SXSW - Friday
by Marc Hawthorne, Josh Modell, Sean O'Neal, Kyle Ryan
March 14th, 2008
1:30pm, Josh: Before I begin my journey into day three, I feel the need to pause and acknowledge how much fun—and how bizarre—this whole experience is. Yesterday I saw some amazing young indie bands in a small club, one of my youth's most important musical touchstones on a little soundstage, several great bands in a church, and then capped the night off with a Playboy-sponsored warehouse party featuring Moby and Justice. The amazing thing: I could've had five experiences like that, just with different puzzle pieces.
Anyway: I missed Los Campesinos in favor of R.E.M. yesterday, so I made up for it today at the Filter magazine day party. I think I love Los Campesinos, and not just because they're Welsh and sort of adorable, but because they have so much fun being smart and young. "International Tweexcore Underground" is so funny and so right, it's almost shocking. "I never cared about Henry Rollins!" New album out in late April, so beware the tweexcore invasion.
1:40pm, Kyle: The glory that is Whataburger. It took me a good half-hour and two different 'dillo buses (the free shuttles offered by the city of Austin), but my favorite fast-food place is worth it. Too bad the closest one to Chicago is in Mississippi.
1:55pm, Marc: I keep seeing Neely Jenkins (I think that's her name) from Tilly And The Wall walking around, which keeps reminding me that if she weren't dating that guy from Maria Taylor's band, I certainly wouldn't mind being her boyfriend.
2:10pm, Marc: At the Paste/Stereogum party at Volume Night Club, I'm reminded that if I were a lesbian, I certainly wouldn't mind being Kaki King's girlfriend. The pint-sized guitar goddess is doing her tapping thing with a backing band, which is allowing her to concentrate on songs from her excellent new album, Dreaming Of Revenge. John McEntire helped hip her up on her last record, and she's kept up the good work.
2:16pm, Kyle: A kinda fat, bald singer of a punk band stands on a second-story ledge overlooking Sixth Street. A crowd gathers below as he bellows what's admittedly a pretty good song. A guy standing next to me yells, "Turn up the vocals!" The song ends, and the singer says, "Keepin' it weird, Austin." He drops his pants for good measure.
2:21pm, Kyle: Beginning a day of celebrity doppelgangers, I spot Alia Shawkat—Maeby from Arrested Development—or someone who looks just like her eating a slice of pizza in front of Red 7 Seventh Street. Later, I see someone who is the genetic twin of Alyson Hannigan.
2:23pm, Kyle: No one looks like Keith Morris of Circle Jerks and Black Flag fame. The dude sitting on the patio of Beauty Bar is none other than the man himself.
2:31pm, Kyle: Dallas band The Future Cast plays to a small but enthusiastic crowd behind Beauty Bar. The group's sound is a sort of piano-laced post-hardcore, not the typical style you find on the streets of Austin during SXSW. They play with an intensity I haven't seen on this trip, and it's nice to see a band play like their lives hang in the balance during an otherwise uneventful day party.
2:55pm, Sean: Bradford Cox is a pretty funny guy—you'd never know that from his dour day job in Deerhunter. But Atlas Sound is all sighing, dreamy pop instead of slightly sinister narco-rock, so I guess it's okay to cut loose with a joke now and then. "Is everybody enjoying the Renaissance Faire?" he asks. "Did you get your turkey leg and candle-making kit?" Later he takes a phone call from his roommate: "I'm on stage right now and there's about 500 people waiting, so hurry up." He then announces that his roommate paid the rent on time and got a promotion; Cox holds up the phone so the crowd can give him a round of applause from over 1000 miles away. "That guy's a nut!" he exclaims after finally hanging up. Even with the Bob Newhart routine, Cox manages to get through a sizeable amount of cuts from his lovely (but unfortunately named) Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel, including "Winter Vacation" and "Recent Bedroom," the songs bubbling about the room like we're soaking in a glass of Fizzy Lifting Drink. It's an excellent tonic to my still-lingering hangover from the Playboy party.
