Brad Barrett’s SXSW Diary: Day Three

Fighting through hangovers and malnutrition thanks in part to the American diet and in another part to the lack of eating is part of the trial of SxSW. You'd think with free food on offer that nourishing your body would really be no problem. Unfortunately free alcohol offsets this by also being on offer. Suddenly the masses of BBQ consumption you were planning on is replaced by heroic levels of liquid lunches. Shit. Even if you find the wonderful press-designated restaurant with gorgeous dishes to choose from - yes, this is indeed what you may call 'the life' - you realise that Band A and Band B are a mere 5 minutes from starting and they are all the way across on west 6th street beyond Neuces. Suddenly eating time is chronically reduced and there won't be another opportunity for at least another twelve hours or so.
But more so than this relatively easily solved problem is, as I've already intimated over the past two days, the consistent plague of bands you want, nay need, to see all somehow crammed into the same hour window. So, in tribute to those I've missed, I intend to list them here: Aa, Abe Vigoda, Arms, Autumn Owls, Awesome Color, Banjo Or Freakout, Lou Barlow, Bastard Child Death Cult, Bear Hands....actually maybe not. We'll basically be reading a directory here. Hopefully I can make it up to the 70+ bands I really wanted to see at some point. For now, let's celebrate what I've been doing while you've all been at work (and I'm sincerely sorry that this is the case - you can all come join me next year and you really really should).
Following a Blackberry incident involving serious interface between phone and floor the previous night, fellow journo Mischa Pearlman - my Austin roomie - and I find ourselves a store appropriately named Mobile Phone Geeks. Here some fine surgery - while you wait - is performed on Mischa's only link to the outside world. This in itself is an astounding recommendation of how customer service is seen as the cornerstone of the US retail industry, as opposed to chatting with your work colleagues like it is back home. A brief yet wildly enthusiastic visit to Waterloo Records - Black Flag's Damaged on vinyl for ten dollars! JR Ewing CD for a George Washington! Long deleted Liars EP for a mere $2.99! - ends in time for us to see some of the emerging swamp sounds of Birmingham, Alabama. The Photonicas take great pains to adhere to the twin values of brooding and bellicose. WIth unexpected density streaming from their guitars when in full throttle, their sound is not unlike a heartbroken Kyuss. It is, however, very unlike stoner rock because melody climbs upon stilts and wades through the layers that begin to form like a transparent crust.
Broken Letters, the main project of garage rock mental Dan Sartain's bass player, simply renders Americana in its blackest colours. With a calamitous twang this foursomes songs sound as if the cello was invented specifically for them. Yet without the most maudlin stringed instrument, the sparseness is merely co-opted by the themes and weilded like a weapon. The emotional stings savage us, leaving nothing but a slightly shaken mess of ourselves.
From new bands to old and reforme: Superchunk whose entire repetoire bleeds early nineties inspiration. Being contemporaries of and shoved between the mighty metropolises of Pavement and Pixies - both as you all know also reformed - meant Superchunk weren't just overlooked, but the part they had to play was sneeringly rubbed out. A shame, because this Village Voice daytime showcase is whirled into a frenzy by their collegiate, thrashy tunes which are all sparks and flyby froth. A special mention must go to the ace bouncer who allowed us entry, a man quite happy to help in our time of need. Thanks sir.
Holy Fuck is not just an exclamation you expect to emanate from myriad mouths at some point during the band's set but also an allusion to a marriage between something that is wholesome and good and something which offends only those who don't indulge in it. I don't think you'll find a better metaphor for the Canadian quartet's Neu!-flak and traumatic bass. The majority of the set is made up of new material from their forthcoming third album before breaking into Lovely Allen, its ringing translucence still echoing beckoningly inside this head.
After a unscheduled pool party - with promises of Bill Murray and Nas clearly a gullibility trap set by an unnamed label PR (and by unnamed I mean Rich from 4AD) - I move from decadence to ascendance. The beautiful stain glass interior of St David's Church is exchanged for a place of worship for a mortal rather than a deity. God may not like it but Matt Pryor perhaps deserves this treatment. As songwriter and vocalist of the hugely influential The Get Up Kids, his words have spilled onto teenage love letters and into countless romantic mixtapes. It is this solo acoustic show though that really highlights not only this prodigious writing talent - pop music anxious to hit all the right chords - but a vital voice currently under represented by those he has influenced.
This overwhelming wave of positivity had to come crashing down at some time. So, as sure as it's pouring rain this morning, the crushing disappointment of expectation pisses on me once again. SALEM - that mysterious, compelling group whose Water EP from later 2008 remains one of my favourite releases in recent times - are devastatingly awful at Mohawk's Patio. The tar and warpaint brutality, the sinister and elusive sludge, the haunting and chillingly gagged vocals, all of the things that mystify and fascinate on record are completely removed during the live experience. The PA's inadequacy leaves the penetrative beats and ravenous bass flaccid and useless. The vocals are no longer part of the synthesis but an awful, off key distraction. The result is, my head hung low, an early exit.
Something unlikely to happen with Everything Everything whose astonishing splicing of technical virtuosity and extremely literate lyricism is brilliantly corrupted by throwaway gestures, carefree melodic jaunts and a responsibility to be as unresponsible in mood as possible. The fact remains that EE aren't anything like anything else, either now or before, which makes enjoying their music that much better. Startling.
A brief dalliance with DD/MM/YY is enough to grasp the collisions of pinging, searing noises and a bounding optimism in the pure joy of sound itself. Quasi, having wilfully kidnapped one of the best drummers in modern rock from Sleater-Kinney, are a violet beast. Like the artwork of new record American Gong, splashes of laconic oils are spread through their chunky, thrumming rock. If rock music is indeed the folk music of America, as Pere Ubu's David Thomas once said, then Quasi's debt to their roots are being repaid in spades.
Finally, speaking of dues, Minus the Bear are owed far more than they receive. This planned 1 am show doesn't start for another 50 minutes and I'm blaming the awful Hurricane Bells, a band so bad that slipping into sweet oblivion from intoxication and tiredness is infinitely preferable. Minus The Bear simply plough into reams of new material. The bewildering guitar work of former Botch man Dave Knudson - utilising synth textures and molten overdrive - remains the incredible hook upon which MTB's music is based. The silhouetted rhythmic pulsing, the steadfast croon, the disparate percussive force; yet another unique band whose blinding excellence is so rarely allowed into people's lives.
With one more day to go, it all seems to be drawing to a close far too rapidly. It's that accursed time, stealing away the minutes and seconds we need to be able to appreciate everything we want to appreciate. Make the most of it may be a cliche but, just like stereotypes, they're in place for pretty appropriate reasons. So, forcing myself away from the keyboard - your eyes, dear reader, surely cheering in anticipation of the end - to once more enter unto the breach. In the immortal words of that crazed, drug-addled mentalist posing as a journalist Hunter S Thompson: "So yes, and here we go again..."