Review Round-Up: April 2013

After a somewhat monochrome March, April has been practically bursting with color, musically speaking: most dramatically, the Knife's noxious, fluorescent habit-shaking pink and green; but also the brightly shining blue and yellow of Kurt Vile's always-sunny-in-Philadelphia daze (the building is much yellower in my imagination) and the bold, somehow garish gray and, i suppose, peach of Phoenix's very entertaining, still-percolating Bankrupt! (which I'll get to soon enough.)  Plus there were the pastels'n'posteriors of Chrissy Murderbot's latest goofiness (see below); Neon Neon (in name if not cover art); and even the (sexual) chocolate and silver of Breakbot's really fantastic By Your Side, which just came out domestically and has been on repeat quite a bit around here, though it seems to have gotten more or less overlooked by the tastemakers both times around... particularly poor form, i'd say, in light of all the hoopla around Daft Punk's return (power-color: burnt orange, a good choice.)

Which...jury's out on that one. "Get Lucky" is perfectly catchy and double-plus groovin', but it's also kinda overpowered by the "guest contributors" (as others have suggested, I could do with more of the parts that don't have Pharrell, though his singing is perfectly fine.  also, what's with the "verse" being about a quarter as long as both the intro and the pre-chorus?)  will be interested to hear the album version.  and the whole album, of course.  in the mean time it already feels like there's a French Touch revival going on, between the super-stylin' Breakbot record, Phoenix, and fake-French OG Jacques Lu Cont bacque in acquetion as well (still gotta get my hands on that.)  more broadly, just around the corner in May, some sweet synth-poppin'-off from Classixx, Little Boots and the highly excellent Dungeonesse among others...basically what i'm saying is we are being well primed for another Summer of Dance-Pop - i can feel it in the musical climate almost more than in the actual weather (which is sunny and super-springy but still surprisingly chilly from time to time.)

As it turned out, my review quota for April was cut quite short – in fact, I didn't have a single review published in CP during April; I'm cheating a little bit with my inclusions below – so I didn't manage to actually write about most of the above (nor the also very worthwhile Iron & Wine, Shuggie Otis, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Kalabrese albums.)  I did write some stuff, but mostly it was on weird, lame old-people music, like jazz and punk and folk and rock and roll.  ew, who listens to rock and roll??

Marc Ribot's Cermamic Dog
Your Turn

The title of album number two from guitarist Marc Ribot's gonzo jazz-punk power trio Ceramic Dog is mostly a visual gag: the cover shows a hastily scribbled tic-tac-toe board, eight of its nine spaces scrawled with Xs.  Your Turn.  The music contained within isn't quite that perversely sadistic – most of the time – but it's at least as blackly humorous.  Vocal cuts (about half the record) find them railing with grim sarcasm against inequities political (a furious, Occupy-inspired take on labor anthem "Bread and Roses"), bodily (the pained, Morphine-esque blues "Lies My Body Told Me") and cyber-economic (sardonically self-abasing pro-download screed "Masters of the Internet.")  There's just as much caustic comedy to be found in the instrumentals, replete with Ribot's ribald, axe-throttling skronk and the equally redoubtable, amped-up frenetics of bassist Shahzad Ismaily and drummer Ches Smith: oblique, Naked City-style freakouts; an unhinged "Take 5" takedown; a squalling noise dirge pointedly entitled "Prayer."  While making space for everything from Beasties-indebted rap ("We Are The Professionals"), earnest, reggae-flecked protest folk ("Ain't Gonna Let Them Turn Us Round") and a swinging, deliciously twisted faux-standard ("The Kid Is Back"), Your Turn feels less self-consciously eclectic than 2008's Party Intellectuals; it's bolder, more focused (nothing pushes past six minutes), and just all-around more rocking.  Decidedly unlike that pathetically futile game of tic-tac-toe, it's great, great fun.

Dump
Superpowerless and I Can Hear Music

In his review of their gently majestic, habitually exalted thirteenth album this January (in MAGNET #95) Brian Howard described Yo La Tengo's perhaps-improbable perseverance as a form of quietly determined resistance.  But it's instructive to remember that their approach to music-making – pointedly personal; passionate yet decidedly low-key – was once simply a way of life, for them and many in the nascent days of "indie rock."   For James McNew, who became the band's bassist in 1991, at age 21, playing in other people's groups wasn't enough, so he initiated his own project: recording to a 4-track cassette deck under the suitably smirky, self-effacing moniker Dump.

