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Sunday, March 22, 2009
A: Pearl Jam. Beastie Boys. Dave Matthews Band. Kings of Leon. Ghostland Observatory.
Q: Who are the headliners of the Austin City Limits Music Fest October 2-4, according to a loose-lipped C3 insider, overheard at the “Rock the Rabbit” party?
Asked if this leak was on the mark, ACL booker Charles Attal said he would have no comment until the lineup is officially released in about two months.
We’ve also learned that the great Levon Helm will play with his all-star band.
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SXSW review: Maya Azucena
(Midnight Wednesday, Mohawk Patio)
Taking the stage at midnight - shortly after Bavu Blakes had blown up the spot at the Mohawk - Brooklyn neo-soul vocalist Maya Azucena had a hard act to follow. Unfazed, Azucena used her voice as her band’s most powerful instrument, providing one of the evenings most unexpected delights as she radiated charm and finesse, revealing herself as one of the most approachable and likable divas you’d ever want to meet.
Although it might have made more sense to have hometown heroes Bavu Blakes and his Extra Plairs burn up the stage after Azucena so that the crowd didn’t thin after Blakes finished (which it did), the billing of the two artists was ultimately well-played as it allowed Azucena and her crack two-piece band to flex their own considerable skill in the aftermath of Blakes’ lyrical fury.
Guitarist Christian Ver Halen and “drum-cussionist” Ivan Katz were on point. Ver Halen never missed a lick, subtly and deftly providing the dominant musical melodies while Katz played a talking drum with one hand and a highhat with his other.
And then there was the statuesque Azucena. “She’s mesmerizing…and so full of energy,” one young woman in the audience shouted out to her friend (and in my ear) during Azucena’s clever R&B meets hip hop-soul “Junkyard Jewel.”
And it was true: it was hard to take your eyes off Azucena during tracks like “Down, Down” as her voice rattled the rafters with her fearless ability to hit the most difficult upper register notes. But Azucena seemed most stirred during her collaborations. For her song, “The Half,” she brought back up Kendra Ross (who had performed her own set at 9 p.m.) and the two bounced the chorus back and forth as if they’d rehearsed the song for years.
Likewise, the most impressive and inspired moment of Azucena’s set came during a collaboration between Azucena, Extra Plair Terrell Shahid and Blakes as she called them up to the stage for an impromptu joint (collabo) on Azucena’s best song, “G-Hetto.” Austin and Brooklyn yield some of the best musical talent in the country, and the pairing between Blakes’ freestyling flow and Azucena’s energetic precision appeared to raise the level of both of their game.
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SXSW review: Janelle Monae
(Thursday night, Austin Music Hall)
Two words: Janelle Monáe!
Gentle reader, every now and again at SXSW, if you’re exceptionally fortunate, you’ll encounter an artist that’s so singular in vision - so well rehearsed with music that is extraordinarily forward-looking - that you’ll know deep down in your marrow that you’re bearing witness to greatness.
Atlanta experimental-R&B/“afro-punk” musician Janelle Monáe gave a starmaking turn at the Austin Music Hall on Thursday evening, performing a total of four songs in less than 30 minutes while providing what surely were some of the most slammin’, genre-melting moments of the festival.
After a brief voiceover introduction wherein a sentient cyborg reveals its fears of death through disassembly, Monáe emerged looking more like a replicant from “Blade Runner” than a 21st century R&B singer. With unblinking eyes opened wide like a Japanese anime character, Monáe worked the entirety of the enormous stage like a pro, giving a nod to her NYC musical theater training. Her dancing was kinetic and purposefully robotic, electric and propulsive, all locked into the bombastically banging music.
Her ridiculously tight band knocked out her songs with precision and virtuosity: “Many Moons,” “Sincerely Jane,” “Violent Stars, Happy Ending,” seamlessly segued into one another leaving absolutely no time for the audience to process the career defining performance. During the empowering lament “Smile,” Monáe displayed the range of her multi-octave voice, skillfully knocking people out without any overwrought melisma or showy tonal acrobatics. Only a lead guitar accompanied Monáe as she belted out the refrain, recalling the soulful pathos of Billie Holiday combined with the charismatic sass of Liza Minnelli.
The afro-punk, electronica-inspired textures that Kanye West flirted with on his last record were given a more thorough exploration during Monáe’s experimental set. Unlike West, Monáe proved she is not just dabbling in the still emerging afro-punk genre; Thursday night’s set showcased Monáe defining the new musical movement as she transcended the typical genre trappings of R&B, soul, hip-hop, pop and rock as she combined them all into her deconstruction. In this new age of President Barack Obama-inspired hope, Monáe is on the forefront of expanding musical paradigms and possibilities, too.
