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Rachael Ray’s Feedback party, Maggie Mae’s, 2:00 p.m.
When I say the best thing at Ray’s second annual SXSW shindig was the food, it’s not a knock against the bands—it’s just that humanity has not invented a form of music more toe-curlingly delicious than those beer and beef chili sliders on bacon biscuits with tomatillo ketchup. In the time it took you to read that, I scarfed down three of those suckers. Heartburn never tasted so good.
Musically, the party’s obvious highlight (at least during my brief visit) was Ra Ra Riot, a gang of indie-poppers from upstate New York who seem to be well on their way to living up to all the Arcade Fire comparisons they inspire. All six members delivered their surging, anthemic songs with an appealing mix of passion, sensuality and goofy, youthful charm. It also doesn’t hurt that they have, in Alexandra Lawn, the hottest cellist in rock (all apologies to Rasputina’s Melora Creager).
While the youngsters of Ra Ra rocked it downstairs, the old men of the New York Dolls were kicking out the jams on the upstairs patio. These days, there’s something sort of adorable and non-threatening about these once mighty proto-punks, like if your weird Uncle David had a bar band that played slowed-down versions of classic rock and punk tunes (actually, when I first made my way upstairs, they were bashing their way through Janis Joplin’s “Piece of My Heart”). Personally, I’m totally fine with this—better that David Johansen and Sylvain Sylvain wear the elder statesmen mantle than try to run around in fishnets in their fifties. For what they are, the Dolls are still good fun—the Simon and Garfunkel to Iggy Pop’s Dylan, if you will.
Princeton/Loney, Dear/Titus Andronicus, Red Eyed Fly, 3:45 p.m.
The Hold Steady were headlining at Rachael Ray’s, but I hoped Craig Finn and company would forgive me for ditching them in favor of an up-and-coming band that borrows a page or two from their brainy post-punk playbook. Titus Andronicus are a buzz band from suburban New Jersey whose debut album, “The Airing of Grievances,” portended a raucous live show. I had high hopes.
The Rebel Group’s oddly titled, “Coffee? No Pants!” party was running late, and I was running early, so before Titus, I got treated to two other bands. Los Angeles’ Princeton are a very young pop-rock quartet (according to their Web site, they’re a trio, but they had four guys onstage) with some terrific hooks and harmonies in search of stronger songs. They’re promising, but not quite there yet. Loney, Dear are a Swedish band that’s mainly the work of singer-songwriter Emil Svanängen. On disc, his music can be deliriously catchy, but his live show felt a little flat—maybe because on most of his songs, an iPod with prerecorded backing tracks seemed to be doing most of the work. Loney, Dear was the second act I saw in Austin who brought an iPod onstage as an “instrument” (Anya Marina being the first). I hope this doesn’t represent some kind of trend, and I bet there are plenty of sound guys out there who agree with me.
The long-awaited Titus set did not disappoint. This is a band that plays every song like it’s the finale of a Pogues/Clash/Springsteen concert, with guitars turned up to 11 and frontman Patrick Stickles looking like he’s about to crawl out of his skin. Even when they’re singing about giving up cigarettes and sex (as they do on “Titus Andronicus”—gotta love a band with a song named after themselves), they make it sound a reason for cheering.
Through the Sparks, St. David’s Church, 7:10 p.m.
“Wanna drink in church?” one of the volunteers asked, selling me a can of Tecate and a lime wedge for three dollars. It turned out that “in church” did not mean the same thing as “in the sanctuary,” where this largely unheralded Alabama indie rock collective performed, so I had to chug my brew before I could grab a pew (well, OK, wooden chair, but you get the idea). Backed by a three-piece horn section—including a trumpeter and sax player recruited locally—frontman Jody Nelson and company played a set of luminous, soulful folk-rock that somehow fit the modern church setting perfectly. When Nelson sang about how Jesus must’ve broken a lot of hearts, he kind of glanced sheepishly up at the ceiling, as if to say, “Don’t take that the wrong way, Lord.”
Pimpbot, Flamingo Cantina, 8:00 p.m.
