When I woke up this morning, I sat on the edge of the bed for a few seconds, slumped over, and pressed my palms into my eyeballs like a character in an Alka-Seltzer commercial—or, more in line with my band itinerary yesterday, a character in a Cursive song. It's like my body doesn't want all the beer and meat that I've been shoving into for the last three days. It's having a similar reaction to standing for 14 hours a day.
Josh was all about eating our party up; my interests lay more in catching up with friends, using some of the (estimated) one million drink tickets provided by The Onion and Pabst, and catching Parenthetical Girls at 4. In the mean time, I caught The Thermals again, playing a set that totally won me over to its crunchy-and-catchy side. The band's new single, "Now We Can See," is still available for free download from this website and your friendly neighborhood Decider, and if you're anything like me (and I'd like to think you are), that "oh-way-oh-whoa-oh" refrain is going to be your new favorite earwig. Still, as I tweeted previously, singer-guitarist Hutch Harris looked too much like Stephen Malkmus from a distance to stop me from wishing he was singing "Rattled By The Rush."
I loved the shit out of Parenthetical Girls, which was a minority opinion, given the amount of blank stares, lack of bodies in the inside stage, and how Marc told me he thought it was "retarded." Whatevs, that mean's there's more bizarro chamber-pop for me. The band members left the chamber at home, opting for a more electronic setup that lent itself well to a set-closing cover of Orchestral Manoeuveres In The Dark's "Maids Of New Orleans." Lead Girl Zac Pennington is more of an heir to Bowie, Klaus Nomi, and Kevin Barnes than last year's excellent Entanglements led me to believe: the hand gestures, the moments of faux-conducting, abd his habit of testing how far the mic cord can go were oh-so-very glam. In contrast, the rest of the band members were completely stoic, even during the galloping "Four Words." Maybe Pennington's act is wearing thin, maybe SXSW is wearing on them, or most likely, they're robots. Robots that help make beautiful music.
(PS, nice work on the party, everyone. Thanks for being awesome!)
After a brief respite that involved Best Wurst (I favor the bratwurst) and resting my head on my desk for 30 minutes (OnionHQ needs more comfortable furniture) I was off to see if the Saddle Creek Records showcase at Radio Room could capture the spirit of 2002, those wild and halcyon days when a gallon of gasoline cost only a nickel, and five nickels could get you the latest Bright Eyes single on wax cylinder. Fine, it just feels like it's been a long time since Omaha was the new Seattle—though not as long as long ago as the period where Friday's showcase all-stars Devo and Metallica ruled the airwaves, which was right around the time Da Vinci completed The Last Supper. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Saddle Creek's spinning out any new Rilo Kiley's any time soon.