3:13pm, Kyle: The line to get into the Shirts For A Cure Show at Red 7—which culminates in a performance by the semi-reunited Hot Water Music—stretches down Seventh Street to Red River. At the front door, a perfectly succinct sign:
3:15pm, Kyle: Cattycorner from Red 7 is a parking lot-cum-music venue with a tented stage where Billy Bragg currently plays to a throng of onlookers, many of whom peer over the gate to see him. He prefaces a song by describing "Johnny Clash," his name for his new low, guttural singing style.
3:20pm, Sean: The Pitchfork party is always one of the most crowded of the week, and indeed the audience is packed to the neon gills on the Emo's outside stage watching Fleet Foxes. The band's pleasant psych-folk is a perfect soundtrack to this sunny afternoon, abetted even further by the free popsicles being handed out. I've only been able to spend a week or so with Ragged Wood, but "White Winter Hymnal" has one of those melodies you remember forever the first time you hear it, so I'm all smiles when it finally wafts in. They manage to pull out their four-part harmonies and crystalline finger-pickings and make them sound good even out here—no mean feat on one of the worst sound systems in town.
3:20pm, Kyle: The Spin party is always a hot ticket, the laminates a sort of status symbol among the festivalgoers, but the line-up this year—Switches, Ben Jelen, The Whigs, The Raveonettes, Vampire Weekend, and X—doesn't do much for me. I walk in to The Raveonettes on stage doing their best Jesus & Mary Chain impression. I generally like them as a band, but live they're about as exciting as paint drying. Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo stand virtually motionless and speak in a disaffected, too-cool-for-this monotone. Behind them is new drummer Leah Shapiro, who plays standing up and uses a floor tom as a bass drum. If I hadn't seen her playing, I would have sworn The Raveonettes programmed the beats using My First Drum Machine.
3:55pm, Josh: Spin always has a great day party, and almost always with the buzziest bands. I catch the end of The Raveonettes' set, and the beginning of Vampire Weekend. I know this goes against the prevailing critical winds, but I can't bring myself to muster an opinion on them. I think they're absolutely okay. Pretty fine. Not bad at all, but nothing to write home about. MySpace music editor and occasional A.V. Club contributor Trevor Kelley tells me that that's okay, and when he notices that I'm clapping like a half-enthused robot, I decide to move on.
3:55pm, Sean: Allow me to be the one-millionth person to shout out that the emperor has no clothes on Times New Viking. Instead, he's running his thin, naked ass down the street and hiding behind feedback and shrill attitude. The drummer/singer has an obvious need for attention, but what he really needs is to have his microphone taken away from him: He's way too into his own stage banter, introducing nearly every song with some longwinded generic quip. Except you can't understand him for all of the delay on his voice, so the banality just echoes around the room—kind of like the shared delusion that this band is awesome.
3:59pm, Kyle: Sixth Street and the surrounding area are littered with street buskers whose best efforts are mostly drowned out by the din of 10,000 bands playing at once. Most of them are dudes/ladies with guitars, but I see one guy who raps. His style's a little more aggressive: walking with passersby until they throw a buck at him to go away. Here, a couple walks as the dude spits lines like "Get your fuckin' mind right!" uncomfortably close to them. They're pained, but polite—and probably furiously digging through their pockets to make this guy leave them alone.
4:15pm, Marc: Perhaps the simultaneously hottest and most backlashed band at SXSW this year, Vampire Weekend is playing a great set at Stubb's as part of this party put on by Spin, which conveniently just put the band on its cover. The band is way more indie rock than the world-beat thing that people like to talk about, but the one thing that separates it from the herd is that it uses sparseness perfectly, in a way that makes one think that Vampire Weekend could very well become as good as Talking Heads. Okay, so maybe I'm getting ahead of myself, but as for right now, I wouldn't want to be seeing any other band right now.
4:25pm, Josh: I give up Vampire Weekend in favor of Dizzee Rascal, who's playing at one of the big TV sets in the convention center. It's the rare live hip-hop show that doesn't sound kinda muddy—probably because it's going to be on TV?—and I realize that grime kinda sounds like plain' ol' old-school hip-hop. Or maybe I just don't know anything, because I head upstairs to see The Lemonheads after a few songs. Turns out they've cancelled, with no reason given. Alas.
