It’s time for sponsors, sunshine, and the social media search for set times! Yet again we return to booze-a-thon industry conference/hipster working vacation South-by-Southwest 2024, Monday-Saturday, March 11th-16th!
The sponsors get you there (shout out to Delta for unplanned three-hour hang at the Detroit airport); the Austin, Texas sunshine rouses you out of bed (concluding sets are at 1am, even on the slower Monday), and the set times are hidden in an unending deluge and ‘Gram stories – and also wrong!
We’re back, baby!
MONDAY
Happen Twice / Howdy THC / 8th Wonder party @ Cheer Up Charlie’s
Greg Freeman
“Sorry, so out of tune,” Greg Freeman noted, adjusting his guitar, South-by soundchecks being what they are. “That’s the Vermont sound!” a friendly listener offered back to the Burlingtonian, exchanging smiling quips during the outdoor afternoon set at Cheer Up Charlie’s. Bringing some serious Jason Molina vibes, the sax-and-pedal steel-augmented five-pieced rock and ruminated. “Come drink my heart out,” Freeman pointedly sang, foretelling the week of Lone Stars and songs yet to come.
Showcase @ Austin City Limits Live at the Moody Theater
Mogwai
Scottish instrumental-soundscapists Mogwai brought an 80+ minute headlining set of cascading post-rock to ACL Live at The Moody Theater – complete with pulsating, hypnotizing light show.
Switching occasionally from quartet to quintet, then the two keyboard players could face each other, offering an ‘80s movie synth to round out the buzzing guitars and vacuum attack pedal settings.
The tension escalation and release wasn’t only musical, as “arms companies sponsoring music festivals” (a controversy pulling a lot of indie bands to cancel appearances this year, which has some militaristic backers) was decried from the stage, bringing added heft to an encore powerful enough in its own right.
Showcase @ The 13th Floor
BALTHVS
BALTHVS ended South-by Night One with a 13th Floor AM set of soulful psychedelia, Cumbia, and a note your correspondent half-accidentally scrambled into “Fisco-Dunk.” Nimble yet substantive, the Colombia trio operated in paradoxically slinky bulk, bending the whammy, tapping the cowbell, fattening the groove. They started in reverse, with “Ashes,” and – shredding and smiling – used an incantation of “Body and Soul” to ably translate mind to hand.
TUESDAY
South-by-Southwest Tuesday nearly veered into an unwelcome early scratch day (especially with decent-odds thunderstorms looming later in the week) but ultimately was recovered. Surmountable obstacles dodged, tipples only tipped for, showcases attentively attended.
Party @ Hotel Vegas
BODEGA
Hotel Vegas isn’t big on sincerity, so sly NYC prank rockers BODEGA synced up splendidly for a nearly-sunset set. They urged any parents to combat the dystopian future by registering their child’s domain names, they interpolated “Roll Over Beethoven” into one of their jams, they pleaded for bands to “stick together” against the crushing scope of the music industry. New Album: Our Brand Could Be Yr Life
SXSW Music Opening Party @ Palm Door on Sixth
Nabihah Iqbal
Her single henchman alternating between guitar and sax, sporting on-the-nose “Free Palestine” shirt and sharing accompanying banter, acclaimed brit Nabihah Iqbal offered a no-frills version of her dancey-but-hummable guitar and drum machine ruminations. A talent capable of greatly expanding the singer-songwriter mold, she shared her glowing heart in originals and a Cure cover, but the bright-lights-under-a-patio-tent presentation paradoxically dimmed the vibe.
Showcase @ Cuatro Gato
San Gabriel
Bedroom indie sweetheart San Gabriel was hidden away in downtown’s newer nightlight quadrant, tacky bullshit banging away in the street loud enough for a concert patron to go rouge and close the open front door. Offering sunshine synth and confessional falsetto – with heartfelt guitar solos tucked in between – the one-man band charmed modest but attentive Cuatro Gato patrons. “Time is a helluva teacher,” he crooned. It is. And it was time to get to sleep. “Goodbyeeeee” he sang.
Unfortunately missed
-Free tacos at the Working Families Party Politics House. They ran out of food: just like actual communism!
