HOSPITALITY at SXSW Music Festival. March 16, 2012. Rating: NNN
Hospitality sound like Björk fronting a twee, Brit-rock guitar pop band. Not the case, I learned at their SXSW daytime gig at Home Slice Pizza.
The voice of the band is from Kansas City.
Singer Amber Papini couldn’t sound more Scandinavian, but she prefers to think she sounds British. She says she developed the singing accent from listening to The Psychedelic Furs’ Talk Talk Talk too much.
A likely story, but I digress.
I really enjoyed the hospitality of Home Slice Pizza, my Austin haunt which I sometimes refer to as my Home Slice away from home. It has to be in the running for the best slice south of the Mason-Dixon line.
I also enjoyed Hospitality, who make likable, idiosyncratic rock music that fit the scene perfectly.
The band just released record on Merge, and played parts of it for a friendly, packed-into-the-parking lot crowd. Liberal Arts, Friends Of Friends and other songs stuck with me long after my last piece of pie.
Here’s Friends Of Friends, to hear what I’m talking about and see a cameo from Arrested Development’s Maybe.
Hospitality are definitely not making groundbreaking music of any sort, and how much better off everyone is for that. Papini is funny, in a great, cut way, and brings that humour to her performance and lyrics. That more than makes up for any uncharted ground new bands are supposed to be covering here.
Hospitality weren’t as thrilling as the pizza at Home Slice, but they aren’t trying to be. They’re a rock band with personality, which is a lot more than 1000s of other bands at this festival.
