2012 Review Round-Up: March

it's december! here's the plan: as i work my way toward year-end musical festivities (listing! mixing! feasting!), i'm rounding up all (or nearly all) of my writerly output from 2012 with a series of posts, one per day, one for each month, over the next eleven (or twelve?) days. or bust!

proceeding into march, and a fair amount of perhaps overly arty schtuff of various kinds.  but first: another month of 2012, another bout of gushing hot chip fanboyness:

New Build
Yesterday Was Lived And Lost

The third in a recent string of unreasonably excellent Hot Chip side projects, following About Group's Start and Complete and The 2 Bears' Be Strong – all released within a year of one another and also, impressively, as the band were preparing their own soon-to-be-released fifth album) – New Build is spearheaded by guitarist Al Doyle (also of LCD Soundsystem) and drummer (in this group, bassist) Felix Martin. Given its pedigree, Yesterday Was Lived And Lost holds exactly no stylistic surprises, offering a familiar blend of gently melodic synth-pop and electronic dance-rock with plenty of percussive, LCD-style disco-funk workouts. Doyle may not have the undeniable personality and charisma of James Murphy, Joe Goddard or Alexis Taylor – though he does have a bit of Taylor's earnest sweetness. But his understated melancholia is endearing in its own right, and his subdued vocals do sometimes recall another Chip affiliate, the smooth, blue-eyed retro-soul man Grovesnor.

One of New Build's most effective tactics is to juxtapose a floating, leisurely lead vocal line against a markedly more kinetic rhythm track – be it the stirring, propulsive double-time drive of "Behind The Shutter," the jittery, DFA/Talking Heads-style dance-punk of "Mercy," the warmly sparkling, '80s-vintage pop-funk of "Silence and the Muttering" and the gorgeously silky "Miranda (Be My Guide)" or, most audaciously and dramatically, the pumping Euro-house synths of the plaintive/anthemic "Do You Not Feel Loved." As the tempos slow toward the album's latter half, the results grow somewhat less distinctive – "Schism of the Mind," "Finding Reasons" and the beatbox bossa "Last Gasp" toe the line between suitably somber and simply sluggish – although these ballads serve their function, balance-wise, in context. More satisfying, if slight, are a pair of mildly silly, XTC-ish pop nuggets, "Medication" and "The Third One."

But it's lead single and go-to track "Misery Loves Company" that provides perhaps the most immediate and unabashed thrills, bursting from a sturdy, workmanlike chug to an effervescent, stop-time chorus whose musical effect is similar to Doyle's lyrical description of his experience upon sighting the object of his affection: being transported to "a place where the process of thought dissolves into tiny pieces." Much more than a stop-gap substitute that will be forgotten by the time the next Hot Chip full-length comes along; Yesterday stands on its own terms as one of the finest dance/electro-pop records of the year. Either Doyle and Martin have been impeccably schooled by their bandmates in the fine art of blending melody and propulsion, humor and heart (not to mention the tasteful inclusion of steel drums) – or else they've been some of the band's too-well-kept secret weapons all along.

Ital
Hive Mind

Ital is the latest alias of Daniel Martin-McCormick, a San Francisco-based deep thinker and genre iconoclast whose resumé includes punk/noise/experimental mayhem with the groups Black Eyes and Mi Ami and weird, murky solo electronic pop excursions as Sex Worker. Ital represents, at least in theory, Martin-McCormick's take on "straightforward" electronic dance music, but there's little that's straightforward about Hive Mind (Ital's first full length following a trio of 12"s) – and while you could probably dance to much of it, that feels fairly low down the list of priorities here. The album's few, lengthy tracks aren't far removed in their ultimate effect from the kind of spacey, psychedelic, low-impact quasi-house music that's been emanating from plenty of corners lately, but there's something decidedly unconventional – loose and intuitive, haphazard even – about the way they're constructed. Which isn't to say this is an amateurish affair – even working with deliberately crude technology (the tracks were constructed using the basic freeware program Audacity), Martin-McCormick's clearly got strong production chops, ample attention to detail, and an intrinsic understanding of how to put together a credible dance track. But he wields his eclectic musical background and border-crossing "outsider" status with smirking pride, playfully muddying up the margins of what dance music is "supposed" to do.

The most striking thing here is opener "Doesn't Matter (If You Love Him)," which jabs listeners with a numbingly incessant sample of Lady Gaga speaking the title phrase (evoking the stutter-cuts of Chicago footwork music – especially considering the album's appearance on Planet Mu – but also inevitably recalling The Chemical Brothers' similarly ticcish, arrhythmic use of an nearly identical phrase, to similarly demented effect, on "It Doesn't Matter") atop a limber two-note punk-funky bassline punctuated by cosmic laser swoops and unexpected detours (Whitney Houston makes a memorable appearance.) It's a thrilling, if jarring and rather exhausting ride. The rest of the album, though, takes a gentler tack: colorful, certainly, but less overtly demanding of attention. Setting aside the brief, unsettling lurch of "Privacy Settings" (complete with wolf howls!), the other three tracks (each ten minutes long) are fluid, groove-oriented excursions: wet, woozy and synth-drenched, with plenty of percussion and occasional, largely indecipherable speech samples (contributing to a vague sense of political/philosophical subtext.) There are plenty of musical reference points that might obtain at various moments throughout Hive Mind – the wormy leftfield electro-pop of Schneider TM, the lazy Balearic grooves of Sweden's Studio, the dubbed out disco-house of Motorbass, the seasick swoon of Teengirl Fantasy, the brainiac irreverence of Mouse on Mars – but ultimately Martin-McCormick has cobbled together something that can't quite be compared.