WEDNESDAY
It was, in a deeply subjective sense, International Speak-Sing Dance-Punk Femme-Fronted Wednesday this week in Austin for South-by-Southwest.
Audiofemme party @ Cheer Up Charlie’s
La Sécurité
Did someone open the emergency exit at the casino? Cuz there’s discordant, alarm-like beeping, sometimes chaotically beautiful and swirling, chiming. Call La Sécurité! The Montreal collective’s vocalist effectively drew out syllables in English and French, almost always punkily protesting. City dwellers acknowledging the unceded land of the Tiohtiàke, they served up a danceable feast. Poutine! At the Disco!
Empty Bottle party @ Mohawk
Dry Cleaning
Dishing out post-rock poetry (maybe a better descriptor is observational monologue?), Dry Cleaning presented a fascinating mash-up of beard-and-tattoo bruvs backing button-up British reserve. Angular guitar rock underpinned Florence Shaw – sleeves long, arms held close, a table of notebooks piled nearby – as she ruminated on modern life. “Traditional Fish” had textual bits of wallet contents and street advertising – “Chicken Burger Pizza”, “Bus Pass” – which proved all the more poignant when things got heavy at the end.
Showcase @ Chess Club
Library Card
Dutch four-piece Library Card embraced one another, smiling, before kicking into its wiry arpeggios and speak-rant punk-adjacent shapeshifting late night set at downtown’s Chess Club. Seldom settling into a groove, the Rotterdam-based crew skillfully mutated and artfully writhed through half an hour of angst and urgency. The frontperson’s start-stop witticisms knew no bounds: “everything can happen at all times” was declared – or something similar – and the mind drew it in, feeling transformed. Challenge accepted, new challenge presented: “So you think you’ve changed?”
THURSDAY
South-by-Southwest is assuredly smaller yet this year, a year-after-year rollback that seemed to pre-date the pandemic. A lot of what’s pared away, however, is what was once a disposable and bloated grandiosity. The brand RSVP activations wane, but the indie bands still shoot their shot. Your correspondent tucked into unoccupied corners and tried to listen on Thursday.
Paste Magazine party @ High Noon
Omni
Serving up a modernity-skewering, New Wavey soup, Omni brought a wiry yet melodic three-man punch to the covered patio of East Austin’s High Noon for the Thursday chunk of the two-day Paste party. Channeling Talking Heads and Television in same jangly twister, the Sub Pop signees opined upon “the safest way to play God,” their bassist and drummer, trading vocal lines, coaxed the crowd to “unbox paradise!” and then, song concluded, cheekily pumped some pre-recorded hold music into the house PA.
Third Man Records / Creem Magazine party @ The 13th Floor
The Spits
Offering thunderous, three-chord pummel adjacent a traffic-barricaded Red River, Seattle-via-Michigan dirty punks The Spits kicked of each song in late afternoon their set with a promissory “1, 2, 3, 4!” No re-inventionists, the raw rockers wore their own merch (except the robot-costumed keyboardist) out on The 13th Floor patio. The band gated into their repurposed outdoor stage, while the frenzied crowd gathered and thrashed on the sidewalk and street. “Buy some merch!” the singer demanded, last chord fading. “Thank You! Goodnight!” It was 6:26pm.
Academy Fight Songs / Rough Trade Publishing / Mute Song showcase @ Hotel Vegas
Kiwi Jr
Collared shirts unbuttoned and tattoos absent on the Hotel Vegas backyard stage, Toronto pavement pounders Kiwi Jr guided ear-infecting melodic synth lines around sly, graduate-level narratives of moral calamity. Referencing cinematic history (“The Sound of Music”) and assembling criminal narrative via sinister lists (“Unspeakable Things”), the slanted racketeers enchanted with colorfully resigned poetry and hooks abundant, percussion and guitars swelling and abating with lyric-enhancing flourish. “We lose lines in deleted scenes,” the singer lamented, another SXSW Instagram story somewhere likely fragmented and misfiled in the internet archive.
FRIDAY
More music came to Austin on Friday at South-by-Southwest.