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SXSW review: Titus Andronicus
(1 a.m. Saturday, Club de Ville)
Two months ago, Titus Andronicus played a packed house at the Parish Room, where they opened for Welsh indie pop sensation Los Campesinos! During the latter performance’s denouement, lead singer Patrick Stickles threw himself into the crowd a half-dozen times, surfing from one end of the Parish to the other with a giddy, boyish grin on his face. Despite being on tour with the group for, by that point, several weeks, Stickles had all the glee of someone who’d just discovered them for the first time.
Titus Andronicus brings that kind of unbridled enthusiasm to everything they do, including Saturday’s packed show at Club de Ville. The New Jersey punk rock quintet plays loud but is surprisingly literate — their name is an allusion to the identically titled Shakespeare play, and their music includes references to everything from Camus to “Seinfeld.” They were bubbly and enthusiastic Saturday, profusely thanking the openers, the audience and the show’s organizers, breaking out the harmonica for one song and delivering a rollicking cover of Sparta Bags’ “Waking Up Drunk.”
All that endless positive energy is a bit peculiar for a band with such routinely depressing lyrics — Stickles looks bizarrely happy when he croons, “You met the world naked and screaming/And that’s how you leave it.” But if the band truly believes such thoughts, you couldn’t detect it from their set, which was bouncy and hedonistic and utterly devoid of angst.
Perhaps that’s the essence of punk rock, though: when confronting ife’s problems, instead of getting sad, get angry, and try to have fun doing it.
It certainly seems to work for Titus Andronicus.
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SXSW review: Colourmusic
(11 p.m., Club de Ville)
Colourmusic’s show was an ominous development for music journalists everywhere.
A band’s sound is a tricky thing to articulate, so we often fall back on assembling two disparate genres into one as a handy way of summing up the listening experience. This is the very mindset that has given the lexicon such gems as “indietronica” and “tropical punk.” But Saturday’s performance by Colourmusic combined layers of reverb, droning guitars and spacey vocals with a relentless, pounding drumbeat, the occasional blaxpoitation-style bass guitar, and plenty of enthusiastically delivered “ba da ba ba da” vocalizations. At one point, the band seemed to briefly borrow the catchy, minimalist guitar part from LCD Soundsystem’s “Us V. Them,” but immediately followed it up with a long, reverb-heavy “Heeeeeeeeeyyyyyy!” that would have been perfectly at home in a Black Angels song. I was left with only one conclusion: “dance psychedelia.”
And with that, we’ve officially run out of hybrid genres.
But while this might make life more difficult for the rock writers of the world, the audience at Club de Ville sure didn’t mind, as Stillwater, Okla.’s Colourmusic engaged an audience with relentless shredding, powerful vocals and inescapable beats. One can only wonder why they took to the stage in an all-white outfit of tennis windbreakers and skirts, but it’s an oddly apropos gesture for a band that’s all about enigmas — trying to decipher lyrics under waves of reverb is an equally challenging mystery, and even lead singer Ryan Hendrix’s facial expressions were a puzzle, hidden as they were under his long, greasy black hair. Regardless, they were easily the most studly axemen to ever wear miniskirts.
All of which must have been pretty tantalizing to the audience, as they threw themselves back and forth and pumped their fists wildly into the air. The energy reached a fever pitch during what was intended to be the show’s closer. As Hendrix sang “Gonna give it up/gonna change the world/gonna live it up,” the audience took the words to heart and a dozen people rushed on to the stage to join the band in an impromptu dance party. After that transcendent moment, Colourmusic could only oblige their fans by giving them a one-song encore, an extraordinary rarity for an opening band at a SXSW showcase. Clearly, Colourmusic has the right stuff.
And if that means us music writers now have to look forward to, say, “techno bluegrass,” well, that’s just the way it will have to be.
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SXSW review: Ponytail
(Midnight, American Apparel/Viva Radio, Club de Ville)
It might not be entirely accurate to call what Ponytail front woman Molly Siegel does “singing.”
We traditionally understand that phrase to denote the use of lyrics. But Siegel, with rare exceptions, has all but abandoned those in favor of assorted “oooo”s, “ahhh”s, “yaaaaays,” and, every so often, an elongated distorted cooing that vaguely resembles the sound of a pigeon on PCP.
