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The idea I had for covering South by Southwest 2005, in Austin, Texas, was simple: Try to see (and write about) artists I hadn't seen before.
This would have been easier on Wednesday, March 16, if two of the three showcases I was most interested in didn't belong to local labels. Sub Pop's lineup at Emo's boasted the A Frames (20 superb minutes I couldn't describe better than Yancey Strickler's piece, to the left of this column) and Portland's Thermals, whose first three songs sounded as brisk and on target as on my previous viewings and listenings.
A little after 11 p.m., three colleagues and I took a cab to the Back Room, an off-the-path suburban bar whose walls were filled with metal posters and whose stage was filled with rappers.
We got there in time to see Philadelphia DJ Chops play to a full, nonchalant house. Since we were in Texas, it only seemed right to party with the Houston-themed evening—the primary sound was bottom-heavy Southern rap (which the Back Room's crappy sound system didn't do justice to), and the vibe was mellow enough.
Good thing, since apart from a lively 10-minute appearance by local hero Paul Wall, a white dude whose heavy buzz suggests he might become a Southern Eminem, the evening dragged on pretty uneventfully.
The artist we really wanted to see was Houstonite Devin the Dude, he of the laconic flow, everyman persona, and the most deeply pleasurable hip-hop album of the past year (2004's To Tha X-Treme).
Devin was set to go on at 12:30, but by the time 12:45 arrived and he didn't, we'd lost our patience and found a cab back to party central, the middle of the downtown club district. I hustled into Maggie Mae's just in time for U.S.E. Having written about them in this space before, I'll briefly note that the band elicits the same fervor outside its home base as it does in Seattle. I didn't recognize any of the folks near the front who were dancing so hard they were nearly moshing at a few points. I'll also bask in the fact that three people I'd recommended the show to were all as ecstatic as I was when it was over.
Thursday, March 17, was another good day for basking—for one thing, the sun came out after a cloudy Wednesday. Appropriately, the first band I caught was Stars at Emo's, one of a handful of groups riding a wave of dubious hype surrounding Montreal-based indie pop this year. Stars, though, bypass the hype by being charming; they're pretty and jangly, and they gain momentum—meaning, I guess, that they speed up a lot. (I am, it should probably be noted, a sucker for jangle that speeds up.) When the male lead singer ended a sentence with the phrase "guaranteed good reviews," though, nobody laughed, probably because most of the folks in the audience had already filed theirs.
After an abortive attempt to get into what was by all accounts a thoroughly botched listening party for the new Gorillaz album (after spending 20 minutes in line, I suddenly realized that I'd just spent 20 minutes in line to hear the new Gorillaz album) and an even more abortive attempt to eat (after I spent 25 minutes being ignored, a man in a suit walked in and the wait staff were on him like he was the moon and they were Neil Armstrong), I hiked back to Emo's for Tegan and Sara, who were the very definition of serviceable.
Better were the Kills, at Red Eyed Fly (a party sponsored by SW owner Village Voice Media). "Sorry it's daylight," said guitarist Jamie Hince. Well, maybe if you weren't wearing a black scarf around your neck in the middle of a Texas spring you wouldn't feel that way, dude. Still, the duo—Hince's guitar and occasional backup vocals, Allison Mosshart's yowl and occasional guitar, and a drum machine—rocked plenty, though it wasn't hard to understand what one English publicist meant when during one number he asked, "Is this 'Barracuda'?"
After American Analog Set back at Emo's (I saw them incidentally, which fits their music), followed by dinner, I made my way to Friends for the Like Young (anxious, muffled, bleh) and St. Paul, Minn.'s Hockey Night. Willamette Week music editor (and SW contributor) Mark Baumgarten referred to them as "my U.S.E.," which was good enough. So was the band: indie rock that evokes its early-'90s heyday, before its practitioners got scared of their own post-Nirvana shadow. They were also funny: "This song is about tubing," said one of the two drummers, "which is something I would love to do right now."
After an ineffectual wait to get into M.I.A. at Elysium, my revolving crew and I landed at the Whiskey Bar for two Brooklyn bands: Turing Machine, whose sandstorm guitars and snarling breakdowns were effective and limited in equal proportions—great soundtrack music, but not necessarily for a bar—and the Hold Steady, the second great band in a row featuring Craig Finn and Tad Kubler. Expanded to a quintet thanks to the addition of keyboardist Franz Nicolay, and sporting a different drummer than appeared on last year's brilliant The Hold Steady Almost Killed Me, the new lineup swung harder and seemed freer onstage than when it formed two years ago.
