SXSW Day 3

Given his penchant for hooded robes and druidic, trance-inducing stage performances, I admit I was somewhat surprised when Southern Lord Records honcho Greg Anderson turned to me with a wry smile and asked if I knew where he could get a beer.
Not saying I expected the drone-doom pioneer to request a flagon of red wine or even a chalice of fresh goat's blood, but his hearing his gravelly, hick-inflected drawl ask for something as ubiquitous and run-of-the-mill as a cold beer put Anderson in a different, and much more relatable, light.
As it happened, I did know where he could get a beer.
It was Friday night, the third night of South By Southwest, and Southern Lord was hosting a showcase that night at Emo's annex.
The beer was easy enough to get.
Getting to it, though, took a bit of effort.

To get someone like Anderson – already a giant of nearly six and a half feet tall without boots – through a crowd of savvy, well-informed metal junkies is nearly impossible.
First we run into Scott "Wino" Weinrich, doom metal's godfather and a headlining performer later that evening. Wino wants to make sure Anderson will be up for going to a late-night Lamar Street bridge show with Annihilation Time and Trash Talk after the showcase ends.
Anderson good-naturedley claps Wino on the shoulder and assures him that if he's still up, he'll be there. They toast but Wino looks non-plussed.
A small group of fans want Anderson's attention next. The three metal nerds are equally attired: black t-shirts, long, stringy hair, combat boots. Anderson is funny and gracious and drinks some beer with them; the fans are cowed.
It's fun to watch.
Members of a critically-acclaimed sludge-metal band step into Anderson's path. They're playing a different showcase a few hours later at a club around the corner. He recognizes them immediately. Hugs, smiles and shots all around.
The artist who designed the limited edition lithograph commemorating the showcase grabs Anderson's elbow. They confer for a moment, laugh and then crush beer cans together.
As it happens, drinks just mysteriously materialize for record label owners.
Go figure.
We finally make our way to the back of the annex tent, stake our claim next to the bar and watch the evening's first band, Southern Lord PR man Eddie Solis' It's Casual. The crustcore duo are actually signed to Neurot but were given the chance to demo some new material to an enthusiastic audience. Earnest, ball-breaking groove-core. Very promising.
Without missing a beat, Baton Rouge sludge upstarts Thou follow and pummel an already receptive audience into total submission. Easily the nicest group of guys at South By Southwest, Thou turn the stage into a swamp-gas purgatory complete with tortured screams, ten-ton guitars and tar-pit bass. The closest thing you'll see to Burning Witch or Eyehategod these days.
Another two duos, peyote-punks Eagle Twin (featuring Gentry Densley of Iceburn and Ascend) and the absolutley crushing Black Cobra, followed.
Where Eagle Twin are pleasantly perma-baked, Black Cobra bristle with a tom-heavy, drop-tuned garage-punk sneer. Throw in an EP recently reissued on seven-inch vinyl and a full-length release scheduled for the Lord this summer and Black Cobra are making their bid for the big leagues quite clearly.
A few moments pass as the amps and drums are taken off stage.
Anderson asks about another drink.
An atypically thin crowd greets the next performer, legendary doom-metal forebarer Robert Scott "Wino" Weinrich (St. Vitus, The Obsessed, Hidden Hand.) Like a favorite black-sheep uncle at a family reuinion, the gray-haired doom warrior pulled a battered acoustic guitar onstage, plucked a few chords and absolutely slayed.
It was just Wino – his guitar and his whiskey-weathered voice, backed by decades of gut-shaking emotion.
It was a humbling experience. More people should have been there and everybody should pick up his new release, Punctuated Equilibrium (out now on Southern Lord, duh.)
As excited as I was about seeing Cascadian eco-drone black metal warriors Wolves in the Throne Room, Savannah crust behemoths Kylesa were playing at Red 7 around the corner and the Rule of Seen Shows dictated my choice: I'd seen Wolves in the Throne Room last October; this would be my first Kylesa show.
With two drummers(!) and coordinated vocal attacks from guitarists Phillip Cope and Laura Pleasants, Kylesa bring a calculated eye for art and experimentation where many crusty, sludgey, Southern metal bands have trod. The result is fresh yet familiar. A stand-out.
I did catch the tail end of Wolves – epic, symphonic, emotional, blackened-drone metal. They were great, as expected.
Wolves off, Pelican on.
Until this year, Pelican has been closely associated with Aaron Turner's post-everything label, Hydra Head. Turner (ISIS, Old Man Gloom) helped the Chicago foursome cultivate a dynamic, purely instrumental approach to post-rock and metal during the mid-2000s that garnered them much critical acclaim. The show met all the requisites for a "post"-show: it was intense, epic, emotionally wrenching but ultimately affirming.
Drummer Larry Herwig said the band's new EP for Southern Lord will expand on the instru-metal quartet's signature sound by including influential drone-metal pioneer Dylan Carlson on guitar.
[Ed. note: metal nerds everywhere are salivating at the prospect.]
I did get to catch blackened-thrash bashers Skeletonwitch at Red 7 before Pelican called it quits. Just imagine a whole bunch of bullet-belted, beer-gutted beardos grinning and headbanging like lunatics. To be honest, it was hard to tell who was in the band and who was in the audience.
Awesome. Just awesome.
So back to the Annex for Pelican's finale: a gorgeous guitar-driven mountain climb, all peaks and valleys and summits and mesas.
It was past 2 a.m.
We had run out of beer.
A group of musicians and stage crew congregated backstage. Could we make it to the Lamar bridge in time to see Trash Talk?
Could anyone drive?
Should anyone drive?
Moments later, Anderson bounds up to the haggard, shell-shocked group. After soundly clapping everyone on the shoulder and pronouncing the night an unqualified success, he was carried off by another group of dedicated metal geeks in search of the more metal and more beer.
Robes be damned, that man knows how to party.