The Host
s/t

The Host – a fresh alias and a fresh start for Irish producer Barry Lynn, who's best known for his dubstep-inclined work as Boxcutter – arrived with a slight whiff of the mysterious: upon announcing the act's signing, Planet Mu records initially kept mum about Lynn's involvement; there's also the vaguely ominous tone of the name and the album's post-apocalyptic/sci-fi artwork. But – at least in terms of abstract electronic music – this project turns out to be much more about the familiar. A predilection for '90s-era internet terminology ("Angel Fire," "Neo-Geocities") among the track titles seems to have little direct relevance to the music save for its general emulation – at least in the album's first half – of that era's prevalent IDM sounds, particularly recalling the classic work of Aphex Twin, Autechre, Boards of Canada and µ-Ziq (a.k.a. Planet Mu label-head Mike Paradinas.) Hence, we get plenty of fluttery, skittering percussion alongside amorphously oozing synth washes; spacey, spiraling melodic effects and sometimes woozy, ominous bass thrums. In a few instances ("Tryptamine Sweep," "Second Life"), the rhythm tracks have a spastic but light-on-their-feet quality that recalls the hyper-kineticism of contemporary Chicago footwork music (fittingly enough, since footwork has found its most fervent ambassador in Planet Mu), but even so it's balanced and muted by the subdued pace of the surrounding synth activity. This is, at heart, music for dreaming, definitely not (even thinking about) dancing. That's even more true of the album's second half (the final four tracks are nearly as long as the first eight combined) which, along with the briefer, earlier outliers "Hidden Ontology" and "3am Surfing," largely eschews rhythm and percussion altogether in favor of a more floating, organic approach reminiscent of 1970s Kosmiche and gently psychedelic New Age music; all shimmering, suffusive warmth and soft, melted-in-the-sun guitar frippery. Most satisfying – and the clear centerpiece – is the seven-and-a-half minute "Rainy Sequences/Phosphene Patterns," which dissolves from languorous odd-meter jazz-fusion, complete with a lusciously snaking bassline, to a gorgeously somnolent, sun-flecked daze. The shorter, slightly cheerier "Summer Solstice At Cape Canaveral" charts an approximately opposite trajectory to similar effect. And the gentle, entirely pulse-less "Aeontology" and "Birthday Bluebells" simply meander through space, pleasantly aimless. Despite an abundance of ideas and ample facility with sound and texture, The Host never quite coheres into anything more than an enjoyable collection of doodles and moods – but that's definitely not to suggest Lynn's hospitality is ever anything less than gracious.
originally published at AllMusic.com

The Magnetic Fields
Love At The Bottom Of The Sea

Like Guided by Voices' Let's Go Eat the Factory earlier this year (and with oddly similar cover art), Love at the Bottom of the Sea finds a beloved troupe of indie vets valiantly relapsing to a sound and style they'd forsaken since the miraculous mid-90s – back before their sui generis magnum opus 69 Love Songs and the subsequent, decade-spanning "no synths trilogy" – with, on the whole, credible results. Despite some shiny new toys, Love doesn't stray from the distinctive synths'n'ukes'n'drum machines template and the lovably weird, soupy sonics of records like Holiday and Get Lost. But TMF are not the band they once were – that is; Stephin Merritt isn't songwriter he used to be. Time was he'd implement his amply-vaunted cleverness at the service of his songs, but for some time now that relationship has been inverted; his recent ditties – these fifteen included – typically smack of Wit with a pointed wink and a satisfied smirk and a capital W. So it merits a mild sigh, but no great surprise, that after the vaguely insipid, campy artifice of Realism, beneath the uncharacteristically throwaway album title, behind the refreshing lack of conceptual trappings (the songs are mostly about love, and more specifically sex and/or sexual frustration, but that's basically de rigeur), lies the Magnetic Fields first out-and-out novelty record. Fortunately there are some decent jokes. "Andrew in Drag" ("the only boy I'd shag/the only boy I'd anything") is a pure delight, and prime, archetypal Merritt, as is "The Horrible Party" (sung by Claudia with deliciously scornful haughtiness), while the ersatz-Depeche-Mode "Infatuation (With Your Gyration)" and wry foot-stomper (and melodic highlight) "Goin' Back To The Country" are jaunty fun. As for the groan-inducing "I Would Go Anywhere with Hugh" and senseless rhyming-dictionary exercises like "All She Cares About is Mariachi"...well, at least every song here is under three minutes long. Soul may be utterly antithetical to the Magnetic Fields project at this point, but at least Wit has one, and brevity is it. [7]

