The massive music industry festival that is South-by-Southwest fell into some bad timing this year, coming right after the Japanese earthquake/tsunami/nuclear crisis, and right before the United States and her allies joined the fight in Libya by bombing Muammar Gaddafi (Day Two of the festival was also St. Patrick’s Day, but SXSW knew that going in…). It all threatened to make the festival, and music in general, seem irrelevant, what with the world going to hell in a handbasket. But ensconced in the cocoon that was downtown Austin, on your smart phones and Twitter, with wristbands and free drinks galore, SXSW proved to once again be an engrossing, all-encompassing musical clusterfuck of an experience.
Went for the harder fare on Day Three of South-by-Southwest.
[Note: QRO had a number of correspondents at SXSW this year; this is just the Day Three recap from Robin Sinhababu; click here for Ted Chase’s Day Three recap, click here for Amanda Krieg’s, and click here for Tammi J Myers’]
East Invades West party @ Side Bar
Liturgy, 5pm
Liturgy is still awesome. They were the best band I saw last March (QRO recap), and though I don’t think they’ll take home my widely coveted, king-making superlative this time around, they’re only getting better.
Their main strategy is the same: small-kit blastbeats from Greg Fox, strong chordal bass, and varied, cascading chord and note-riff progressions from two guitars. Although Fox tends to steal the show, the guitar lines make Liturgy unique, as they’re more creative, purposeful, and unrepetitive than the black metal average. I can’t say the same for Hunter Hunt-Hendrix’s vocals, which are medium-bodied on record but just high-pitched shrieks on stage.
I say they’re getting better because of how their last two songs deviated from this core method. Closer "Pagan Dawn", from 2009’s Renihilation, begins and ends as described above, but in its midsection, Fox effected a huge tempo decrease by just hammering the down beats with the guitars still in speed mode, but suddenly on a cool repetitive track. Now, Liturgy has these guitar breaks on other songs, but I’d not heard one so distinct and well supported. Plus, Fox snapped the band out of it with a sudden, perfect little fill. Even if you were anticipating it, the instantaneous volume and tempo change that followed was awesome.
Immediately before, "Generation" showed a different possibility of this band altogether. For seven minutes, they played slight variations on one riff at one medium tempo. Its power drew not from tonality, speed, and dynamics, but from repetition. It’s the inverse of their usual formula.
Of course, repetition lends meaning to slight variations. The riff didn’t constrain them at all: Fox played around the beat, rendering the band alternately unison-tight, then almost loose, then in-between; Hunt-Hendrix and Gann’s guitar voicings lent narrative and suspense to a piece of music that should by all rights be boring as hell.
It was like "Preparing To Receive You" by The For Carnation, except aggressive and loud. Have you heard that song? It’s ten minutes of one chord – maybe two chords, depending on what you call a chord – over a metronomic four-beat with no fills or vocals. If you like it, you’ll probably like "Generation." However, I hesitate to recommend "Preparing To Receive You" to Liturgy fans. Actually, what the heck, give it a try. For at least the first seven minutes.
I’ve focused on what matters in this review, but this band is polarizing, and it’s tempting to comment on nonsense. If you don’t like this band because of what kind of pants the guys in the band wear, or where they live, then you’re an idiot. If you don’t like them solely because Triple H wrote and sells a pretentious tract called A Theory of Transcendental Black Metal, that’s a little more reasonable, but you’re still a fool. Please, let an mp3 of "Generation", any of the well-shot videos of them – playing music, not being inarticulate – available online, or their modestly priced live show be your criterion.
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Volar Records/I Hate Rock n Roll/The Colonel party @ Trailer Space Records
Dikes of Holland, 730pm
This well-named quintet plays furious and fast rock as if they were in a garage. I want to say it’s a lot of two- and three-chord songs with maybe a couple memorable riffs in the lot, but that’s not fair because you can’t judge a loud band’s tonal qualities based only on Trailer Space acoustics.