4:30pm, Kyle: Today's hot and sunny, so spending an hour inside the cool, dark confines of the Alamo Ritz theater sounds awesome. The occasion: the premiere of the first two episodes of NOFX Backstage Passport, a Fuse series documenting the long-running punk band's world tour of off-the-radar locales like Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, Chile, Russia, and a whole bunch of others. The smart-alecky man-children in NOFX and their crew are perfect for a TV show like this, though I'm still surprised by how thoroughly entertaining the shows are. Frontman Fat Mike has the perfect personality for the show—funny, candid, sharp—and the footage of sketchy shows in Third World countries is pretty engrossing.
4:30pm, Sean: Kyle and Josh were a little hard on Yeasayer Wednesday, and now I can see why: Between the long and lustrous manes on both the guitar and bass player, and the former's patchouli/crystals vibe and the latter's wife-beater/mustache steez, there's a definite Kansas vibe going on. But I'm still a big fan of the music—which I personally liken to a hippie version of TV On The Radio—so I'm happy to hear favorites like "Wintertime," "2080," and "Sunrise" replicated with such precision. I have to admit, though, it goes down a lot smoother if you don't have to look at them.
4:55pm, Marc: It's horrendously hot here in Austin, which makes my beeline over to the convention center to see The Lemonheads—who, Josh tells me, are gearing up to play It's A Shame About Ray in its entirety—more than a little uncomfortable. Then comes the text from Josh that Evan Dando & Co. have canceled, so it's back to Stubb's.
5:05pm, Marc: X has already started its set, which sounds fine and all, but man alive, John Doe and Exene Cervenka look unbelievably old—I later bump into an ex-coworker who describes her as looking like a "crazy homeless witch." Exactly. Rumor has it that Lou Reed is supposed to make an appearance, which he doesn't, but Stubb's has another guest celebrity in the house: Beatle Bob, the old mop-top guy from St. Louis with the ridiculous dance moves, who just the night before I wondered aloud if he was still alive.
5:29pm, Kyle: Back at the Spin party, X nears the end of their set with "Nausea." John Doe is completely covered in sweat and bounces around the stage with an exuberance that belies his age. Exene Cervenka, not so much.
5:46pm, Kyle: Walking back from the Spin party, I pass the outdoor stage where Billy Bragg played earlier. This time it's Carbon/Silicon, the new project featuring Mick Jones of The Clash and Tony James of Generation X and Sigue Sigue Sputnik. The crowd isn't nearly as big, but a number of passersby do double takes then stop to watch. One couple was walking down Red River eating popsicles, when the woman noticed who was on stage. "Wait a minute," she said, popsicle in mouth. "That's fucking Mick Jones!" That's everybody's reaction. Even better, Carbon/Silicon is really good, and Jones—who looks like your kindly British uncle—is obviously enjoying himself.
6:05pm, Marc: Headed back down Red River toward Sixth, I enjoy a quintessential SXSW moment as I pass by the Free Yr Radio Broadcast Corner—there's great music coming from every corner of this city right now, and I can tell that I should immediately change my plans and check out whoever this is. Turns out its Carbon/Silicon, the newish band from The Clash's Mick Jones and Tony James of Generation X and Sigue Sigue Sputnik fame. Jones looks just as rough as X did—with Amy Winehouse in mind, I'm wondering if England has finally made dentistry illegal—but the band sounds good, offering up lots of pleasantly poppy rock.
8:01pm, Josh: I talked everybody into seeing Wing, a Chinese woman who basically does weird karaoke versions of AC/DC and ABBA songs. Even former A.V. Club editor-in-chief Stephen Thompson was pulled along for the ride. I began to feel a little bad watching Wing, because she takes it so seriously. I summed up my feelings to my colleagues this way: "I'm sorry, and you're welcome."
8:06pm, Kyle: At Maggie Mae's upstairs, Chinese-Kiwi singer Wing opens with her rendition of ABBA's "Dancing Queen," which sounds like the worst karaoke song ever. She sings at the highest, most unnatural ends of her register, frequently falls behind in the songs, and generally mangles the material. Wing's fun in small doses, but 40 minutes of her can be pretty excruciating—and it makes me feel a little guilty. Wing stands poised on stage, her hands clasped, and a deadly serious look on her face that shows she's not in on the joke. You can sugarcoat it in an appreciation for outsider art all you want, but the irony in the room is thick.