Perfume Genius
Put Your Back N 2 It

With a whimpering tenor recalling any number of indie sad-sacks at various points along the normalcy spectrum – Conor Oberst, Antony, Sufjan Stevens, Grandaddy's Jason Lyttle, Xiu Xiu's Jamie Stewart – and a hushed, reverb-cloaked palette dominated by his numbingly spare, simple piano playing, Mike Hadreas treads a delicate, well-worn musical path with ample potential for both tenderness and tedium. 2010's Learning stood out for the unflinching candor of its evocatively detailed storytelling; its starkly, sometimes uncomfortably personal verité mirrored in its homespun recording quality. But album number two pulls back from that musical and writerly intimacy – if only slightly – trading a degree of specificity for a degree of universality, and adding just the faintest touch of gloss. Hadreas' narrators still inhabit some decidedly harrowing circumstances – references to violence and secrecy, sex and misery are scattered obliquely throughout – but the particulars are tougher to grasp and probably, ultimately, beside the point. With Back's marked tendency toward '50s pop and, especially, gospel inflections, these songs often feel like elemental hymns – the fervent supplication of "Take Me Home" (surely one of the more spiritual songs about prostitution ever penned); the Spectorian teen melodrama of "Hood" – with Hadreas as our gutter-dragged, unlikely pastor tendering his fragile, hard-won compassion. [7]
originally published in Magnet Magazine

Mouse On Mars
Parastrophics
[Electronic]

Two decades into an improbable, idiosyncratic career, Mouse on Mars refuse to sit still. Parastrophics (Monkeytown), the German duo's first outing in six years, has probably their shortest attention span yet, playing like gleefully hyper-fragmented spin on the warped pop'n'splutter of 2004's Radical Connector. If there's anything holding together this disorienting (though rarely disagreeable) mishmosh of wibbly videogame fever-dreams, Martian robot hip-hop, and demento disko, it's the album's consistent sound –bright, bleepy and brittle– and its infectiously odd, bubbly humor.

Francis Harris
Leland
[Electronic/Acoustic]

Probably wisely, Brooklyn producer Francis Harris set aside the decidedly silly "Adultnapper" moniker in favor of his birth name for the self-consciously mature Leland (Scissor and Thread) – although, funnily, it would actually be excellent music for adults to nap to. While most of the album is rooted in deep, downtempo minimalist house – think Pantha du Prince at his most placid and somber – the grooves take a back seat to live instrumentation – cello, loosely jazzy vocals and Jon Hassell-ish trumpet – suffusing Harris' patient explorations with an elegant, pensive melancholy.

Windy and Carl
We Will Always Be
[Ambient/Experimental/Rock]

As it's printed on the cover, the title of Windy and Carl's tenth(ish) album, We Will Always Be (Kranky), combines with their own names to form a gently emphatic (re)assertion of the long-running Michigan couple/duo's perseverance and singularity. The music feels much the same way. Excepting the unexpectedly Low-like vocal opener, they never veer from the minimalist, instrumental "space-rock" path they've been following since 1993: glacial, guitar-derived drone – seamlessly serene, if sometimes surprisingly heavy – quietly potent enough to retard the passage of time.

Julia Holter
Ekstasis
[Art/Pop/Ambient]

Conversant with both classical (her training) and pop (her audience), but beholden to the conventions of neither, Julia Holter's music feels airy and lucid on the surface, but maintains a deeply obscure, unfathomable interior. Ekstasis (Rvng Intl), the fast-rising California art star's second album, paradoxically pairs a twinkling, glassy beauty not unlike plenty of recent, dreamy bedroom fabrications (pillowy synths; perfunctory machine percussion; ethereal, glossolalic swirls and clusters of vocal) – plus a few sparingly ornate touches (harpsichord, tympani) – with an utterly chilly, dead-eyed post-punk austerity.

Grimes
Visions
[Rock/Pop/Electronic]

Visions (4AD) is by some measure the most concrete, melody-centric and approachable record yet from pixieish Montrealer Claire Boucher – aka Grimes – but there's still something ineffably insubstantial about its cotton-candy cyborg pop; all plush, pillowy synths, aerated vocals and soft-focus sweet-tooth atmospherics; something fluky and casually unpremeditated. Even the bona-fide synth-pop jams (like the on-repeat, Del Shannon-channeling "Oblivion") feel pleasantly accidental. So-called "dream pop" rarely comes this close to the surreal, patchwork otherness of actual dreams.

Sleigh Bells
Reign of Terror
[Rock/Pop]

Sleigh Bells' second album couldn't hope to repeat the sheer shock and awe factor of their debut; on Reign of Terror (Mom + Pop), the Brooklyn duo seem to be compensating by simultaneously ramping up both the hardness and softness of their blunt-force, maximum-impact pop: both Derek Miller's punishing metal/industrial storm and stress and Alexis Krauss' sugary coo are noticeably intensified here. But the real coup is the songs themselves; a smarter, toothier, more complex batch that suggests these guys may have even more surprises in store.