With skankin’ grooves and lyrics name-checking Oahu surf spots, these Hawaiian ska-rockers fit right in at this kitschy tropical bar, where tanned bartenders served up drinks from inside a little hut dominated by a gigantic stuffed-animal flamingo. Lead singer Fernando Pacheco plays a mean trombone, making this my second band in a row with horns. Horns make me happy. My last night in Austin was off to a good start.
The Asteroids Galaxy Tour, Maggie Mae’s, 8:20 p.m.
This Danish dance-pop crew are probably one-hit wonders, but as one-hit wonders go, they’re pretty fun. The hit is “Around the Bend,” an insanely catchy little jam that soundtracked an iPod commercial last year. That song was the obvious highlight, but the rest of their set made for some good head-nodding, too, thanks to an extremely funky bass player and—again!—a great little horn section. I was on a veritable horn roll.
The Little Ones, Maggie Mae’s, 9:10 p.m.
OK, no more horns, but this L.A. five-piece didn’t really need them—their artfully arranged power-pop guitar hooks and harmonies are as sunny as a Herb Alpert trumpet solo, and several orders of magnitude hipper. For now, the Little Ones are sort of the upstart kid siblings on the Los Angeles indie-pop scene, often getting overlooked in favor of kindred-spirit bands like Earlimart, the Submarines and the 88. But with a plum spot here at the showcase for Chop Shop, the hugely influential music supervision company behind the soundtracks to “Gossip Girl” and “Grey’s Anatomy,” and a packed house hanging on every note, this set sure had the feel of a coming-out party. I didn’t hear a more breezily enjoyable set all week.
The Break and Repair Method, Maggie Mae’s Gibson Room, 9:30 p.m.
Just around the corner, another L.A. band every bit as good as the Little Ones was playing to a virtually empty house—a cruelly routine occurrence every year at SXSW, where buzz probably counts for more going into the festival than coming out of it. Why there isn’t more buzz surrounding the Break and Repair Method is a bit of a mystery—the band is the side project (or, more accurately, labor of love) of Paul Doucette, rhythm guitarist for the wildly popular Matchbox Twenty. I only managed to catch the band’s last two songs, but they were every bit as terrific live as they are on record, and even playing to a sparse crowd, Doucette was laying it all out with the kind of high-energy performance that makes you go, “Oh, yeah—this guy is used to playing sports arenas.” For the record, the Method sound has more in common with the pop classicism of other L.A. singer-songwriters like Jon Brion and Grant Lee Phillips than it has with anything on modern rock radio. I hope Doucette eventually finds a wider audience for it, even if that audience wasn’t on hand in Austin.
An Horse, Emo’s Jr., 10:00 p.m.
The debut album from this Australian guitar/drums duo, “Rearrange Beds,” is filled with smart songwriting and appealingly no-frills roots-rock. Live, however, their material came across as uninspired and somewhat same-y. They haven’t been together that long, and it may just be a matter of their performance skills needing to catch up to singer-guitarist Kate Cooper’s songwriting—or heck, maybe they just need an iPod with some prerecorded backing tracks.
Buck 65, Scoot Inn, 11:00 p.m.
I love indie rapper Sage Francis and his Strange Famous label, but holy crap, Sage—did you really have to have your showcase way out in the boonies? After a 20-minute hike to this dirt lot of a venue, I arrived just in time to miss British rapper Scroobius Pip (performing without his usual DJ/producer cohorts, Dan Le Sac—out sick, someone informed me), who was fairly high on my “must-see” list. Oh, well. Fortunately, he was immediately followed by Canadian hip-hop veteran Buck 65, who pretty much killed it, laying down a one-man mixtape of snippets of songs from throughout his 15-year career. He also played a rap remix of Devo’s “Whip It,” dedicating it to anyone in the crowd who, like him, had “meant to catch their show,” but didn’t quite get around to it. It was, up to that point, the most thrilling hip-hop performance I saw at the whole festival.
The Perez Hilton party, abandoned Safeway, 12:20 p.m.