His first two LPs, recorded in piecemeal fashion throughout the early '90s alongside myriad singles and EPs (of which, for some reason, only one – a self-titled 1992 five-song 7" – is included among the bonus tracks on these Morr Music reissues) were issued in 1993 and 1995, respectively – exactly concurrent with YLT's seminal, ascendant early Matador run (Painful, Electr-O-Pura) – and they offer a fascinating, emphatically casual alternate perspective on that era.  They're full of the spirited eclecticism that soon defined his main band – bucketloads of jangly pop butting up against droning feedback, sweetly folksy ditties, grungy rockers, sputtering "jazzy" instrumentals, churning two-chord slow-burns, and covers covers covers (which tended to receive somewhat more care than his plenty-winsome originals) – but with an almost aggressively laissez-faire attitude toward musicianship (vocal intonation included), let alone "recording quality."  The point being, as any true indie knows, that none of that stuff ultimately matters: if you can get across a song, communicate a feeling, the more efficiently the better, well, you've got something worthwhile.  Here are three hours, almost sixty tunes, and if it takes a little trash-picking to get there, there's something to treasure in nearly every one.

originally published in Magnet Magazine

Chrissy Murderbot
Greatest Hits ★★★★★
[Electronic/Juke/Future Bass]

There's not necessarily much logic to how Chrissy Murderbot operates.  The Chicago DJ/producer/dance music savant's latest release consists of seven entirely new cuts and seven wide-ranging remixes, and – for no particular reason – it's entitled Greatest Hits ★★★★★ (Murder Channel).  That gleeful, extravagant absurdity carries over into the music, which piles on the goofball catchphrases ("after the party it's the Waffle House..."), sci-fi lazer FX ("Pew Pew") and incongruously emotive soul vocals atop skittering, hyper-BPM juke and jackhammering jungle breaks.  When it comes to moving bodies, dude's as no-nonsense as they come.

Neon Neon
Praxis Makes Perfect
[Pop]

Praxis Makes Perfect (Lex), the second straight synth-pop bio-opera from Neon Neon – Super Furry Animal Gruff Rhys plus avant-hip-hop producer Boom Bip – takes on the life of Italian publisher and communist activist Giangiacomo Feltrinelli.  It's not quite as natural a fit as their eighties-steeped homage to John DeLorean – most of the sounds here post-date the subject's 1972 death – but it works, both as an offbeat lefty history lesson (check the eyebrow-raising "Hoops With Fidel") and as a sweet batch of yacht-friendly soft-pop and endearingly stiff, cheeky eurodisco.

Kacey Musgraves
Same Trailer Different Park
[Country/Pop]

Nashville newbie Kacey Musgraves' breakthrough single "Merry Go Round," while not half as clever as she probably thought, was still striking for its frank, pointedly skeptical slice-of-life storytelling.  Same Trailer Different Park (Mercury Nashville) – actually her fourth LP – confirms that she can throw together cliches with the best of 'em, often in an endearingly (even – for Nashville – radically) empowering manner, and have it come out improbably fresh; even building a hook around the word "stupid" that manages not to sound it.  Musically, Musgraves' sweet, simple country-pop – never veering too far either way – recalls Taylor Swift's first album; lyrical-maturity-wise, Swift'll hopefully get there on her next one.

Ólafur Arnalds
For Now I Am Winter
[Classical/Ambient]

Ólafur Arnalds is an Icelandic neo-classical/ambient/new age composer (the lines get pretty blurry, and who needs 'em?) and yes, his music lives up to whatever stock images and stereotypes (glaciers, ethereality, Northern lights...) that may conjure up.  But if it's predictably gorgeous, unabashedly palatable stuff – plangent pianos; alternately sprightly and keening strings; gently burbly electronic undercurrents – it's far from rote and practically never maudlin.  Titular pomposity and spectacularly faulty seasonal timing aside, And Now I Am Winter (Mercury) is an especially delicate effort; even the potentially risky incorporation of indie-pop-flavored vocals turns out typically tasteful, thanks to Arnór Dan's sweetly stoic falsetto and some downright catchy tunes.