Scuba
Personality
[Electronic]

Coming from Scuba – aka Berlin-via-London dubstep maven Paul Rose; bleeding-edge tastemaker behind Hotflush Recordings (Sepalcure, Mount Kimbie, Joy Orbison) – Personality feels downright reactionary, with its fist-pumping forays into progressive trance and surging prime-time techno, and a lead single ("The Hope") brazenly evoking the electro-shlock of Calvin Harris' "Vegas." If anything, though, he doesn't go quite far enough: Rose's well-honed instinct for sophisticated restraint – and his still-palpable dark, dubby fingerprints – leave these tracks feeling a little, well, impersonal, stopping short of the gauche, heedless euphoria to which they aspire.

various artists
Shangaan Shake
[Electronic]

Shangaan Shake (Honest Jons) is an exhaustive, exhilarating double-disc collecting reworks of the radically fast, cheap, out-of-control South African DIY dance music collected on 2010's Shangaan Electro by a veritable who's-who of bleeding-edge electronica, with results ranging from polite, skeletal minimal tech (Ricardo Villalobos, Mark Ernestus) to prismatic broken-beat dub (Burnt Friedman, Old Apparatus), banging Chicago footwurk (DJs Rashad & Spinn) and bad-ass machine-funk (Oni Ayhun) and inscrutable IDM (Actress, Peverelist), all inflected by some of weirdest, wildest otherworldly grooves in recent memory.

Of Montreal/Kishi Bashi
[Indie Pop/Psychosis]
concert preview

Eleven albums into an exceptionally metamorphic career, Kevin Barnes has arrived at some kind of ultimate dark night of the (psychedelic) soul. Never one to shy from brutal self-scrutiny or aural over-indulgence, Paralytic Stalks (Polyvinyl) is his most extravagant and fascinating catharsis yet, channeling a life's worth of romantic and familial psychotrauma into everything from proggy, hyper-theatrical art-funk and depraved yacht rock to towering, tortured orchestral miasma. Key lyric "I'm so confused; what is the purpose of this ego sickness?" stands as both thesis statement and probable listener reaction. Equally elaborate and sonically rich, but far lighter and friendlier, 151a (Joyful Noise) – the debut from of Montreal/Regina Spektor violinist K. Ishibashi (also of the band Jupiter One) – is a sumptuous confection of sweetly symphonic, atmospheric indie-pop that definitely recalls fellow fiddle-loopers and wry romanticists Owen Pallett and Andrew Bird, but also Sung Tongs-era Animal Collective and Elephant Sixers like Beulah, Elf Power and, actually, early, pre-freakification of Montreal.


Gotye
[Pop]
concert preview

Gotye – Belgian-born Australian Wally de Backer – gets compared a lot to Sting and Peter Gabriel, not only for his sound (though there is that), but the whole nature of his project: you just don't see much call for smart, sensitive, internationally-minded, brazenly eclectic (male) pop artists these days. Hugely ambitious and even more hugely successful, Making Mirrors (Universal Republic) is simply immaculate. In another era, at least half of these songs would be massive singles. And hey, it could still happen.


Van Hunt
[Rock/R&B]
concert preview

After two albums of solid, underappreciated neo-funk and soul – plus the darkly extravagant 2008 industry miscarriage Popular (unceremoniously shelved weeks before its slated Blue Note release date) – Van Hunt threw unsuspecting listeners for a loop last year with the self-released What Were You Hoping For? (Godless Hotspot), taking up a strain of raw, fiercely idiosyncratic Black rock that stretches back at least to Shuggie Otis and late-era Sly Stone but that's been largely neglected in the decade since Cody ChesnuTT's one-off paragon The Headphone Masterpiece. Loose, ragged, freaky and funny, Hoping veers from visceral, thrashing punk rock and gritty psychedelic funk to tender R&B balladry (Hunt has cited Iggy Pop and Curtis Mayfield as key influences), with a wide-ranging lyrical scope (discoursing on everything from sex and religion to cross-dressing and time travel) and a reliably frank, incisive wit.

Estelle
[R&B/Pop]
concert preview

It's been a while since we've heard from Estelle, the UK singer and (far too infrequently) rapper who stole America's heart back in 2008 with a little help from Kanye West and will.i.am (whose beat for her million-selling "American Boy" was essentially lifted wholesale from his own "Impatient.") But that should be changing soon: two years after its initially reported drop date and a few false-start lead singles later, her third album All of Me (Atlantic) is due out this week, finding her once again in excellent company (Janelle Monae, Rick Ross) and nimbly making her way through a mix of R&B, hip-hop, reggae and agreeably unmanicured pop that should be a no-brainer for fans of Jazmine Sullivan and Jill Scott.