No rest for the wicked, as they say. After Buck finished his breakneck set, it was off to yet another remote location—the same abandoned Safeway supermarket that had hosted the Playboy party two nights earlier. Tonight, it would be the scene of Perez Hilton’s second annual “One Night in Austin” party. Last year’s Perez party had been one of SXSW’s highlights, featuring amazing performances by N.E.R.D. and a then-unknown Katy Perry. Would this one live up to the hype?
Would it ever. I arrived just in time for one of this year’s most talked-about SXSW artists, British dance-pop diva Little Boots. Perez introduced her as “the next Kylie Minogue, only better,” and that actually sums up the Boots phenomenon pretty well—her songs are basically club anthems with ridiculously catchy pop tunes grafted onto their throbbing beats. The song most people know her for is “Stuck on Repeat,” but she’s got at least two or three other songs that might be even better, including one floor-filler called “Earthquake” that should have Lady GaGa looking over her shoulder. Plus, she’s blonde, adorable and British. She practically had Next Big Thing written all over her gold lamé mini dress.
After Little Boots left the crowd gob-smacked, Baltimore’s Rye Rye had her work cut out for her. But she proved admirably up to the task, dropping a bass-heavy set of Baltimore club bangers and plenty of sassy rhymes (well, at least they seemed sassy—it was impossible to make out the words over all that bass). Perez introduced her as an M.I.A. protégé, and while she probably doesn’t quite have Ms. Arulpragasam’s adventurous production style or stage presence, she certainly had a lot more going on than your average hip-hop diva.
Next up was a surprise special guest (the third of the evening—rapper Kid Cudi made an unannounced appearance during Little Boots’ set, and apparently Indigo Girls had dropped by earlier in the evening, though I missed it). “I don’t say this lightly,” Perez told the crowd, “but I think our next guest is a genius.” I looked at my schedule and thought, “Really? Ida Maria is a genius? Laying it on a bit thick, aren’t you, Perez?” Then Kanye West walked onstage, and the place went completely bananas for the next 20 minutes.
Say what you will about Kanye, his super-sized ego, and his recent fondness for Auto-Tune—but the man is a true pop culture phenomenon, a genre-transcending superstar in an era when superstars are a dying breed. Looking around the room, you could see hipster kids in skinny jeans singing along to every word of “Heartless,” tattooed rocker dudes bouncing on their heels to “Flashing Lights,” Texas girls in cocktail dresses mouthing the words “You could be my black Kate Moss tonight,” middle-aged industry lifers doing the classic-rock one-armed fist pump to “Love Lockdown.” Black, white, Asian, Latino, gay, straight, it didn’t matter—suddenly everyone in that room revealed themselves to be Kanye West fans, including some people, I bet, who didn’t know it until that moment. It was a pretty special set.
By the time the next act, Ida Maria, took the stage, it was 2:30 in the morning and the crowd had thinned out considerably—and those of us still standing looked quite a bit the worse for wear. Still, the much-hyped Norwegian punk-rock girl made the most of her only SXSW appearance (apparently, both of her earlier official showcase performances had been cancelled, for reasons unspecified). Flouncing out in a gold flapper dress with lots of fringe, Ida strapped on a guitar and proceeded to blast off what little paint was left on the old Safeway’s walls. Although the crowd was too tired to match her energy, it was a stunning, blistering performance, climaxing with an anthem called “I Like You So Much Better When You’re Naked” that’s actually a lot smarter than the title would suggest. By the end of her short set, Ida was a mess of tangled hair and streaked mascara, and there was a wild gleam in her eye that suggested this wasn’t entirely an act—Ida Maria is dangerous, probably a threat to herself and others, and you should absolutely make it a point to see her live before she has some kind of Winehouse-style meltdown.
It would be asinine to try and sum up an event as vast and unwieldy as SXSW, though many will try. I'll just say this: for an industry supposedly plagued by diminishing sales and a lack of any real breakout stars, the music world certainly seemed for those four days in Austin like it was more vital than ever. With such an abundance of talent, passion and commitment on display from fans and bands alike, it's hard to feel anything but optimism for the future of the music business, even in these troubled times.
(Did you go to SXSW? Or have a favorite band we overlooked? If so, we'd love to hear about it in the comments section.)
