Wow. So this is where it gets tough. The Thursday and Friday of SXSW essentially become a never-ending booze-fuelled voyage to see as many bands as apparently possible. With Pulled Apart By Horses having torn Austin a new one the previous night – really, hurling ones guts up onstage, having already torn your shirt off, in between blistering explosions of post-hardcore and a spate of bar-jumping-up-on is a pretty easy way to ensure that a full room of minds have been blown – the gauntlet had been thrown.
Kicking off a sweltering Thursday with another epic wander around Austin, soaking in the sheer amount of music emanating from every orifice of the city – I wander in and out of about eight bars after trying my first vegie breakfast burrito of the week (it was awesome) – it’s not until Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears at the Fat, Crooked, Unwound party at Mohawk that the whistle is properly whet. Well. That and a couple of three dollar Lonestar cans help.
The Pitchfork *offline showcase has an unsurprisingly gigantic line when I wander past, so it’s a quick ‘fuck all those posers’ justification to myself (rather than stand in line with a bunch of guys whose beard and shirt match mine), and it’s off and about to drink free beers at the Insound party. This would be where I run into The Twerps and Owen Pallett hushes us and rest of the crowd at Club De Ville with his mind-freeing violin + pedals + loops = captivating pop. For something that could so easily be incredibly tedious, it’s quite close to magical. That’s the vibe before Pains Of Being Pure At Heart pour a load of mediocre indie onto it. Not entirely what happened there – their first album was full of shoegazey, poppish delight, instead they’re now a ‘meh’-level indie band.
In the afternoon heat the call goes out for a trek to Trailer Space – a record store in east Austin hosting a run of instore gigs – so we wander out into the heat. An long while later, we get to catch the very ace No Joy and La Sera (Katy from the Vivian Girls’ side project) playing in the corner while we and some other people stand around and drink more free beer. They’re both excellent – nebbish garage-pop – and though it means I miss Atlas Sound at the Under The Radar party, fuck it, we’re hanging out in a sweet record store, buzzed to shit and with cool people everywhere.
Which is about the opposite of what is witnessed at The Strokes’ show at the Auditorium Shore Stage. As opposed to a happy feeling of music being a cause celebre in and of itself, here it very much feels like the band don’t want to be there, don’t want to be playing their songs, and simply don’t care in general. Which would be fine… were it 2001. It’s not, and the new songs they debut are lacking in dynamism – which then transfers itself onto the band. The crowd walk away disappointed.
The ritual of showing the SXSW badge, grabbing a beer from the bar and settling in to see whatever band is playing happens a couple more times before the recollection that The Death Set are playing at the Beauty Bar sets in. A hasty beeline is made, and I get there before they turn the place inside out. They’re un-fucking-real; they trash themselves, incite a stage invasion and countless crowd surfers – considering the Aussies-cum-Americans lost co-founder Beau Velasco and the Michel Poiccard album they’re launching is their first since his death – everyone is right to go mental. Johnny Siera climbs on top of everything, surfs across the heads of his followers and generally goes batshit. Then there was ‘That cock with the Stupid Hair’ (according to my notes – or as I write late ‘er, it was Diamond Rings. I think. Yeah, it was. Tight.’). Big Freedia, however, is awesome. And, as it turned out Miami Horror, were on the same bill, so with all the running into fellow Australian peeps, the night gets a little epic. Miami Horror themselves are actually great – to follow up Death Set is tough, but Beauty Bar gets another run through the ringer, and again there are crowd surfers, people clambering on top of shit, and general mayhem soundtracked by their synth-pop.
I then find Surfer Blood at the Habana Bar’s backyard show; they’re still as good as they were at Splendour, which is ‘very’. More new songs would’ve been good, however. Regardless, they prove to be top notch.
But this is all in aid of getting to The Palm Door by 1am. I do, and then And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead turn my mind to shit for next hour and a half.
Suddenly I’m up the front, in the pit, covered in beer, grabbing other people (mainly other bearded dudes, admittedly) and screaming lyrics at/with them and then at/with frontman Conrad Keely. I’m one of many doing so. They tear through parts of their new album, Tao Of The Dead, and drop in a few back catalogue morsels (including How Near How Far, Relative Ways and, gasp, A Perfect Teenhood ((eeep!!!!)) ), all of which are met with roars of approval. It’s deafening loud – Palm Door looks like a scout hall with a huge bar along one side, and the sound is massive – which only adds to how momentous the show feels. Shit gets thrown about, there are random fuckers onstage everywhere and it ends in complete chaos. I thank Conrad and Jason for playing one of the best shows I’ve ever witnessed before I’ll wander away in a daze.
Fucking hell. How do you top that?
By seeing them again, of course.
Friday I head to Waterloo Records for their carpark party and another dose of Trail of Dead. In the meantime, I check out La Sera again, the extremely buzzed-about Oh Land (who, really, are just one extremely hot babe and a couple of faceless older dudes in charge of drum pads and synths) and the ‘meh’-worthy Cloud Nothings. In the blazing heat this time, Trail Of Dead (looking very worse for wear after the previous evening) tear through their entire new album – the sound is superb, so the show quickly gets epic.
After a bunch of cheap Bud cans in the sun, simply hanging out and checking John Vanderslice at Mellow Johnny’s bike store as part of a Seattle radio station’s showcase is a nice change. And the local beer on tap they have is excellent. I’m there for the Dangerbird record party out the back of Mellow Johnny’s, during which Maritime prove to be some happy cookie cutter jangly indie pop, whereas Eulogies are showing off their new album Tear The Fences Down, and they’re in fine form. It’s not very busy though.
I bail as I accidentally check out Kylesa and fucking Helmet in the process of packing out Dirty Dog Bar. Both are brutal, and both get the crowd’s dangly-bits quivering. Page Hamilton remains remarkably stellar… and my lordy, I didn’t even know Helmet were playing, which makes it all the more excellent to be surprised so.
The Sounds From Spain showcase (apparently of increasingly bizarre Spanish bands) is excellent, culminating in an epic slab of raunch-laden electro from the brilliantly named Telephunken. It also proves that the Spanish know how to party like no one else on earth. All the ladies are jaw-droppingly smoking, and suffice to say, I’m also the least swarthy person in attendance. (note to self: buy more gold chains and open-necked shirts)
I wander into the SPIN party at Stubb’s just in time to miss TV On The Radio and witness Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark… on their first American tour with their ‘classic’ lineup since 1988. And as those, *cough* immortal lines of If You Leave wash over me, I can’t help but think, ‘oh, that’s right. They’re terrible. And always were. Now they look like actors who are always cast to play kiddy-fiddling uncles. Great.’
Better though, are Extra Action Big Band out on the street on the way to the hotel. What better way to end the night than with a full marching band horn and percussion section, running makeup on the dude and chick cheerleaders and rad songs in a pep rally-via-busking atmosphere?
Well. The next night would try its hardest. It involves tasers.