With their sonics indiscrete, the coolest-looking moments seemed like the best-sounding moments. I preferred the group singing approach, especially since I could barely hear Liz Burrito’s pink-haired vocals solo. They had a cool breakdown on their last song, which showed that their drummer could hit hard if he didn’t have to play so fast all the time.
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Sub Pop showcase @ Red 7 Patio
Obits, 940pm
Fronted by rad-voiced Rick Froberg of Drive Like Jehu and Hot Snakes, and Sohrab Habibion of Edsel, Brooklyn’s Obits drew heavily from their new album Moody, Standard, and Poor. It sounds like they’re sticking to the garage-y, surf-y vein of debut I Blame You (QRO review), released almost exactly two years before.
Their showed best on their closer, the new song "I Want Results". Like their other good tunes, it relies on a nice balance of riffing and atmosphere instead of going hard in one direction or the other. The rhythm section varies little within songs, so maintaining this balance tends to be the purview of Froberg and Habibion’s reverb-heavy guitars. I’ve seen them twice and listened to I Blame You many times, but I can’t tell you the differences in their two styles. Most songs have either both of them riffing or one riffing and one noodling spacily, but they trade off on these duties. One neat thing to watch was that Habibion got steadily more comfortable and aggressive as the show progressed, and as the songs seemed to get simpler.
Among the players, drummer Scott Gursky remains the weak link in Obits. He’s serviceable when he doesn’t have too much to do, but he clearly strains during quick fills and up-tempo eighth-note high-hat situations. But on mid-tempo, disco-style hat-snare-hat-snare patterns, the guy sort of grooves.
Obits’ bigger problem this night, though, was the low-end disaster of loud, oddly rubbery kick drum and Simpson’s already rubbery tone conspiring to dominate the whole sound of the band. Obits is a fleet-footed kind of band, with short, snappy songs. Loud, un-groovy drums and big, muddy bass don’t do them any favors. I’ve heard some great-sounding shows on this patio, so this mess was a surprise.
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Nicodemus Agency showcase @ Maggie Mae’s Gibson Room
Damien Jurado, 10pm
With an inattentive, socializing audience and only an acoustic guitar and a vocal mic at his disposal, Damien Jurado had a tough task before him.
He’s real earnest, a little intense, and he definitely puts his heart into his music. I think he tried to give himself and his audience the chills on "Ghost of David", and he came close. As unaccompanied singer-guitarists go, he holds my attention as well as any of them. For most people, however, it seems he’s no match for social media, chatter, and random whoo-ing, which were working against him both in his stage-side audience and especially in the big crowd hanging by the bar. He hollered at the latter group to some effect, but it was back to chattiness after a minute. Later, he tried leading a sing-along chorus, which worked a little better.
Jurado can turn a phrase, but overall, his lyrics are a weak point. He tends to repeat lyrics without even slight variations, rendering his decent lines dull and his good lines only decent. On some songs, what I thought was a cool verse ended up being a chorus, repeated to the point of sapping suspense and tension.
He finished with a catchy and funny old B-side called "Trampoline", which was good except for the repeated lyrics issue. I know it’s not easy – good lyricists possess the rarest skill in American rock music today – but if he could just come up with one more verse, or in some cases just a couple more lines, it’d make a big difference in the songs.
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WFMU & Free Music Archive showcase @ Barbarella
Endtables, 11pm
The Endtables brought a visual spectacle and great rock ‘n’ roll like no one else did this week.
Especially the visual spectacle part. Not one of them was what you’d call charismatic, and I don’t recall one audible word of banter. No need. Frontman Steve Rigot, a stout fellow sporting blond-highlighted black locks that hung over his face, along with a big orange jumpsuit and black dress shoes, did something I’ve never seen any rock musician do. He drank his stage drink through a straw! Maybe it seems trivial to you reading this now, but let me tell you, it was total comedy. Who drinks with a straw on stage? Out of one of those little plastic cups? Steve Rigot does, in between bouts of standing still and deadpanning his lyrics into a 1950s radio announcer mic, sweating all the while.