8:16pm, Marc: It's hard to not feel like an asshole every time you laugh at Wing, but sometimes it's impossible to keep your mouth shut—the South Park-approved Asian singer from New Zealand is kind of like the new Wesley Willis, with schizophrenia replaced by broken English. And a falsetto that's about as on-key as I am when singing "Cherub Rock" as part of a drunken 5 a.m. Rock Band session. And a string of covers that includes songs by ABBA, AC/DC, The Beatles, and The Carpenters. I really am attempting to eliminate all irony from my life, but little miss Wing proves to be just a bit too tempting.
9:09pm, Marc: Lines in front of venues are already starting to get long, so I figure a set by The Little Ones off the beaten path is a good choice for right now. Wrong. The indie-pop band from L.A. has already started and my friend and I decide that we really don't want to stand in a line right now, so I consult my program and make the executive decision to spend the entire night at the Merge show.
9:30pm, Josh: After some ill-spent time at the Sub Pop showcase—Sera Cahoone was beset by feedback problems (and a cheesy-ish backing band)—I plunked myself down at the Super Deluxe Comedy Death-Ray show, intending to stay for an hour or two. I ended up there all night. Morgan Murphy, whom I'd never heard of, made me laugh lots. ("I was talking to my girlfriend—just a friend that's a girl, I love cock.") The Human Giant dudes did their T-shirt cannon routine. Eugene Mirman shared his enjoyment of the Internet. Brian Posehn told the same jokes I've heard him tell lots of times before, but they were still fucking funny. (He describes his physical appearance as a "bunch of farts that got dressed up in a man costume.")
Occasional A.V. Club contributor Andrew Earles and his partner in comedy Jeff Jensen have a new prank-call CD coming out on Matador soon, and their two-man act was about as meta as the disc. It ended with Jensen in a dress, pretending to be Elaine Boosler.
Reggie Watts mixes beatboxing with jokeless comedy, which sounds like a recipe for disaster but is, in fact, pretty hilarious. His entire act also served as a setup for Mr. Show alum Paul F. Tompkins, who spent about five minutes talking about how he was going to come up and do beat-box comedy, but now he couldn't, because he had to follow Watts.
The weirdest part of the show belonged to Janeane Garafolo. I thought she was joking when she came out all jazzed up and freaking out about her various neuroses—and maybe she was. But it was less a comedy set than an onstage therapy session, with some punchlines thrown in on occasion. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't really good, either. And at times it was a little bit scary. As Scott Aukerman and BJ Porter said, after wrestling onstage in their underwear, "alternative comedy!" Still far better than regular comedy, I say.
9:32pm, Kyle: Friday night turns out to be a series of anticlimactic sets by hyped bands. Kicking it off at the Bourbon Rocks back patio is Pissed Jeans, who play slow, sludgy post-rock with frontman Matt Korvette doing his best David Yow impression. The shtick gets boring quickly and sets precedent for what will follow the rest of the night.
9:40pm, Sean: Pissed Jeans singer Matt Korvette clearly loves David Yow—and I love people who love David Yow—but you can tell he's slightly too shy to, say, pull out his balls here. Still, his drunken paces and yowls are convincing, and his band careens behind him in the grand tradition of swampy rock like The Birthday Party, Gallon Drunk, and yes, The Jesus Lizard. It's the kind of music that would have inspired a lot of sweaty thrashing back in the day, but this audience doesn't do much more than stare.
10:19pm, Kyle: Carissa's Wierd has spawned at least three projects: Band Of Horses, Sera Cahoone (who played at 9) and Grand Archives. The last one features Mat Brooke, who was in BOH until going off on his own. The group takes an eternity to set up, and its light, folksy pop doesn't bring the energy level up much. Time to see what's going on outside on the patio.
