Take On Me."

10:35pm, Kyle: I'm going to sound like a cranky old rockist when I say this, but whatever: It seems the majority of buzzing indie bands have some non-traditional instrumental setup. And more often than not, it strikes me as gimmicky. I'm reminded of this by Times New Viking—whom a staffer from local college station KVRX accidentally refers to as "Times New Roman"—whose organ-guitar-drums setup, admittedly, isn't cloyingly quirky. Still, the sound they create is absolute mush—overdriven guitar with no low end, surprisingly noisy keyboards, and vocals that sound like they're running through a distortion pedal set to "UNINTELLIGIBLE." Drummer Adam Elliott is a chatty guy, but I can't make out anything he says. A couple minutes into their set, Josh says simply, "They're just not very good."

11pm, Kyle: The holy grail of SXSW: a place to sit. Hours and hours on your feet is taxing, but chairs at Austin venues are as rare as a Nickelback T-shirt. Zing! (Alternates: a dude with a normal haircut; pastel clothing; a rep from a money-making label; or a black person.) Chicago Sun-Times and Sound Opinions critic Jim DeRogatis has snagged on hidden by the soundboard. Bastard!

11:11pm, Marc: Against my better judgment, I'm in line to see R.E.M. at Stubb's, whose employees have already told the wristband people (who have less power than those of us with badges) that there's no way they're getting in. The line is still long enough to be snaked around the front of the venue and spilling onto the street.

11:20pm, Sean: Shoegaze-y Southern rockers Dead Confederate have an excellent Neil-Young-meets-Spacemen-3 vibe, all needling vocals and huge waves of reverbed guitar. For the first time tonight, the rolling smoke machines and strobe lights on the Stubb’s stage seem appropriate. Highly recommended listening—my first genuine endorsement of the day.

11:31pm, Kyle: Seriously, how long does it take Yeasayer to set up? All told, roughly 40 minutes—excuse me, 40 goddamn minutes. I know you guys didn't get a sound check, but how much tweaking do you possibly need in the monitor mix for a 45-minute set? In the end, they screw themselves: SXSW generally runs on a tight schedule, and all that dilly-dallying ate into their set. They only get half an hour.

11:39pm, Marc: The band is supposed to be on at midnight, so I'm still holding out hope. The line has started to thin out a bit, and when I look up at the roof of the large parking structure across the street, I realize where everywhere has gone.

11:47pm, Marc: Thirteen minutes and counting, though the bouncer guy has given me and everyone in front of me hope by saying that everyone behind us probably won't be getting in. That means everyone is front of his waving motion will be getting in, right?

11:59pm, Kyle: Ladies and gentlemen, Yes. Or Rush maybe? Yeasayer's MySpace page describes their sound as "Enya with Balls," and that's also appropriate. The longhairs on bass and guitar look like they could unleash some rock, but it doesn't arrive. Instead guitarist Anand Wilder favors Eastern scales that sound like Led Zeppelin at their Kashmiriest.

12:10pm, Sean: Michael Stipe confirms what everyone has been dreading: “We’re gonna do a bunch of new songs tonight.” He ain’t lying: R.E.M.’s set is almost wall-to-wall songs from the still-unreleased Accelerate and the handful before that (a.k.a. the ones nobody really likes), with only a few bones tossed the crowd’s way in the form of “Drive,” “Fall On Me,” “Auctioneer,” and “The Great Beyond.” Stipe is in full-on pundit mode, introducing “Electrolyte” with a longwinded treatise on how he’s “terrified historians will look back on the first decade of the 21st century as a time dominated by our overreaction to 9/11,” and later avers that he’s “tired of politicians telling me what to be afraid of” before thanking Austin for strongly supporting Obama. He’s also big on dedications tonight: “Animal” goes out to the guy who booked the band’s first ever show in New York; the band brings out a cake and sings a rocked-up version of “Happy Birthday” to a crew member; and somewhat oddly, he dedicates “Until The Day Is Done” to Heath Ledger, whom Stipe says “really understood it”—uh, whatever that means. The applause gets more and more tepid as the hour grows later and later, although anticipation is high for the encore—traditionally a time for bringin’ it on home with some hits. Unfortunately, all we get are a couple more new songs, Reveal’s “Imitation Of Life,” and the other Andy Kaufman tribute, “Man On The Moon.” Just before the encore, Stipe sang, “It’s been a bad day.” Not completely, Michael, but it’s certainly been a long one; would it have fatally wounded your artistic integrity to send us home on a crowd-pleasing note? For fuck’s sake.

12:10am, Kyle: Yeasayer frontman Chris Keating grumbles about having time for only one more song. He advises fans to photocopy SXSW badges because it's "not worth it," then does an immediate 180. Disparaging SXSW is a bootable offense.

12:15am, Josh: The scruffy Scots of Frightened Rabbit offer angry jangle and the sort of desperate energy that's impossible to fake. Their second album, The Midnight Organ Fight, is coming out in April, and they play like they're ready to kill you with it. (That's a good thing.) Singer Scott Hutchison seems grateful that people showed up, noting "You could be at R.E.M. But you wouldn't want to be there." The drummer's a fucking madman, and he keeps bashing as his bandmates clean up their gear. Here's a video from the upcoming album:

12:22am, Marc: Wrong. The line hasn't moved, the band is three songs into its set, and I have yet to recognize anything R.E.M. is playing. It's time to move on.

12:36am, Kyle: I may be a rockist, but I was excited to see British electronica outfit Simian Mobile Disco. I enjoyed last year's Attack Decay Sustain Release quite a bit, and it'll be nice to break up what will undoubtedly be a festival dominated by indie rock. The group immediately delivers with "Sleep Deprivation," and crowd, seemingly a little bored by the previous two bands, erupts. The Daft Punk-lite, seizure-inducing light show is both mesmerizing and a little hard to take because it's so blinding.

12:59am, Kyle: A guy crowd surfs, and people actually cheer him on. The good vibes are thick in the air.

1:03am, Kyle: Signs posted around La Zona Rosa strictly forbid the use of cameras, cell-phone cameras, or any recording device, but no one enforces it. How can they? Everyone has a camera, and taking pictures is hardly plugging up someone's revenue stream.

1:06am, Josh: The first casualty of bad booking: super-quiet Bon Iver, who take the stage after Frightened Rabbit, but who can't fight the buzz of a talkative crowd and simultaneous music crashing through from other stages. If you're not squashed up front, you can't hear or see a thing. Add to that the indignity of the rooftop stage at Maggie Mae's also serving as a pedestrian thoroughfare to another part of the club, and you've got a less than ideal situation to see something so mellow. It makes it easy to head to bed early-ish.

1:10am, Kyle: Few things sound as impressive on a good sound system as a thudding house beat. Aside from some occasional popping that sounds like a shorted cable, the sound for Simian Mobile Disco is perfectly huge.

1:21am, Kyle: Simian Mobile Disco leaves the stage after less than an hour—an encore is certain. A guy behind me says "Sick beats, man." The group is back within a minute.

1:30am, Kyle: SXSW is usually overloaded with after-hours parties, but tonight's surprisingly slow, and that's fine by me. Tomorrow, the intensity kicks up a few notches. Best to ease into it.

1:50am, Marc: Back at the church, I'm watching Ola Podrida—whose bass player is none other than Andrew Kenny of American Analog Set fame—playing its mellow, pretty pop, which is much more appropriate for the venue than what Zookeeper offered—one could even call it divine! Kenny initially suggests having a nightcap after the show or taking a stroll through the park, but we all decide it's too late, and really, I need to get up early to write this blog…