Billy Bragg
[Folk]
concert preview

Billy Bragg opens his ninth album by declaring "I'm so tightly wound in tension."  He hardly sounds it, though: this is easily the sometime firebrand's mellowest LP to date, a warm, burnished Americana set bearing all the tasteful hallmarks of producer Joe Henry (including Greg Leisz's always-lovely pedal steel inflections.)  Continuing the newfound lyrical directness of 2008's similarly understated Mr. Love & Justice (which feels practically aggressive by comparison), Tooth and Nail (Cooking Vinyl) makes good on Bragg's longstanding Woody Guthrie fixation with earnestly populist homilies like "Do Unto Others," plus one wistfully reverent cover reading.  But despite "There Will Be A Reckoning" – the album's sole, stirred-up rocker – and a few other choice words for the "misbegotten, misanthropic merchants of gloom," the most impassioned pleas here are generally of the romantic variety.  For lefty rabble-rousing, you're better off with 2011's website-only compilation Fight Songs – or the witty, heartfelt between-song tirades that are a staple of his live sets.

John Medeski
[Jazz/Improvisation]
concert preview

In his twenty-plus years of blazing incendiary new trails for the contemporary jazz piano/organ trio alongside compadres Billy Martin and Chris Wood, John Medeski has supplied keys for everyone from John Zorn to Iggy Pop, Robert Randolph, Trey Anastasio and, most recently (wow), Coheed and Cambria.  But he's only now gotten around to cutting a record of his solo playing, displaying a radically different approach from the eclectic grooves beloved of jam-happy MMW heads.  A Different Time – the first new release on long-defunct, newly-revived classic jazz imprint/Sony sublabel OKeh – is a beautifully spacious, ruminative, largely improvised nocturnal affair in the tradition of Bill Evans and, particularly, Keith Jarrett.  While there's considerable virtuosity and classically-informed technique on display here – especially as it was recorded on a difficult-to-control 1924 French-made piano, the Gaveau – it's above all a masterclass in delicacy, expressiveness and restraint.

William Tyler
[Instrumental/Folk/Americana]
concert preview

Solo guitar records can be engrossing, meditative, gorgeously textural – and, to be sure, Impossible Truth (Merge) is all of the above – but it's rare to find one as exuberantly vivid and lush as the second full-length opus from Nashville-based virtuoso William Tyler, whose playing has previously supported Lambchop, Bonnie Billy and the Silver Jews.  Strictly speaking, it's not an entirely solo affair: pedal steel, trombone, vibraphone, bowed bass and even drums crop up in a few of these warmly expansive compositions, though they generally feel like subtle, nearly inconspicuous shadings against the foreground of Tyler's rippling, luminescent picking.  The album was inspired by a stack of weighty non-fiction texts on American symbolic geography, and you can hear reverberations of the vast, mythic West in pieces like "Cadillac Desert" and "Country of Illusion," while the raga-like drones and pedals elsewhere gesture, equally evocatively, toward the imagined East.

Goat
[Psych/Worldbeat]
concert preview

The deliberately shadowy Goat maintain an epic, absurd and presumably largely fabricated (or at least heavily mythologized) backstory involving a generations-old tradition of voodoo worship, communal living and collective music-making in the tiny, extreme-North Swedish village of Korpilombolo.  The group's three "core members" (the specific number and identities of the musicians involved are kept characteristically vague) do indeed hail from there. . . probably.  Either way the narrative feels less like attention-seeking puffery than a legitimate (if grandiose) means to sever their music from conventional contexts and expectations which would hardly suit it anyway.  Thankfully, their album, World Music (Rocket Recordings) – the title is simultaneously impish and self-evidently apt – doesn't feel the least bit pretentious or put-on.  Instead it's a total blast, a swirl of Afro-beat, droney psych-rock squalls, instrumental acoustic folk and polyrhythmic Middle Eastern grooves that does for worldbeat what fellow Swedish fantasists Dungen did for classic rock, unleashing a celebration of wailing storm surges ("Goathead"), ritual incantations ("Goatlord") and party jams ("Disco Fever," which interleaves kraut-funk and Ethiopian jazz) replete with hand-drums, hammond-organ fever-dreams, tribalistic chanting and, of course, that most universal of instruments, the electric guitar.