School of Seven Bells
[Rock/Electronic]
concert preview

School of Seven Bells' trajectory has been one of both distillation and magnification: trimming the fat and the fuzz from the grimier sounds of its members' previous bands (Secret Machines and On!Air!Library!) to create something darker, starker and purer, which they've buffed and polished, over the course of three albums, into a sleek, elemental force; a glistening synthesis of rhythm, melody and noise for which "digital shoegaze" is an apt but far too pedestrian designation. Recorded in the wake of Claudia Deheza's departure from the band, which is now down to a duo (Benjamin Curtis and remaining twin sister Alejandra Deheza), Ghostory (Ghostly/Vagrant) is their biggest-sounding album to date but also, unexpectedly, their most human.

Black Keys/Arctic Monkeys
[Rock]
concert preview

There's something almost quaint about this show. Since when do rock bands (okay, make that rock bands under 40) play stadium concerts anymore? It fits, though, with the rather anachronistically gradual, grassroots path the Black Keys have taken, over the last ten years, to reach this point, and with the grandstanding swagger and cheeky retro vibe of, in particular, their latest and greatest record, the gloriously tossed-off rock'n'soul party El Camino (Nonesuch). Arctic Monkeys, as archetypically British in their aesthetic reference points as the Keys are prototypically American (both bands hail, not insignificantly, from similarly mid-sized industrial cities – Sheffield and Akron), have had an almost polar-opposite career trajectory, from a meteoric, notoriously 'net-abetted rise to, seemingly, mounting indifference, even if last year's delightfully clever Suck It and See (Domino) ranks among their finest work.

Pond/Oberhofer
[Rock/Pop]
concert preview

Righteous and ramshackle, the Perth threesome Pond come across like shaggier country cousins to fellow Aussie psych-rockers Tame Impala. It's no shocker that the bands share two members, but Pond have definitely got their own thing going; swapping Impala's laser focus (both sonic and structural) for a looser lysergic groove that, on the deliciously decadent Beard, Wives, Denim (Modular) – their fourth long-player following such titles as Psychedelic Mango and Corridors of Blissterday – gallops and wallops all over the long-haired throwback map. Brooklynite Brad Oberhofer favors a strain of muscular, cathartic indie rock emotionalism that's at least as old as his 21 years. There wouldn't have been so many glockenspiels, xylophones and general Brian Wilson/Jon Brion-isms back in those days, but hooks are hooks, and Oberhofer's debut, the Steve Lillywhite-produced Time Capsules II (Glassnote), is lousy with 'em.

Young Prisms
[Rock/Pop]
concert preview

What's so amazing that keeps us shoegazing? Twenty years after Nowhere and Loveless, there's hardly a shortage of shattered, sleepy-haired bands still in thrall to the sway and shimmer, the seasick churn, the cardboard-flat drumming, the dreary dreaminess of it all – and five-strong San Francisco rainbow connectors Young Prisms might just be the purest refractors going of that endless, edgeless sound. In Between (Kanine), which drops later this month, skews a bit softer and fuzzier than their debut (they've got a few more X chromosomes this time around), and is, like its title, as good a summation as any of shoegaze's primal, elusive not-quite-there-ness; that wonder-filled/workaday magical muddle of perfect dirtiness and damaged purity. Someday we'll find it...

Elliott Brood
[Rock/Americana]
concert preview

Elliott Brood – a band, not a person – hail from Toronto, but they sure know how to hit that elusive Americana sweet spot between roots-folk heart and rock'n'roll muscle. By turns punkish and tender, Days Into Years (Paper Bag) – reportedly inspired by time spent visiting WWI cemeteries and battlefields in France – has its share of banjo and mandolin, but what really hits it home is Mark Sasso's mean, sinewy guitar work and richly gritty (and warmly harmonized) lead vocals.



Fanfarlo
[Rock/Pop/Folk]
concert preview

Scotland's Fanfarlo emerged on their 2009 debut as fine but rather undistinguished purveyors of thrummingly earnest sad-sack indie-chamber-folk-pop very much in the Arcade Fire/Beirut/Grizzly Bear mold. But something seems to have jolted them out of their tragically-tasteful longueur sometime over the last three years, because Rooms Filled With Light (Canvasback) is a different – sparkier, quirkier, artier – beast, with a newly frenzied, almost jerky rhythmic drive; setting aside the mandolins and singing saws (though not the moodily cinematic string sections: they need those) in favor of weird, swoony saxophones, healthy sprinkles of synthesizer, and some well-deployed temple blocks – although, it must be said, the romantic expressiveness of Simon Balthazar's baritone still affords its share of Win Butler flashbacks.