Jaded party @ Empire Control Room
Bubble Tea and Cigarettes
Bubble Tea and Cigarettes brought wobbly melodicism and 3/4 swoon to the interior room (appropriately dimmed) for a darkness-at-afternoon guitar-and-synth trip. The hazier, gentler side of shoegaze, they evoked The xx and Beach House, but left enough shimmering space to meaningfully differentiate themselves. Apologizing for not having a drummer (but sharing his love of Texas’ Whataburger in his absence) the two-person team merged reverbial wonder into new forms and reborn throwback ballads. It seems like a silly bad name; then you hear the music.
Space Agency / Spacecamp showcase @ Hotel Vegas
Soda Lilies
Austin bootgaze locals Soda Lilies were last-minute subbed onto schedule at Hotel Vegas, possibly over some RTX/Army protest drop-off, but they spun it into some memorable banter: “Boycott your local struggling rock club to take down western hegemony and the IMF!” one member wryly spat between noisy bursts of psychocandy. My grungy valentine pulsed hard, riveting 64th notes dissolving into noisy, formless guitar, distorted cooing melting into glazed shimmer. The complete medium was the message – text unceremoniously buried – so much so that when an audience member asked for the mic, the band obliged.
Showcase @ Cooper’s BBQ
Swamp Dogg
“Good to be back in Miami!” 82 year-old weirdo-soul/alt-R&B troublemaker Swamp Dogg winkingly greeted the crowd for his all-too-short stint upstairs at Cooper’s BBQ Friday night. You could say the bassline in his rendition of his cult classic “Total Destruction To Your Mind” evinced a “Taxman”-feel – but that would mistakenly place Mr. Dogg on the periphery of the Beatles universe, and ol’ SD is unmistakably in the center of his own. Dressed head-to-tapping-toe in a yellow suit, sunshine-hued ballcap, and mustard boots, he punctuated songs with “maniacal screams” (his descriptor), bantered about the ideal dose of Viagra (“60 ounces”), and proved charmingly unaware that SXSW strictures mean you don’t even get an hour to prove your mettle (he didn’t need it). Best songs, bester banter, besterest dressed. We were on the second floor and yet the crowd’s post-show exit still required an upward crawl from the muck.
SATURDAY
South-by-Southwest 2024 closed out on Saturday, March 16th.
Winspear / Pond / Marg.mp party @ Cheer Up Charlie’s
Being Dead
Dispensing charmingly ragged and reverbed vocal harmonies, Austin three-piece Being Dead dropped a trippy set on the outdoor overcast Saturday crowd of Cheer Up Charlie’s. Alternatingly poignant wordless cooing with lyrical absurdism, they settled into a groovy beat – and then demolished it. “There’s no fairytale town / where everyone had a good day,” they inverse serenaded, still sounding sunny in the shade. One moment offering a twisted jangle, then sprawling jazzily upward to spacious abandon, their caveman basslines and palpable drum thwacks lurched toward heaven.
Fire Records / Anniversary / No Gold showcase @ Seven Grand
Jon Langford
They might have jammed Mekons’ co-founder/stalwart Jon Langford into the 7pm Saturday SX night slot at Seven Grand, but an attentive, aged-like-wine crowd turned up to hear him sing playful-yet-knowing strummers like “Old Lost Dog”. Accompanied by a unique instrumental get-up that augmented dual guitars with fiddle and Mellotron, the elder statesman, singing “I am discarded” at one turn, and of “all the pens that will not write,” in another, contemplated aging, mortality, and perhaps one’s place in the ever-youthful rock game, all while having all-too-much-fun. “If Bill Clinton were a band,” he mused, “it would be this.”
SXSW showcase @ The Grackle
Pelvis Wrestley
Fusing synth pop sensibilities and throwback country into a hearty barn club stomp, Austin quintet Pelvis Wrestley kept things versatile for their outdoor nighttime set at East Side dive The Grackle. The pulse-quickening Springsteen drive of “Keep on Runnin’” got fists pumping, while an extra twangy take on supernatural ballad “Andy” (pedal steel and keys subbed in for the album’s strings) pulled us into the anguished narrator’s bid to “feel whole then let the current take [them].” Mastermind frontperson and bassist Benjamin Violet beckoned us in, had us help cast a beast-conjuring spell (“A horse with wings / A horse with horns”) then afterwards released us back into the Texas night, ruefully humming.