Jamie Lidell
[R&B/Pop]
concert preview

Jamie Lidell's 2005 breakout LP, Multiply, was something of a eureka moment, unleashing his freaky, fearless falsetto against a backdrop of IDM-reared production chops and uncovering newfound possibilities for smooshing up old-school soul with mod-podge electronica.  These days he's hardly the only electro-soul game in town (Autre Ne Veut, Quadron and Little Dragon all owe him some debt), although he remains in high demand as a vocalist (this month alone he's turned up on tracks by Atom™ and Brandt Brauer Frick.)  Under his own auspices, Lidell's self-titled fifth full-length (Warp) tightens up the technicolor sprawl of 2010's Compass into something equally elastic but more narrowly focused, even reverent: a laser-lit homage to the original electronic/R&B interminglings of 1980s synth-funk, recasting the plushly poppy, machine-abetted boogie of Cameo, Bootsy Collins, P-Funk et. al., with the electronica wayback dials set to Lovesexy-style zap'n'twitch.

Bonobo
[Electronic]
concert preview

Electronic music has changed a lot since his first forays into playful lounge-jazz chill-out back around the turn of the millennium, but British producer Simon Green – alias Bonobo – has somehow kept his music fresh and relevant without ever dramatically changing his approach.  The North Borders (Ninja Tune) continues down the moodier, more sophisticated path signaled by 2010's excellent Black Sands, displaying an increasingly masterful ear for composition and intriguing, lushly organic sounds, but also well-attuned to the recent rhythmic tendencies emanating from London, Los Angeles and beyond.  While it'd still rest mostly comfortably within the well-worn, all-but-outmoded umbrella of triphop/downtempo, this is also Green's most diverse, body-friendly work yet.  "Know You" is a gorgeously sculpted dancefloor detonator, all stuttering, slowly cresting two-step syncopations; the kalimba-studded "Cirrus" is an idealized intersection of Pantha du Prince and Rounds-era Four Tet, while "Heaven For The Sinner" invites Erykah Badu along for a deep nodding groover recalling her pal Flying Lotus – and yet, it's all patently, undeniably Bonobo.

Lianne Le Havas
[Folk/Soul]
concert preview

Is Your Love Big Enough? (Warner/Nonesuch) introduced Lianne La Havas as, by and large, a rank and file member of the UK folk'n'soul brigade; crooning like an understated Adele, fingerpicking like a calmer, bluesier Laura Marling, and generally following alongside Michael Kiwanuka and Corrine Bailey Rae in the largely forgotten footsteps of forebears like Joan Armatrading.  It's all tasteful stuff; smooth, smoky and readily gratifying if not massively memorable.  But among the dapperly dusky torch ballads (one of which has already turned up as an under-the-radar Simian Mobile Disco sample), there are glimmers of something bolder and more distinctive, particularly in the scrappy, funk-looping grit of "Forget" (produced by Dave Sitek), the Supremes-y sophistication of "Au Cinema" and the ice cream-loving title track's exuberant, 6/4-time throwback swagger.  That song, Wikipedia notes incidentally, "is considered to have sexual connotations, relating to male genitalia."  Hmm, sounds suggestive.

The Mavericks
[Rock/Latin/Americana]
concert preview

Miami's Mavericks formed back in the late '80s, and if their name has taken on an additional connotation or two since then, it still suits them perfectly as they continue operating proudly outside of Music Row conventions, or indeed any other expectations you might have of a Nashville-ensconced outfit who've scored fourteen singles on the Billboard country charts.  In Time (Valory) the re-reunited group's first studio album in ten years, dispenses with country music, per se, almost entirely.  (For one thing, Raul Malo, whose melodramatic tenor warblings are as lusty and magnificent as ever – Roy Orbison remains the singular, almost inevitable point of comparison – is singing with much less of a twang these days.)  Turning a typically blind eye to established musical boundaries, the album amounts to a vigorous, accordion-kissed aural argument for immigration reform, swirling together elements of cumbia, norteño, surf-rock, tango, rumba and ska with juke-joint swing and '50s-style rock'n'roll balladry to create a delirious, Tejano-rockabilly melting pot.