The Coup

[Hip-Hop/Funk]
concert preview
As radically energized as they are, the Coup sure take their time between records – we haven't heard from them since 2006's Pick a Bigger Weapon (Epitaph), which still sounds tremendous even if its political talking points ("Bush and Hussein together in bed...") are a little outdated. Sorry To Bother You – the guest-studded soundtrack to an in-the-works film of the same title inspired by Boots Riley's time working as a telemarketer (and featuring Patton Oswalt and David Cross) – is reportedly dropping sometime later this year, so hopefully we'll hear some previews of that material; either way it's always worth catching one of the funkiest live bands in hip-hop.
originally published in Philadelphia City Paper

SXSW 2012: Friday

Had some adventures today. Having fun, getting into the zone. Saw about twice as many bands as Thursday, too. Unintentionally apropos lyric quote of the day, from New Build: "It's not good for the body, but it's good for the soul." (At least, I hope that's true.)

esc

(this is not spoek mothambo, it's just some guy who was at the spin party)

Spoek Mothambo 12:30 PM SPIN Party @ Stubbs
A friend hooked us up with passes to the hot-ticket Spin Magazine party, killer lineup but also an ideal, archetypal way to start a Southby day: free BBQ, free beer, free vodka, free weirdo space-age sugar-water. The highly amusing MC for the event ("Make some muthafucking tweets!") described this Sub Pop-signed South African rapper/artist/guy as "way cooler than you," which I guess is true on a technical level – and he did have a pretty fly jacket – but between us I think you're actually probably cooler. His set bounced around from post-punk to rap to electro-ish breaks in rather haphazard fashion, and was decent to dance to in spurts, but didn't leave much of a musical impression, except maybe his funked-up version of Joy Division's "She's Lost Control."

Dionnevox 1:00 PM @ Stubbs
From Seattle, playing this party because they won some sort of contest, but anyway they earned it, without a doubt. Nothing short of baroque in their approach to costuming, with a sort of dark fantasy steampunk burlesque look (summarized by the aforementioned MC as "if the movie Blade Runner were two attractive girls.") Lead singer lady stripped through about four distinct outfits over the course of the brief set, including a sequined harlequin bustier and black leather bodysuit with assorted diagonal zippers (she had to sit down on stage to fully remove that one), not to mention her elaborately made-up/bejeweled face and black feathered headpiece, while the dead-eyed dancer was equally striking in black and white lace tights, garter, striped faux-fur legwarmers and platforms. For some reason they didn't make the DJ/producer guys dress up at all; totally lame. Musically they followed a similar aesthetic – dark industrial electro-goth torch songs with low, deadpan vocals and solid songwriting. The standout was probably "Spoken Like a Slave," during which the singer lady repeatedly cracked her mic cord like a whip.

Escort 1:30 PM @ Stubbs
Stone killers. Escort is a fifteen-piece (at this show anyway) disco orchestra, largely composed of NYC studio pros (the drummer happens to be my cousin.) And they're perhaps the most ridiculously tight live act anywhere, not to mention the most fun. They're fronted by lanky French-African singer Adeline Michele, who's a total knockout and a sweet-smiling charmer – but really the whole band are just gorgeous to look at; about as diverse a collection of musicians as you could imagine sharing one stage. Too bad they're apparently too big a band to make touring economically plausible; there's a lot of folks out there who could use some of their pure, unadultered joy.

New Build 2:10 PM MWTX @ 1100 Warehouse
The latest in a recent string of unreasonably excellent Hot Chip side projects (following Alexis Taylor's About Group and Joe Goddard's 2 Bears – who just put out probably the party album of the decade), this group is spearheaded by guitarist Al Doyle (also of LCD Soundsystem) and drummer (in this group, bassist) Felix Martin, joined here by a Stop Making Sense-ish full band, including a killer timbale/steel pan player. With his shock of red hair and big scruffy beard, Doyle's a friendly, familiar figure from Hot Chip and LCD shows, and definitely a likable bloke, but he doesn't quite have the charisma to carry a performance like his other bands' inimitable frontmen. Or maybe this was just an atypically low-energy set – he admitted that they were exhausted, which was pretty clear to see. (And not a great sign considering they still had a bunch of shows to play.) Set-closer (and my current brain-ruling jam of the moment) "Misery Loves Company" riled up some dancing energy from the crowd, but it pretty much took that long.

Purity Ring 3:00 PM @ 1100 Warehouse
Super cool, super hotly tipped electro-weird duo from Montreal (and Halifax, apparently); almost as fresh and original in their approach to performance as to their music. I.e.: very. Set against a simple. spare pink/green/orange backdrop, producer Corin Roddick triggered sounds by drumming on a complex arrangement of paper-lantern-like color-changing lamps, while Megan James twirled and whacked a mounted bass drum that lit up with every hit. As for the music – definitely done some sonic disservice in this overly loud and bassy setting, but potent nonetheless – it is deep; twitchy; voluptuous; alien; gorgeous. I normally hate this comparison, but I would describe James' vocals, particularly her way of drawing out and rounding her syllables, as legitimately Björk-like at points. Stunning.