SXSW Day 2

Three questions often overheard backstage at South by Southwest:
1) Where's the bathroom?
2) Who's got the drink tickets?
3) Where can I get something to eat?
The answer to question one is invariably the same, venue to venue: in the back, at the other end of that very long line.
Number two is usually taken care of by the stage manager. Get in his (or her) good graces and drink for free. All night.
Question number three, however, is ultimately the deciding factor in rendering a stellar performance from a road-weary band. (After the port-a-potty visit, of course.) Bottom line – if the band doesn't eat, there's no show.
Luckily for everybody, the city of Austin takes pride in feeding the thousands upon thousands of people who invade downtown, plague-like, and turns out its top-level street-food vendors in droves.
From bratwurst and lamb gyros to grilled chicken tacos and falafel, if it's able to be easily assembled on a street corner and then eaten mere seconds later, it's here. A must-visit is 6th Street mainstay Hoek's Death Metal Pizza. Yes, it's exactly what it sounds like and is as brutal as pizza gets. See it to believe it.
So this is how I find myself debating the pre-gig merits of chowing down truly-hellacious pork carnitas tacos versus a sauce-laden, barbecued brisket sandwich with Micachu drummer Marc Pell.
Eyeing my sauce-stained fingers, Pell thanks me for the scholarly debate and instead opts for the signature SXSW musician pre-show meal: a Lone Star beer in a tall, frosty can.
[Ed. note: At the time I just didn't have it in me to tell the Londoner that the once-mighty "National Beer of Texas" is currently brewed by the heathens in Wisconsin. Would have broken his heart.]
Bellies suitably filled all around, Micachu took the stage at 8 p.m.
The British noise-pop trio spat out song after quirky song, each bursting with the skree of home-modded acoustic guitars, the rattle of distorted tin cans, gut-shaking 808 bass drops and infectious, chorus-laden hooks.
A good start to a long night.
Brooklyn six-piece Dirty Projectors followed. Brainchild of Talking Heads-disciple Dave Longstreth, the three female, three male chamber-pop group spoon-fed an engaging set of African-flavored indie-pop to an enraptured audience. Beautiful, multi-part harmonies, handclaps, sing-a-longs; those in the know were there to experience it.
You'll be hearing of them soon enough.
In perfect opposition to the brainy, literate dance-rock of Dirty Projectors, the half-Californian, half-Brazilian DJ duo N.A.S.A. came to solely to party.
With green body-painted gogo dancers in platform boots and bikinis and foam-rubber-costumed alien B-boys, N.A.S.A. (North America/South America, natch) jacked a staid, indie-pop audience into a rump-shaking tent revival. N.A.S.A. favors a Girl Talk-influenced mashup routine – heavy on the familiar hits and beloved throwbacks, light on the irony.
They did, after all, come to party.
Danish psych-dance collective The Asteroids Galaxy Tour took up the reins and launched the still-manic party into outer space. These freak-folks in floppy hats and flowery shirts merged Mothership Connection-era space-funk with ABBA melodies and Psychic TV weirdness into a hypersonic, technicolor mindmelt.
Totally gnarly.
And then, like a comforting pat on the arm during a particularly intense trip, British electronic/lounge chanteuse Little Boots (Victoria Hesketh) old-schools everybody back down to reality, where late-70s Italo-disco is cool again and nobody has ever heard of Lady Gaga.
Finally, just after 1 a.m., a packed house greets Datarock.
The Norwegian indie-dance scions are given a king's welcome. Unfortunately what follows is a shockingly predictable pastiche of Devo, LCD Soundsystem and Death From Above 1979, all of whom did dance-punk waaay better than these clowns.
Tellingly, they were the only band who came dressed in matching, maroon tracksuits the whole week.
And thus the night ended. The audience cleared out. The bartenders started counting their drawers.
A few band members and stage crew volunteers stood outside the tent, riding a wave of alcohol, euphoria and exhaustion.
Somebody mentioned they were hungry.
As it happened, we were just a few yards away from a globe-spanning, international street-corner smorgasbord – Austin's street-food carts.