Redd Kross
[Rock]
concert preview

Between The Clean, Imperial Teen and Teenage Fanclub, Merge Records has made itself quite the respectable home for aging power-poppers over the years, and they managed an unexpected and especially sweet feat last year when Redd Kross, the long-dormant SoCal brotherhood of amped-up Beatlitude, turned up on their roster for their first album since 1997.  Researching The Blues, despite what its studious-sounding title may suggest, is no mild-mannered, reticent reemergence: it finds the grunge progenitors (and one-time suburban teenage snot-punks) still retaining plenty of the power part of the equation – check the title track's snarling punk-blues stomp, for instance – while balancing it with a bevy of bouncy, Byrdsy janglers which manage to stuff an impressive amount of melodic invention into three minutes or less.

Iceage/Metz/White Lung
[Punk]
concert preview

Hotly tipped hell-raisers hailing from points across the industrialized, socially democratic global North – Copenhagen, Toronto and Vancouver, respectively – this trifecta of neo-hardcore bruisers all share the time-honored punk value of brevity.  You could fit each band's most recent full-length – Metz's seething, brutally efficient s/t Sub Pop debut; Iceage's style-refining, nuance-courting (but still plenty reckless and ramshackle) growth-spurt You're Nothing (Matador) and White Lung's sneering, electrifying, Riot Grrl-checking blitzkrieg Sorry (Deranged) – onto a single CD-R, with room to spare.  Proceeding to actually listen to said pile-up, however, would be a bracing, pummeling, existentially exhausting undertaking – nasty, brutish and short, indeed – and it's hard to even fathom the impact of seeing them all live in quick succession, though at least you'll get the set breaks to catch your breath and wipe off some sweat.

originally published in Philadelphia City Paper

FIDLAR
[Punk]
concert preview

This L.A. punk band's name is an acronym, a sort of bro YOLO, which stands, in part, for "...it dog, life's a risk."  It's a mantra they seemingly take as an injunction to partake of as much risky behavior as possible including – just to run down the tracklist of their ass-kicking self-titled debut (Mom + Pop), cheap beer (the raison d'être espoused in their signature, sing-along rallying cry), cocaine, cheap cocaine, and smoking (presumably also cheap) weed.  Plus, waking, baking, skating, and not being able to surf – which in particular should endear them to tourmate/labelmate/SoCal compatriot and beach-scum Wavves (whose own new Mom + Pop bow, Afraid of Heights, is his most earnest slab of grunge revivalism to date.)  Along the way, the FIDLARs make their way through a couple hard'n'fast quasi-thrash bursts, but also some of the sweetest heroin bubblegum since the Ramones, and a surprising amount of Nashville twang to boot.

sxsw roundup pt. 3: i'm not that into music

friday

started off (musically) where thursday had ended - with billy bragg, this time doing a quick three-song set for live broadcast on "free yr radio," though i'm still not sure what that is despite the considerable amount of time i spent in contact with their promotional machinery. this time nava was even awake. there was a delicious soundcheck tease of "to have and have not," and maybe something else, but the set was mostly a repeat of two new songs he'd done last night - the not-quite-xtc-ish "farmboy" and the allegedly title-less clash one - and some of the same stories to boot, but he did treat us with an awesome "waiting for the great leap forward," which he introduced as a sing-along despite then changing nearly every line from the recorded version, including some special "sxsw exclusive" versions. good man good man. oh yeah, we also heard/saw she & him (m. ward and zooey deschanel) play there, though we were mostly too busy making buttons to notice. (i made robyn and jens buttons.)

and then we saw jens! (lekman). well, first peter moren, of björn & john sxsw ubiquity fame. was cute - he did one pb+j song, "paris 2004" - but also just kind of odd as a solo performer. he just walked off stage towards the end of his last song. was hoping for a full-band lekman set, but he just had one female accompanist (on bongos) instead of five. that turned out to be just fine though, making it a little more intimate and off-the-cuff feeling. he's just as charismatic and endearing a performer as bragg is, maybe even more so, and his banter feels less stagy and scripted - he tells the same stories over and over too of course, but he at least acknowledges it, in the unmistakably jonathan richman-esque self-dialogue intro to "postcard to nina" ("tell that story just one more time, jens." besides "nina," he did most of the highlights from kortedala (though not my faves, "shirin" and, what i was really hoping for, "your arms around me,") as well as "black cab" and the so-so "hammer hill." best part, maybe, was the sparse, kalimba-accompanied arthur russell cover ("a little lost"), though bobby didn't like it. but the set list is really beside the point, since just watching him smile to himself is as subtly thrilling as about anything you could hope hear.