Nicolas Jaar's Darkside 3:30-6:30 PM(?) @ MTV Hive House
Ok, this was kind of unexpected. Not knowing what I was getting myself in for, I boarded a bus with only about eight other people, bound for an (evidently, very) intimate performance by elusive, arty-electro wunderkind Jaar (or more specifically his new, jazz-tinted "Darkside" project.) It turned out be at a house somewhere a good ways from downtown, with an expansive yard complete with stone fireplace, rusty swing set and large chicken coop. The performance was to be intensively videotaped for an episode of Yours Truly (some web thingy which I don't entirely understand), but it took almost two hours to actually happen, during which time we chilled on the porch, watched the chickens, and enjoyed some nice Belgian blonde ales, pulled pork sliders, tater tots and champagne. Not exactly how I'd been planning to spend my afternoon, but hard to really complain...

And the performance, when it happened (in the garage; windows blacked out and adorned with colored fluorescent light-bars), really was something special – Jaar on Ableton loops, keys and multiple knobby controllers, along with a clearly jazz/improv-rooted guitarist and sax/keyboard player, all three of them immensely proficient musicians, more or less improvising extended elaborations on their recent EP tracks, and achieving a true, fluid fusion of electronic and live instrumentation in a way that was pretty much unprecedented in my experience. If that sounds at all esoteric and/or heady – well, to some extent it definitely was, but it was also emotional, engaging, and surprisingly dynamic, with elements of the mix constantly shifting and evolving around a subdued but seriously grooving core.

Easily the most transcendent piece came after the brief (~20 min.) taping itself; another extended "jam" that wormed its way into a spry, funky re-imagining of the album highlight "Space is Only Noise," as we danced barefoot on the lawn...

The Rubies 7:00 PM @ Elysium
And then, for something completely different – except insofar as it was an equally demonstrative instance of SXSW's gloriously chaotic, improbable serendipity. Somehow I had it in my head that this band was a spin-off of ambient noise/drone group Emeralds (probably because it was listed as "The Rubies (from The Emeralds)," and I conveniently ignored the "from Yokohama Japan" part.)

But no. These Rubies from Japan were a bunch of preposterously manic hard rock'n'roll/power-pop nutsos, in classic bewilderingly enthusiastic Japanese fashion. They all had on matching splotchy print shirts and red pants. Except for one guy who had a tiger print shirt and red pants, who came out playing about five tambourines at once and wearing another one on his head. Then he passed them all out into the crowd, followed by a huge shopping bag full of mini-heart-shaped tambourines. Then they pulled a random girl onstage to dance and smash a cymbal, and left her there while most of the band jumped into the audience and started pulling people into a frenzied dancing circle. Then they passed out a ton of those little bottle-shaped party-popper things and instructed us to fire them all simultaneously at one of the band members. All while pounding out nonstop heavy metal surf riffs and high-octane Beatle-pop harmonies. Oh my god, it was preposterous!!

(I left, after maybe twenty minutes of sheer madness, festooned with tangles of party-popper streamers, and also with a mini-tambourine, which became an excellent accessory for my night of biking through the streets and back alleys of Austin, as well as an excellent audience-participatory clapping aid.)

The War On Drugs 7:45 PM @ ACL Live/Moody Theater
Hey, Philly band! Honestly can't remember if I'd seen these guys before or not, but anyway they did their warm, hazy, folky-rockin' thing, like they do, and it was resoundingly pleasant, especially under the pastel purple and sea-foam green lights of the new and very spiffy Moody Theater. There were a couple of other Philly(-ish) bands I'd been thinking of trying to catch around this time – the terrific folk songwriter Strand of Oaks (actually from Wilkes-Barre) and super-fun good-times rockers Free Energy (whose new single is pure radness...so psyched they're back in action these days!) But, I was here instead, mostly to make sure not to miss...

The Magnetic Fields 8:45 PM @ Moody Theater
Oh Stephin. Oh Claudia. Oh John, and Sam, and Shirley... So, I have a deep, long-abiding love/hate relationship with this band. Which I won't get into here. (Well okay, when it comes down to it, mostly love.) Anyhow, what can I say. They have reintroduced synthesizers – after a decade-plus of their strictly-real-instruments-only policy – on their (not-terrible, but predictably sub-par, and overly joke-centric) new album – but decidedly not in their live setup, which remains almost entirely acoustic. Impressively for the size of the space, it was quiet enough not to wear earplugs – per usual, Stephin Merritt did his best to enforce absolute audience silence in his typically oblique, bone-dry fashion. ("I talked at somebody else's show once.......it was Patty LuPone.......that's why I'm so short.") He seemed to be in a (relatively) good mood, though. He made jokes that were funny as well as clever. He played melodica, harmonium, kazoo, and (on a subtle rearrangement of "Come Back From San Francisco") revealed a surprisingly sweet falsetto.

I left after forty-five minutes – not sure how late their set actually went – but while I was there they probably did most of the new tunes (many of which, I'll admit, really are novelty/comedy song gold), along with plenty of 69 Love Songs "hits" and a few choice oldies (spine-tingling "Smoke and Mirrors"; oddball Holiday pick "Swinging London"; Obscurities standout "Plant White Roses") – most of which still bring chills. If only he still wrote 'em like he used to.

