SXSW wrapup, part IV

Saturday, March 19, 2011 (afternoon)

22. Yip Deceiver, Side Bar, 2 p.m.

Two o'clock is essentially first thing in the morning for at lot of SXSW attendees, and it clearly was for Yip Deceiver. Playing on a makeshift stage set up in a smoker's courtyard behind the bar, with the afternoon sun beating down on a dozen or so people watching from the bare wood picnic tables set on a bed of gravel, the lead singer looked out made an announcement. “It's hot, we're hungover, but fuck it – let's have some fun.”

He and the rest of the band made good on his promise, with some distorted electo-pop, heavy on 80's influences. Even as the sun baked the outdoor space, the band gave all the energy they had.

23. Venice is Sinking, Side Bar, 2:30 p.m.
I stumbled across this band in some random corner of the Internet and became completely infatuated with their song Okay, enough to mark them as a must-see at SXSW. The swelling strings (seemingly every act with more than three members featured strings at South-by) and chamber-pop harmonies didn't disappoint.

24. Little Scream, Swan Dive, 3 p.m.
Out of every venue we saw where the SXSW stage was crammed into an unlikely space, the Swan Dive was perhaps the least well-executed. The bar appeared to function as more of a lounge club when not pressed into SXSW duty, and the temporary stage stuffed into a corner was completely out of sight of the sound board at the back of the room behind and below an elevated seating section. With the bar empty for setup, the sound guy was probably minimally able to see what was happening on stage, but filled with people he had absolutely no idea.

Little Scream's set suffered a bit from muddy sound, perhaps partially due to the odd setup and partially due to the bar's unkind acoustics. Nevertheless, the music was good. The obligatory string player was bolstered by a bass flute, a novelty even for SXSW. Flute often helps lyric indie sounds, and did so here as well, complementing the strong vocals. This show mostly hit home how incredible the SXSW experience was: seeing this set in a different context, as the headliners in some small rock club one night, would have been an experience to talk about. Here, it was only the second-best show I'd seen so far that day, and there were still more than a dozen shows to go.

25. Blue King Brown, Maggie Mae's Rooftop, 4 p.m.
Maggie Mae's played host to an all-day showcase of Australian music, which was our home for the rest of the afternoon, and which we returned to Saturday evening as well. Our first taste of down under came from Blue King Brown, a roots group which mixed funk, reggae and roots rock sound. I'm not a huge fan of those elements either on their own or in sum, but lead singer Natalie Pa’apa’a's stage presence captivated me. She may have been the smallest person on stage, but she had a regal bearing and the rare quality of commanding the attention of every person in the room.

26. Andy Clockwise, Maggie Mae's Gibson Room, 5 p.m.
We decided to check out what was happening through a side door and wandered into what appeared to be a performance by Zach Galfinakis. Backed by loud distorted guitars and a wall of noise, the bearded lead singer gave a frenetic performance, bounding around the stage, jumping into the crowd, leaving a trail of sweat wherever he went.

27. Bliss N Eso, Maggie Mae's Rooftop
OK, this one is cheating a bit. I barely got to listen to a full song before we headed out to grab some dinner, but if I had been alone I would have absolutely stayed for the entire set. I have a soft spot for Australian hip-hop, which seems to have taken American old-school rap as the starting point but evolved into something slightly different than modern American hip-hop; the Australian genre seems somehow to take itself a little less seriously.