had promised nava we'd take it easy on the music, or at least the rushing-around, for the afternoon, so after finishing up our semi-free beers and failing to win shoes playing washers (?) there at club de ville we headed to a parking garage cross-town to see about getting some ice cream and swimming pool action. of course. well turned out the ice cream cost and the pool line was daunting, so we stayed in the shade and played some shuffleboard - five games of it in fact, of three rounds each, which was enough to convince them we deserved free shoes even though we couldn't quite squeak out three wins in a row (even playing against bobby who was attempting to throw his games.) the vaunted santogold was also playing in the parking lot (as well as szwerogold), but we didn't really pay any attention to her, so i can't comment on that.

it was a pretty low-key evening musically as well, though i did bop around a bit at the beginning - catching five or six songs from jeff hanson (including my hands-down favorite, "this time it will"), whose impossibly high, frail, angelic voice (sadly, no match for the bar conversation and street noise wafting into emo's iv) makes for a pretty unsettling disconnect with his fairly pedestrian, quite burly, decidedly non-female physical presence; a couple extended jams from kelley stoltz, who may have some decent pop writing chops (i wouldn't know, as they weren't on display in the last ten-fifteen minutes of his set) but isn't quite good enough to justify so much aimless rocking out, harmonica-slide or no; and a perplexing tune or two from the ruby suns, who dressed like frolicking hippy schoolchildren (basically, like my twelve-year-old self - complete with flowing tie-dye shirts and a plastic bone necklace - n.b. the photo above is actually from a different show), acted like they hadn't quite grasped the concept of performing for an audience, and played as though they could have used a few more band members, multitasking instruments and sometimes switching mid-song for no apparent reason. well, i'll withhold judgment until i hear the record, i guess.

i'm ready to pass judgment, however, on the ballyhooed MGMT, whose 10pm set at stubb's was probably the most disappointing of the acts i was somewhat actively anticipating. actually i guess my expectations weren't too high, since the album had so far failed to excite me much. in fairness, i think the sound was pretty poorly mixed, as you could barely hear the keyboard parts (which are definitely the group's strongest point), but they seemed pretty content being a parody of a big-hair arena rock band (this must have been one of the biggest crowds they'd ever played to.) they seemed so young up there, like a bunch of play-acting kids - which is all well and good, but the songs just didn't seem to be there. "time to pretend" and "electric feel," pretty much the only songs i recognized, sounded good enough, but the wankery:melody ratio everywhere else was way off-balance. and they pointedly, it seemed to me, didn't play their best song, "kids," which would have gone a long way to appeasing me (since i was more or less counting on it as pay off for a hard hour or standing on my feet.) on the other hand, the beer-swigging dudes in front of me said the band was awesome, so what do i know?

from there we hedged our bets and lost out both at getting into dr. dog/tapes and tapes (way-long line) and a-trak/cool kids (could maybe have made it, but not in time to be worth it), though i did run into aaron of inflight rock band/throw me the statue. anyway, we made sure to be at pangaea early enough to avoid the rush for robyn that, as far as i could tell, never quite materialized. like amy phillips, we rolled into the (creepily glitzy) club just as the vines were hammering out a clueless cover of "ms. jackson" that after a minute came of less as painful than just plain hilarious. then they yammered something about just wanting to make a lot of money and get all the girls, played one final song (whether it was one of their hits i really couldn't tell ya), during which at one point the lead singer sort of fell over or threw himself into the drum set or something. and you know, i've gotta say i like their style of rocking out a lot more than i like mgmt's - at least it's got some pop, some pep, some rhythmic propulsion, and the songs are short.