The Mynabirds 9:30 @ Lambert's
Totally underrated female-fronted rootsy (folk/soul/rock/country/pop/etc.) indie outfit on Saddle Creek. (The kind of band that has a deer antler resting on top of their Nord Electro synth, whatever that tells you.) Hopefully the underrated part changes with their upcoming second album. I only caught three songs but they were each pretty close to perfect: probably my favorite number from the first album (the tender, thoughtful "Ways of Looking,") and two new songs (including lead single/title track "Generals") both of which were a good deal more funky and rocking than the old stuff. Also, both front-lady Laura Burhenn and her right-hand vocal/percussion woman are total lookers, in completely different ways.

Housse de Racket 10:00 @ Malverde
Clever band name – it's French for "tennis racket sleeve," but the false cognate connotation (noisy house music) is precisely apposite. But what I caught of these Parisians' set sounded pretty generic – typical electro-rocky dance whatever. Maybe it would've helped if I could have actually seen them through the smallish but extremely dense crowd. I think there were some mustaches involved.

Mr. Gnome 11:00 @ Treasure Island
Guitar/drums girl/boy duo from Ohio, about whom I knew nearly nothing going in. Took a long time troubleshooting their seriously complex, pedal-heavy set-up. The songs I heard were pretty complex too. Hard-hitting, punkish, a bit bluesy, but structurally unorthodox and with an impressive amount of sonic activity for just two people. Would give them some more time in the future, perhaps; for now I'm mildly intrigued, but not totally sold.

St. Lucia 11:00 @ Karma Lounge
Basically, in this portion of the night, I was taking inspiration from the NPR All Songs Considered guys, whose SXSW podcasts document a fairly extreme, uncompromising approach to the conference that involves seeing a seemingly logistically impossible number of bands, as many of them as possible new and basically unknown, and generally staying for only a few songs before dashing off somewhere else. If the previous two sets were borderline strike-outs, this band – a name I'd heard maybe once and then again earlier in the day – was a grand slam.

Nothing overtly earth-shattering, musically speaking – it's basically just synth-pop, upbeat and dancy in a fairly standard way, with a definite "tropical" feel in several of the songs – not unlike Tanlines or a more coherent Delorean – and a markedly anthemic, John Hughes-soundtrack vibe. It's just that literally every song sounded like a hit single. And they look great on stage: young, fresh-faced, clean-cut (in a Vampire Weekend sort of way), super-smiley and enthusiastic. And the lead singer has a great, clear pop voice and a confident, commanding presence. Crucially, the audience was equally amped, definitely the liveliest audience I've seen so far this week, and – even though St. Lucia have released a very tiny amount of music so far – they all seemed to know every song. Somebody said they thought it was because the entire crowd was from Brooklyn. Either way, I predict we'll be hearing more about these guys very soon.

Dragonette 12:05 @ Friends
After listening to Grimes soundcheck lackadaisically for about twenty minutes (a half-hour after her set was supposed to start, mind you), from outside the stuffed-to-the-gills Clive House, I ditched and dashed across town to catch these Toronto electropop underdogs, whom I have been wanting to see for years now. (I think they've cancelled at least one if not two US tours in the last half-decade.) And they did not disappoint. Hell, I think they only played two songs that I knew (and not even a particularly great ones) – which means the set was almost entirely new material – but it didn't even matter. They've got their sound – tough, spiky, dancy synth-rock power-pop (Swedish band The Sounds are a good reference point) – and they're pretty much sticking to it; so it doesn't take much to follow along. And, predictably, Martina Sobrara – aside from being a powerhouse vocalist – is completely adorable, and nice, and funny, and basically sexy as hell. (Also, she's tiny.) Awesome, pumped-up crowd for these guys too.

Blitzen Trapper 1:00 @ Red 7 Patio
A very pleasant surprise: I wandered out onto the patio, since Niki and the Dove were still setting up, and was greeted by some gorgeous, Fleet Foxes-style harmonies that quickly morphed into blazing, riff-heavy rock complete with curly red-haired dude wailing away on a cowbell. Never gave these guys much attention before, and I probably still won't, but it was still totally righteous to rock out with them for a couple of numbers.

Niki and the Dove 1:20 @ Red 7
Hmm... Swedish newbies that (along with the aforementioned Spoek Mothambo) seem to represent a not-wholly-convincing attempt on Sub Pop's part to wildly broaden their genre purview. They've clearly got a heavily Knife-influenced kinda thing in mind, and they've got the weirdness part down (both vocal and sartorial), as well as plenty of squiggly, rickety-sounding synths. But they seem to be in serious need of some melodies. Or maybe that isn't the point?

Alice Russell and Quantic Soul Orchestra 1:30 @ Barbarella
Went in looking for Toddla T (whose set ended up being cancelled, due to general lateness I guess, wonk wonk), instead I got this lovely British soul singer – seriously, Adele's got nothing on her – plus "orchestra" (which I guess means they have a violinist.) High, high quality, sophisticated soul. Blue-eyed...whatever. Gold. And so gracious. Plus, it was her birthday! So we sang to her too.

And now, to bed. Good morning!

[reposted from Philly City Paper]