A one-page report from South By Southwest in Austin, Texas.
All photos by Shawn Scallen.
THE HITS
Jesus and Mary Chain
The feedback-friendly Scottish band had little new to show off during their SXSW reunion. In fact, their onstage bickering, out-of-tune guitars and general bad attitude leftover from the 80s is very much intact as they head into the 2010s. But, man, do they have some amazing tunes. Read the full review and see more photos here.
Alabama Shakes
Retro soul can’t get more retro than Shakes, who took the festival by storm with their unapologetically backward-looking sound. While the 60s soul was impressively note perfect, the band still needs some work on the songwriting to break free of the heavy nostalgia. Read the review here.
2 Chainz
This Atlanta rapper has been in the game for 15 years but is getting noticed only now for his recent string of underground hits, like Spend It. And by “getting noticed,” I mean Kanye West dropped by for his set. See my review here.
Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire
After I reviewed this gritty New York rapper, he went on Twitter to call me a racist and fattist. (I did write that he was overweight not sure where the racist part comes from.) But I still dig him. He’s obviously eXtremely sensitive about his music, a refreshing change from lots of too-cool-to-care modern rap acts. Read my review here.
Nite Jewel
The Los Angeles singer has a bona fide hit with One Second Of Love, and she couldn’t have been cooler performing it. Sounding like a female Roxy Music, Nite Jewel’s take on dreamy pop music was a festival highlight. See what I had to say from SXSW here.
HYPE
The Men, a garagey dance band called the “MVP of SXSW” by the Austin Chronicle, drew lineups even at the most secret of their secret gigs. On the last day of the fest, they were charging $10 to get into their show, wristband or not. They went head to head with free and SXSW-sanctioned shows and had people queueing up around the corner regardless.
Bruce Springsteen might as well call his new album Obama/Biden 2012: all his songs seem like Democratic party talking points. His SXSW keynote, however, was a powerful stump speech of his own. “Stay hard, stay hungry,” he urged all the young bands there. I for one took the hungry part seriously, and spent most of my time slumming around the famous food trucks of Austin. See the review of Springsteen’s show here.
Must say I had a fantastic time at the A$AP Rocky show. The New York rapper couldn’t have been nicer. He played for more than an hour, invited audience members on- and backstage (including yours truly). And then when the show finally ended, he walked out the front door signing autographs, posing for pictures and chatting with whoever stopped him. A people’s champion. Read my take here.
Unfortunately, later that night he lost his patience with beer-can-tossing crowds and got into a skirmish with the audience. Frustrating, because “violence at rap shows” inevitably became the story.
TRENDS
The 90s are over, man
The Counting Crows, Eve 6, Third Eye Blind, the Cult and other relics of decades past came through Austin to cash in on South By Southwest’s retro obsession. Aside from the Toronto Star, no one especially noticed or cared.
That lack of attention was life-affirming, proving that not just any old band could parachute in to SXSW, play a show and enjoy a successful comeback.
So Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch can cancel reunion plans for next year.
Rapping up the festival
Spaceghostpurrp is a lo-fi, hardcore, Miami-based 21-year-old who makes slowed-down stripper anthems. I watched him perform one of his more popular songs, Suck A Nigga Dick For 2011, with an energetic crowd of nerdy guys with beards (seriously, the guy next to me looked like a young Francis Ford Coppola). Every other underground rap artist I saw at SXSW drew a similar audience.
Grimy independent Southern music like this might be on the fringes of mainstream rap, but it’s consistently a hit at SXSW, gradually overtaking anything resembling punk.
Darth Fader
The Fader Fort is a corporate-sponsored, carefully curated, invite-only four-day concert in East Austin. Every artist who performs there has been vetted and approved by the Hipster Establishment.
How completely anti-SXSW. It’s no different from any other big stadium festival out there.
Who wants to be spoon-fed next-big-thing acts and drink free vitamin water when there’s a city of backyard barbecues and cavernous clubs filled with the sounds of unheralded music to discover?
Lots of people, apparently. The Fader Fort gets bigger every year. 🙁
THE MISSES
Kreayshawn
For many, her high-pitched, cutesy rap act was a low point in the history of hip-hop. For me, just a lowlight of this festival. See more photos and my review here.
Skrillex
Skrillex is supposedly leading a youth-centric dubstep movement, and from the looks of his gig at SXSW, he’s doing it hands-free. He barely touched a laptop, just jumped around and waved his arms in the air.
The Arkells
Bad programming had this hardworking Hamilton band singing about factory work and the common man before Jesus and Mary Chain took the stage. “That fucking Canadian band” is how the jaded JAMC audience will forever know them now. Read my review here.
Miike Snow
The Swedish band did their best Coldplay impersonation when they were thrust onto the big stage at Stubb’s. But the bigger the venue, the worse they sound.
Lineups
There were upwards of 300,000 people in the small city of Austin for the festival this year. It felt like 200,000 of them were in line in front of me every time I went to get a drink. It looks like it’s going to get worse before it gets better.