SXSW Day 1

A peculiar kind of electricity ignites the air as dusk falls on downtown Austin that first night.
With the film and interactive elements of the festival already under way, South by Southwest's musical sibling kicks off mid-week and the floodgates to 6th Street, as the saying goes, open.
The first wave of bands power on early that Wednesday afternoon. And as the bright, golden daylight cools and tarnishes to silver, and the evening's bands begin trickling their way through the sea of humanity that's become downtown, the energy of expectancy becomes palpable and crackles through air like wildfire.
Already dizzy from the sun and the beer and the walking and the crush of bodies in the streets, the breeze that swept down Red River Street stood my hair on end.
Frankly, it was thrilling.
I'd already caught French electro-pop trio Yelle at Maggie May's earlier that day. I made my way downtown around 2 p.m., walked aimlessly, drank and ate for free and found myself walking up some stairs to an Affliction party.
Not where I wanted to be, particularly.
But through a door and inside an adjacent room, a cute, bob-haired Gallic ingenue chirped an "un, deux, trois," and her two whippet-thin male counterparts herky-jerked in unison behind drums and keys and it was already much better than whoever Affliction had sponsored.
Plus, Yelle gets points for inciting a bunch of barely-buzzed white people to dance at 3 p.m. on a Wednesday.
Afterward, it was over to the Emo's Annex tent, my volunteer assignment for the week.
The half-block-long tent's broad side faces Red River between 6th and 7th Streets. An alley serves as the corridor to our makeshift green room – in this case, the gated back lot of an adjacent building.
The evening's first band, doom/noise shamans Jucifer, had their monstrous backline – a 20-foot wall of Ampeg amps, amassed as a towering monolith behind the duo – assembled earlier that day.
Night began to fall and shadows deepened.
Ensconced in fog and harsh light, guitarist Amber and drummer Eddie alternately shrieked, stomped, blasted, wailed and crawled through some of the very loudest and most intense psych-doom the Lone Star State has hosted.
True believers, the pair live in their touring winnebago, gypsies of a new road.
Midwestern garage-rockers The Elms took the stage next.
In their case, equal parts Springsteen and MC5 worship do not a good band make. They all looked like John Cougar Mellencamp video models.
Much more refreshing were hirsute, hypersonic cock-rockers Valient Thorr. The Chapel Hill quintet boast beards dwarfed only by the size of their cod-pieces and their egos.
In reality, dudes are smart, funny and can shred with the best. No kidding.
Think Thin Lizzy and Kiss on meth. Airbrushed on the side of a van.
After getting British blues-boogie duo The Sea situated on stage, I took off down the street to catch Ancestors. (I was later told the Sea was good, if a little bland.)
Still touring behind their 2008 Tee Pee Records release, Neptune With Fire, the heavy, heady, psychedelic doom titans proved that with absolutely ace songwriting, a (wait for it) two-song, 40-minute-plus concept epic about barbarian life, death and re-birth can actually be really good. Like really good.
Their judicious use of "post-"genre tags only serve to lend weight or nuance where otherwise hyperbole could lurk.
(Bonus: psych-art maestro Arik Roper contributed artwork to Neptune.)
Back to the Annex for Montreal's Priestess.
Leaving out the wink-wink yuks of Valient Thorr, Priestess approach 70s-era rock and metal with a steel-eyed earnestness.
Sure the dudes had fun, but once on, they owned that stage. Epic, challenging, proggy (in a good way,) dudes were fighting to the teeth to show every sweaty, beer-breathed hesher in attendance that the four Canucks who (unfortunately) got lumped in with Wolfmother and the Darkness can simply outplay everybody else.
And they did.
(Roper also did art for Priestess' Hello Master in 2006.)
With an upcoming record in May, Priestess are planning another invasion of North America this spring with GWAR and Cattle Decapitation, bassist Mike Dyball said.
Following a late (but well-deserved) finish from Priestess, California hardcore maniacs Trash Talk assaulted the stage – and the audience – around 1:20 a.m.
By 1:40 a.m, the show was already over.
Bottles lay broken on the floor, band members, audience members and stage crew alike huddled in groups, nursing wounds while remaining spectators backed away, hushed.
Trash Talk had played nearly fifteen songs in less than twenty minutes. A shoe had been lost during the fight that broke out in the pit in front of the stage. The shoe was found, but not it's owner.
Stage crews blamed the band and the windmilling moshers and vice versa.
Drummer Sam said later that given the circumstances, the show had been a relative success.
"I mean, we only had one more song to play," he said. "At least nobody threw up on anybody this time."
Amen, I thought. Let's do this again tomorrow.