10:25pm, Marc: That executive decision turns out to be a great one, as it was pretty easy to get into The Parish, and the last few songs by Baltimore duo Wye Oak are perfectly dreamy and rocking. I can't figure out where that low end is coming from until I notice the drummer has two jobs: keeping the beat with his right arm while he plays keys with his left. Right now, however, the spotlight is on me, as Radar Bros. singer Jim Putnam has noticed my Zankou T-shirt, the one that gets me the most comments at SXSW, since it's a restaurant in L.A. and half the people here this week are from Southern California. I tell him that I'm not from L.A. and I only bought it because it was four bucks, and suddenly he seems unimpressed, and instead of dedicating the next song to me, he dedicates it to Zankou.
10:30pm, Kyle: It's electro-pop duo Handsome Furs, the side project of Wolf Parade's Dan Boeckner. The music has a nice spark, but the songs quickly blend together. But Boeckner gets points for his quip about gaining weight: "Ever since Wolf Parade signed to Sub Pop, I've been eating so much foie gras that I've gotten so fat."
10:35pm, Sean: One of the cuter couples in indie rock, Dan Beckner and Alexei Perry channel their adorable love into some surprisingly dark synth-pop as Handsome Furs. The songs from Plague Park remind me of the really minimal new wave that I love—they're like slightly more rockist takes on early OMD and The Human League, which isn't as easy to pull off as it sounds. (Ask one of the thousands of other synth-pop bands playing this week.)
11:10pm, Sean: Kelley Stoltz's band looks like it was hastily assembled via Craigslist, and my friend from Sub Pop confirms that it changes nearly every show. The band also ups my official glockenspiel tally to four; it is indeed this year's banjo.
11:21pm, Kyle: Now I'm just drinking because I'm bored.
11:29pm, Kyle: Recorded, The Helio Sequence sound bigger than their drums-and-guitar setup, but outside on Bourbon Rocks' patio, it just sounds thin. That said, the airiness well suits "Lately," the opening song from the new Keep Your Eyes Ahead and their first of the night.
11:40pm, Sean: I haven't really given The Helio Sequence a chance in recent years, so I'm fairly surprised at how much I enjoy the new songs. The music seems much more dance-oriented than I remember, and some have a definite whiff of Madchester that I really like. It might be time to catch up with them.
11:41pm, Marc: The Shout Out Louds are just as jangly and good here as they were at the A.V. Club party yesterday, and right now this cover of Chicago's "If You Leave Me Now" is taking the whole thing up a notch. Every time I see this band I kick myself for dismissing them for years, having assumed a band called Shout Out Louds would play shitty pop-punk.
12:10am, Sean: This is my second Fleet Foxes set of the day and it doesn't disappoint. What does disappoint is that while I've been outside watching The Helio Sequence on the Bourbon Rocks patio, the inside bar has suddenly filled to capacity, so I'm stuck standing on the deck watching the band play with their backs turned to me. It's still great stuff, even with the shitty view; it's looking more and more like Fleet Foxes may be my only SXSW "discovery" this year.
12:20am, Marc: I'm pretty much in front of the stage, which means I can't tell how crazy it's gotten inside of The Parish, but it's safe to assume that actress Zooey Deschanel is the main draw here. She's the She half of She And Him (M. Ward is Him), and though her voice isn't anything special, it sounds good over these old-fashioned pop songs. The backing band—which includes Omaha hired gun Stefanie Drootin (The Good Life, Bright Eyes, Art In Manila, etc.) and some guy who looks like he's probably someone's grandpa—is solid, to the point where it's almost possible to stop staring at Deschanel.
12:20am, Kyle: I'd debated going to the Emo's for the Biz 3 showcase with Flosstradamus, The Cool Kids, A-Trak, Kid Sister, and Clipse, and I officially regret it when I get a surly text message during Kid Sister's set from Genevieve, who's here on vacation and thus not blogging: "Fuck your sad emo bullshit! Mortherfucking DANCE PARTY up in here!!!"
12:40am, Sean: Considering how many people—young and way too old—I've seen wearing those gaudy neon No Age shirts this week, I'm really surprised at how sparsely attended their showcase is. The band is loose, and not in a good way: By now they've probably played more than a half-dozen gigs around town—and they have another one after this at the Lamar Pedestrian Bridge—so it's understandable that they'd be a little tired. The pieces are all there, but something's missing; they never add up to the barely contained chaos that I've seen them pull off before. I imagine anyone who followed the hype trail over here to see them for the first time will be confused as to what all the fuss is about.