So Rigot hardly did anything, yet he was sweaty and captivating. Alex Durig’s appeal was equally bizarre and even sweatier. I figure when he was 20 or whatever, he wrote these real exciting guitar parts with sharp riffs and cool, squiggly little leads all over. Now he’s 50 or so, he’s put on some weight, as we all will, and this young-looking drummer behind him is pushing the tempo. Durig’s barely keeping up with how own parts, and seems to end every song leaning back against a stack and sweating ever more heavily.
Maybe that reads like he was too old to hack it, but he totally pulled it off. The guy was obviously giving it his all, and even when he failed, it’s as if his 20-year-old self had anticipated it. These guitar lines – among the best in this vein of punk rock – are built for middle age. They depend on lots of muting and scraping, so when he couldn’t quite fret a chord in time, it sounded fine. Their toughest parts are also the silliest parts, chaotic chord changes that sound even wilder when flubbed. And the solos are not the sort that suffers from amateurishness.
Am I making this sound good at all? It looks like everything I remember being great sounds like a train wreck when written down. During one really exciting solo, Rigot walked over to his drink, blocking everyone’s view of Durig in the process. Funny stuff.
Just go see them, if they play again. They were only around for two years in late 1970s Louisville, and this was their first show since a 1984 reunion. Their recordings on Noise Pollution Records’ Bold Beginnings compilation and on Drag City are worth your time.
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Tee Pee Records showcase @ Headhunters
Lecherous Gaze, midnight
These Oakland guys played average bar rock, but I’d go see them again under the right circumstances. Headhunters is one of these right circumstances. The frontman, longhair Lakis Panagiotopulos, is real into the show. They can all play well enough, especially Graham Clise on guitar. Trouble is, they know it, so almost every song has a shredding blues solo with the drummer riding on the crash under it. The one slow song they played was my favorite, in part because it broke the monotony.
Lecherous Gaze lacks pretense. "You know that girl who used to be hot?" "You know that boss that’s always bringing you down?" They’re sort of like Kiss, musically and oratorically, except that I believe Lecherous Gaze have a firmer, more personal, less caricatured grasp of the troubles facing the common man.
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WFMU & Free Music Archive showcase @ Barbarella
Kurt Vile, midnight
I went back across the street for the end of this show, whose timeslot WFMU had listed as "Special Guest" on the door. I suppose that’s a good way to write "TBA".
As one might expect, Kurt Vile’s band sounded dirtier and harder rocking on stage than his records do. Not that their key attributes on record are lost on stage; I could still make out Kurt’s cool singing and the unmemorable hooks.
Their drummer did a good job with the bass-less lineup by playing tom-heavy, filling out the low end well. Their sax-and-third-guitar man also seemed aware of the sonic situation, but he got a raw deal from Barbarella’s sound system. I couldn’t hear his sax at all, and I guess he couldn’t either because he kept indicating to the engineer that he couldn’t hear himself, but it didn’t seem to improve for either of us.
Whitehorse, 1am
The Barbarella sound system wasn’t kind to Whitehorse, either. It’s goofy to have a big, bald-headed, bearded Australian dude like Peter Hyde screaming his lungs out two feet in front of you when you can’t hear a word he’s saying. Many Austin folks I know like the place for dancing, but between all the inaudible things I’ve seen here last year and this one, I get the impression that the place isn’t cut out for anything with more than three instruments.
Even so, Whitehorse’s most subtle voice, their skinny effects guy, sounded good. He had his array of pedals stayed in a baritone guitar kind of range, giving good texture and keeping me from missing a second guitar. The actual guitarist was the weak link, I thought: the riffs were standard and he was imprecise, especially on his note-at-a-time, possibly improvised solos. Whitehorse plays sparse doom metal with some thought put into when to play and when to rest, so even minor sloppiness didn’t sound good.
I didn’t care for Emile Askey’s drumming at the start of the set, but I was wrong. It’s cool to watch someone maintain tempo and energy in a five-piece band this slow. He was hunched over his kit in a kind of conducting posture, beating out slow punctuations more than rhythms. He killed their few tempo changes, too, smoothly transitioning into fast chaos and then bringing it back down to doom.