but whatever. we were there for robyn, robyn robyn robyn. mmhm. they futzed around with her equipment for a long time, and then she started playing. not sure if the tech issues had truly been fixed - it sounded okay mostly though her vox were too quiet (in her monitor too, after several requests), and one on song ("handle me"?) the bass was suddenly chest-shakingly intense, but she still seemed kinda distracted and annoyed about it, or about something. yeah, robyn's a total pro, and she still put on a great show and got everybody riled up and smiled up, and i'm sure if there were any doubters there they were converted, so in that sense she did what she came there for, but it still seemed like a shamefully badly organized affair. this was her only showcase (though she also played at an invite-only day party in cedar street where apparently she had to do much of the set without the electronics, and at the perez hilton party - i wonder how well the tech worked there), and they couldn't even get her to soundcheck properly or figure out in advance how to make her (seemingly quite involved) setup work?

eh, i know i'm just spoiled for having gotten to see her at her first u.s. gig in new york, but there was strikingly little of the mutual warmth and magic that marked that show here - she barely talked to us, for one thing. no major changes to the set list either, though the mid-set covers medley was pretty nice, including not just "push it" and "sexual eruption" but a few more too that i can't think of now, though the latter was definitely the highlight, as she reworded it: "i'm gonna take my time...i'm gonna get mine before he gets his." i did notice that "dream on" was on the set list, but they cut it due to time constraints (presumably.) too bad... i know, i shouldn't complain, right?

the night was not quite over: we bundled up our energy and headed a little ways away to the blender magazine party, a decidedly hip affair that was going down in a warehouse in an unassuming residential area. the free drinks (pineapple vanilla vodka) and assorted schwag were nice enough, but what we really went for was the dance party, and although the notoriously reserved sxsw crowd did take a little warming up, they did eventually get into it. as well they better damn well should have, considering who was rocking the decks: diplo (philly's own!) and a-trak (maybe my fave dj, both live and on the stellar dirty south dance mixtape), trying out a one-time-only (?) experiment of switching back and forth after one track apiece. i quickly lost track of who was playing what, and it really didn't matter, as it all flowed gorgeously, with plenty of my own favorites getting aired (notably lrd's "jacques your body," stone roses' "fools' gold," de la soul's "saturdays," missy's "pass the dutch") along with lots more i didn't recognize. sadly, this party too had to be cut short, ending at 4am, maybe an hour and fifteen after d and a had taken the stage (and by which point they'd been joined by, in addition to the pottymouthed emcee blaqqstar, kid sister and a host of others whose relevance it was difficult to gauge.) damn. good to shake it with those guys.

sxsw roundup pt. 2: bragging rights

thursday

got our bikes in gear and cruised down south first to bouldin's cafe, where we had a late-ish tacos breakfast and spotted jeff lewis and some of the jitters. n and i tried to infiltrate the austin convention center to catch billy bragg's 3pm showcase set, but after four escalator flights we found out it was off-limits to mere wristband-holders. so we joined bobby at emo's instead for the shout out louds, a perfectly competent and affable pop-rock band from sweden who nevertheless fail to excite me even as passable peterbjörn+john substitutes. i did enjoy their interpolation of a verse from "train in vain" though, and how long it took me to realize that the second guitarist's hair wasn't actually a hat.

we wandered across to the annex for lykke li, surely one of sxsw's busiest performers (she had no fewer than 9 scheduled performances in three days, which is a little insane), who showed up with her band late and harried (no surprise as she'd had been a busride away for a set scheduled to start an hour and fifteen minutes earlier - but no problem as it meant we had some time to dance to the dj stylings of men aka 2/3 of le tigre, including a sweet "with every heartbeat" remix and some kind of bmore-club-esque track based on "orinoco flow" which i heard again later in the week.) her set was short (five songs) and somewhat stilted - though reading her bio and remembering that she's only 21, her stiff stage manner starts to make some more sense - but the music was enjoyable enough for what it was. (she ain't no robyn, though, that's for sure - but give her some time.)

