"Sweet Baby Jesus on a stick, I'm tired!" So said The Gossip's Beth Ditto as she took the stage last Friday night at the South by Southwest music festival in Austin, where I happened to be standing. And that statement pretty much sums up what it's like to attend this 4-day-long, stinky, sublime, red-hot love affair with music. By the end of it, your legs are jelly and your eardrums are shot, and you have a 12-hour car ride back to Santa Fe facing you (and lemme tell you, the ride to Austin is no picnic either-lowlights include creepy West Texas oil pumpjacks, wild turkeys flying across the road and almost hitting your windshield and several
Boys Don't Cry
moments). When you arrive in Austin, you face the daunting figures: 1,300 bands, tens of thousands of people, and only so many hours in the day. I don't have space to report on every group I
heard, every new group that blew my mind, every old group that disappointed, but here are the highlights:
THE THERMALS, THE ALBUM LEAF, SLEATER-KINNEY, WEDNESDAY, 10 PM-2:30 AM
What better way to metaphorically wipe off the West Texas grime than with a serious blast of smart, solid rock? None. After rolling into town and grabbing a quick bite of Tex-Mex cuisine (main
ingredients: cheese, cheese and cheese. Did I mention cheese?), I have time to catch the second half of the Sub Pop showcase. If the first set I see at SXSW is any indication, the omens are good, very good: The Thermals deliver a charming, distorted, happily punk set. They are somehow a mixture of Guided by Voices and the Smiths. They are teaching me to fall in love with music again.
The Album Leaf, however, leave much to be desired. As one of my colleagues (OK, my sister) eyeballs the Leaf setting up their violin, tiny xylophone and pair of laptops, she says "I don't have high hopes." Good thing, because the group can't quite pull off their brand of drum beats, ethereal noise, keyboards and, ahem, visual stimuli projected onto a sheet behind the stage. Any band that needs visual stimuli onstage probably doesn't belong there anyway. The set is, in a word, boring. The couple in front of me that is tripping on X seems to enjoy it mightily, however.
Beer, pee, wait for Sleater Kinney to jump onstage and make me a believer again. And oh God, they do not disappoint. I feel a few stabs of adrenaline cutting through all the cheese in my stomach as Carrie Brownstein, Corin Tucker and Janet Weiss take the stage. Guitarist Brownstein is nothing but glory, all Pete Townsend windmill arm and rock-star leg kicks. The trio rips through a set consisting mainly of songs from their new album,
The Woods
, coming out this May, and it's clear they've progressed (or regressed?) from their early, sparse incarnation to a more blues-based sound. It works. It's hot. I believe again. But now it's 3 am and time to stagger home and wipe the beer, sweat and grin off my face.
TEGAN AND SARA, THURSDAY, 4 PM-5:30 PM
One of the horrible ironies of attending this year's festival was the fact that I had to miss T&S's gig in Santa Fe. Thankfully they played, like, 80 times at SXSW, so this afternoon gig fits right into the schedule. The duo flanks the stage like hip, talented bookends, discernible only by haircuts and vocal quirks. They have clearly matured, emerging from underneath Ani diFranco's patchouli-scented wing to pump out what sounds like a lady-centric, updated version of the Cars, complete with subtle synthesizer interwoven into hook-laden pop songs.
CALEXICO, FRIDAY, 3:45 PM-5 PM
Oh, Calexico, are you white-boy co-opters of Latino culture, or are you artfully weaving beautiful bits of border songs into your indie rock in a respectful way? At this moment, who cares? You sound great, Calexico, when you slip in a ranchero melody to a song that might otherwise sound like a generic toss-off from a Matador Records compilation. And those parts where you take your time with your groove-drenched horn parts, like Ozomatli on just a touch of Valium, those are good. You make me happy, Calexico. You make me want to drive down to Ciudad Acuña and drink beer.
ERASE ERRATA, THE GOSSIP, FRIDAY, 9 PM-2:30 AM
This is totally bizarre. The super-queer math-rocking weirdos (in a good way) Erase Errata are playing at a huge sports bar on Austin's 6th Street. South by Southwest makes for strange bedfellows. A few frat boys are lingering, watching the NCAA tournament on the almost car-sized TV sets that make up the place's decor. Do they know what they're in for?
Apparently not. A couple stick around as the bar fills up with dykes and more weirdos (in a good way). I'm curious to see the band without Sara Jaffe, a founding member whose expert, angular guitar work gave anchor to Jenny Hoysten's agitated pop vocals. I expect to be disappointed, and am not. Sure, we miss Jaffe, but as the frat boys leave in the middle of the first song, as Hoysten twists out her own tweak-y guitar lines, I realize this sports bar is the center of the pop freakout universe.
The Gossip plays a surprise set afterwards and seem like they are collectively about to fall over from exhaustion. Ditto is a trooper, though. After belting out one of her punk/garage rock/Etta James blues ditties, she staggers a bit and says, "Whoo, I just almost threw up." But not from being fucked up, just from the sheer overwhelmingness of it all. And there's still Saturday to go. Jesus Baby Christ on a stick.
