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.