then on to mohawk, where the clipse closed off an excellent lineup at the rhapsody party, all of which we'd missed except for a catchy final song or two by sons and daughters through the fence as we waited in line. took them a minute to get on too, but when they did they treated us to a lengthy, body-rocking, hit-packed set with most of hell hath no fury (though not "trill"), a couple throwbacks to lord willin' (though not "when the last time") and even "what happened to that boy," and a bunch of other material that i assume is from their latest mixtape. now, i like the clipse as much as i like any straight-up, traditionalist, street-minded hip-hop (save maybe sway, more on whom later), but that's nothing compared to some of the heads in this crowd, singing along with nearly every line. and pusha and malice seemed genuinely touched and even surprised by the level of crowd enthusiasm, basking and revelling in our presence and energy as much as we were in theirs. they put on a professional, spirited performance, and seemed fully at ease in the slightly incongruous all-white-hipster crowd and sunny outdoor setting, but what surprised me was how warm, affable and humorous they were considering their tough, deadly-serious, hardcore lyrical personae. they're obviously very self-aware and incredibly savvy, not just as artists but as businessmen ("it's all in the spirit of competition...we just think we're the best"), and it's clear they recognize this crowd as a core constituency of their fanbase. basically it was a big love-in.

after a somewhat extravagant dinner at miguel's, we headed south of the river to catch the world's greatest active rock band, austin homeboy's spoon, alongside a few thousand of their fellow citizens in a sprawling riverside festival-stage area. i didn't bother getting in a place to really even see the stage (at least until the set-closing "underdog"), was perfectly content to sit back in the grass and smile along. i've now seen them outdoors twice as many times (four) as indoors.

got a little stressy after that, as i scrambled to figure out the location and time of a sway performance i'd just gotten wind of that morning, the delay causing me to wind up at the end of a long static line for the secretly canadian showcase and miss the two low-pro bands i'd been there to see. once i did finally get inside to see the tail end of explorer's club, there was some miscommunication and some exhaustion and some ambiguity of priorities that led to me and nava going back outside and sitting on the lawn opposite the venue as bon iver played his/their set. it sounded great, certainly loud and clear, and it was sorta nice to just sit and listen and not have to worry about the crowd or trying to watch it, though i do wish we'd managed to see something in this prime-time slot, if not bon or sway then, as i now remember and realize we actually should have done, the retribution gospel choir at st. david's church.

got it together and biked over to the cedar st. courtyard an hour early for billy bragg, on the way passing by the english beat on stage at the bizarre, fake 'smokin' music' venue that i'd forgotten they were playing. wish we'd stopped and gone inside there too (the crowd looked pretty sparse), but i'm happy with the bits i did catch: the opening fill and groove of "twist and crawl" and the final verse/chorus of "stand down margaret," which they rather disconcertingly changed to "stand down hillary." hmmmmm. it was no trouble getting into cedar street, though as lovely a space as it is, it's long, narrow, cluttered with furniture and just generally poorly chosen as a sxsw venue. probably would have enjoyed devotchka's late, lovely set even more if i'd been able to see a bit better, but it was good enough catching occasional glimpses of the suave, expressively-eyebrowed lead crooner, goofy sousaphonist and toy-looking squeezebox player.

in any case i'm glad we got there early because it made it easy to get almost up to the front before mr. love and justice, aka billy bragg, the iconic (more like a st. bernard than the eiffel tower, he says) commie troubadour i've been wanting to see for at least a decade now. and he did not disappoint, churning out the jams for as long as they'd let him (it still feels a little funny that the venues have to cut off every show at two on the mark, as they did with every 1am-slot show i saw all week except for the tough alliance.) some material from the new album (!) - "farmboy," "i'll keep faith," "oh freedom" - which is being touted as a return to worker's playtime form (nice to hear that recognized as perhaps his best work), though those songs at least seemed a little mawkishly propagandistic to me - and an excellent sorta-silly "johnny clash" song which i assume is on the album but i'm not sure. but mostly he stuck to golden oldies - "accident waiting to happen," "power in a union," "levi stubbs' tears" (!), "little time bomb" (!!), and of course penultimate sing-along "new england." [also "way over yonder in the minor key" and "world turned upside down."] he also talked a lot - he's very funny, even if he occasionally takes his jokes farther than even i might - and he just generally seemed to be enjoying himself, which was great to see. he offered us a choice between the carpenters and dylan for a 'busking-style' acoustic cover, but after the carps (of course) squeaked a win nobody sang along with the chorus [of "superstar"], so he cut himself off, bemoaned it a 'travesty of democracy' and launched into "don't think twice" instead - okay, but a little whatever. (i heard he did a shangri-la's tune - "give him a great big kiss" - in duet with kate nash saturday afternoon - how effing cool!) anyway, so so good to finally see the man in person, and easily a highlight of the week.