New York buzz band Vivian Girls were one of nearly 2,000 bands at 60 different venues during the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, last week. Photo by .
As has been the tradition for over two decades, the streets of Austin were sodded with Converse All-Stars, Tevas and other sensible hoofin’ shoes for 2009’s . Among the gentle seas of foam hats, foam coozies and brightly burned shoulders of tank-topped gig-hoppers, legions of squirrely journalists and equally squirrely musicians bobbed nervously, cigarettes plugging their lips.
Day one (last Wednesday) began with a veer towards Red River Street, where the Bitch Magazine/ Kill Rock Stars gentry had baited with free breakfast tacos. Pasty and cozily somnabulent, us beta-types queued dutifully and munched away our prize as hurried onstage.
The trio, made up of two drummers and a guitarist, began the set with a surf-y, fret-jumping lick just right for a noonday debut. Singer Klaudia Meza growled the melody with a punch frayed all around the edges, buoyed with puddles of echo and the rumbly tinkering of four drumsticks at work. The keyboards, which teetered in and out, were either superfluous or just badly mic’ed; in favoring the low E string, Meza’s guitar playing drowned them easily. Nevertheless, the set served as a solid and energizing welcome.
Another refreshing first-day treat was a sailor-capped troupe of Austin locals who took over the deck at . Leading the lineup was Veronica Ortuno, a singer with the sweet, plain voice of your best friend and the stage presence of a black-haired Debbie Harry.
Jazzed with “Moondance”-style piano and snapping fingers, the sound resembled an impromptu alleyway warble after a session at Gold Star Studios: simple, casual and cheerful as the first half of the ’60s.
A late start on day two brought me to the Bay Area Takeover party at . Backdropped by a glittering girl silhouette, sang in loping hiccups over freshwater peals of guitar. All four of the full-lipped young’uns had the laddish, devil-may-care bounce wielded almost exclusively by adolescents. The strolling pace and doe-eyed instrumentation must have been either a trick or too earnest for its own good; it looked like two of the guitars had a swatch of dried blood behind the strings.
Later in the afternoon I marched my aching dogs to the and caught, quite by accident, the exuberant mid-set. Bedecked with gold rouge, fake fur and dayglo donuts around her wrists and neck, Ms. Bones stomped, shimmied and galloped about the stage in a mash-up homage to past punkers X-Ray Spex, Bow Wow Wow and Lene Lovich. The music was diabolical dance pronged with electronics and serrated guitar, made all the more alive with the homemade headdresses and erratic painted unibrows of the guitarist and backup singers.
Also at the Scoot Inn was , who nipped gently at the heels of Ebony Bones’ performance. Petite Yuki Chikudate was blessed with a full and womanly voice, and from her place at the front of the stage, she commanded it as beautifully as she did her keyboards and small glockenspiel. Behind her was a band of dudes who looked like serious shoegaze junkies; despite the tangle of chords and pedals at their feet, the guitar effects never muddied the tunes. The result was a citrusy dream pop awash with sunny strings and the right dose of drums.
The first standout of day three was , who swayed and bent with a toothy aggression that belied the beating of the sun. The stellar Anna Barie, intimidating as all heckfire behind her giant shades, had the odd swagger of a Missy Elliott/Laurie Anderson love baby. The songs, although cleverly layered by erratic beats, triggered a yearning for something fuller and weirder.
Nighttime at promised a plethora of talent, and I succumbed with ten of my crumpled dollars. My first act was a turbanless ; although he was hidden behind a field of hairy heads, the sound rolled across the club like a scofflaw of a no-spitting sign. Capping off the gritty spirit of the set was , who joined Sultan with a guitar and necklace of human molars. Following quickly therafter was , who palmed their keyboards with a hyperactive echo of “Gut Feeling”-era Devo and scraped their amps with loud and clangy guitar.
My evening at Beerland ended with , who, although being perfectly charming on vinyl, had begun to wear on me live. True, it was the third time I’d seen them at SXSW, but I had been patiently waiting for the dreamy distance of their records to resurface onstage.
Unfortunately, it did not, although the girls did impress with smiles, raw energy and sheer volume. The aging punks at Beerland were not so forgiving; one booed and muttered to himself about the heyday of Flipper, while another scoffed, “They’re worse than the Dead Milkmen” — probably an ironic jab at the shirt Cassie Ramone wore at . Hey now — you mean you curmudgeonly old farts never chuckled at “Bitchin’ Camaro”?
On the fourth day, after a bleah stint at in Waterloo Park (there were 8-year-olds in Hooters tees and cats on leashes), I returned once more to Ms. Bea’s for . The trio was comprised of two guitars and a drum kit, manned by goofy, giggling twenty-somethings who knocked out some excellent ’80s-style Cali punk (and an ELO cover, to boot). Bonus points to the lady drummer for her solid rhythm and Butthead tattoo.
Bringing up the rear of my Austin visit was the lovely and talented , who reprised their Beerland performance with a heftier crush of people and even bubblier vocal effects. Conspiratorially hostile and delightfully danceable, Blank Dogs cranked up the fuzz and noise and delivered a forceful clutch of songs. Once they had wrapped up their setlist, the audience’s cries for more went sadly unfavored.
A noob to the weird and sweaty world of Austin during South-By week, I left with my ears and feet both impressively blistered. If not for my flimsy notebook, anal spreadsheet,and decent memory, the experience would have been nothing more than deliciously un-navigable glut of warring cacophonies from catty-cornered clubs. Next year, I’ll make sure to ditch the schedule and remember when Dinosaur Jr. is playing; other than that, I’ll happily enter the sweaty fray all over again, and with squishy orthopedic footwear.
Alex Edgeworth is a Denver writer and regular contributor to Reverb. And no longer a South by Southwest virgin.
Photos from the respective artists’ MySpace pages, unless otherwise noted.