It’s a bit of a genius idea — after all, does anybody really care that Justice or MGMT songs even have words, let alone what they mean? Baltimore quartet Ponytail’s wholesale desertion of lyrics frees up Siegel and her band mates to belt out exhilarating, wholly indiscernible vocalizations that lend their songs an instantly powerful, sing-along quality.
Toss in dueling guitars with crushing solos and a drummer who puts seizure victims to shame, and you had Ponytail’s Saturday night show at Club de Ville, a movement-filled shot of adrenaline to even the most fatigued of festivalgoers. Incorporating the occasional flash of inspiration from the most unlikely of places — be it prog rock or the opening theme of “Shaft,” whose famous drum intro was seemingly incorporated into the band’s final song — Ponytail’s flood of dance rock got an entire venue jumping.
The night climaxed as the adorable Siegel, clad in a Ray Lewis jersey and looking like the cute tomboy you crushed on in middle school, tore into a piñata onstage, ripping into it like Romero zombie into a fresh torso. As she showered the audience with candy, guitarist Dustin Wong briefly inserted a rare line of decipherable speech, screeching “Oh no I left for school!”
Did the lyric make any sense? Of course not. And as a captive audience screamed and jumped and clapped their hands underneath pulsing lights, nothing could possibly have mattered less.
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SXSW Review: Jana Hunter
(8:10 p.m., Saturday, Beauty Bar Backyard)
Jana Hunter really got dressed up for the occasion. She wore shredded Vans, gym shorts, and a worn-out tank top with a sports bra underneath for her Saturday showcase. That didn’t stop a swarm of photographers from descending on the wide open space in front of the stage at the striking of her very first note.
It was probably a bit unsettling for the Houston native who now calls Baltimore home. She was already frazzled by technical difficulties that would ultimately subject her voice to an echo chamber, and she no doubt knew the loud bands that had already kicked off the night at surrounding venues were going to make it really tough for her to convey her lilting, tension-wire voice. Now she was the center of attention in a really small space. Good thing she and her two bandmates took a ceremonial shot of brown liquor at the onset of their set.
Nothing Hunter played was recognizable. Instead of the hurts-so-good, slowed-down pace of old-school Cat Power that inhabits her most recent album, the exquisite “There’s No Home,” her drummer and bassist played loping rockers over which Hunter would often plaster scuzzy guitar work. By the last song, the outside interference had apparently gotten to be too much, as Hunter opted to run a loop of her voice and focus on her notes. But despite it all, she never once complained.
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SXSW review: Third Eye Blind
(12:30 a.m. Saturday, Stubb’s)
I have a confession: Third Eye Blind is one of my favorite bands.
Depending on the age and degree of musical snobbery of the people I tell this to, I either get looks of intrigued surprise or disgusted disapproval. But either way, I’m always ready to defend my taste. Even on albums as recent as 2003’s relatively unnoticed “Out of the Vein,” the ostensibly throwaway ’90s pop stars were busy muscling up their arena rock anthems with slick riffs played in non-standard tunings, explosive unconventional rhythms and raw, confessional lyrics occasionally delivered with a hint of hip-hop flavor.
I’m not alone on this one, either. The line for non-badge and wristband holders hoping to get a last minute ticket to last night’s showcase at Stubb’s started forming three hours prior to the show and eventually extended the length of the venue and wrapped around the corner.
The band had been rumored for weeks to be debuting their forthcoming album, “Ursa Major,” at Saturday’s showcase at Stubb’s, and with the exception of “Jumper,” “Never Let You Go” and “Crystal Baller,” that turned out to be true. They didn’t even play their breakthrough hit “Semi-Charmed Life,” which was probably confusing to anyone who hadn’t heard them in years, but refreshing to longtime fans.
Unfortunately, the new material was largely hit or miss. Some songs, like “Bonfire” and “A Sharp Knife,” which have been floating around the web in bootleg format for a couple of years, blazed through delayed lead lines and urgent vocal delivery nearly as well as any Third Eye Blind staple. But others were cringe-worthy. In “1 in 10,” frontman Stephan Jenkins sings about trying to “turn butch chicks,” and “About to Break” builds up to the cliché sentiment, “When I see your face/I wanna be in the human race.”
Perhaps most disappointing of all, the cult favorite “Summertown” was completely made over into a tune that takes the hip-hop thing a little too far, with Jenkins proclaiming something about a “rap superstar” at the end. Whatever happened to the UC Berkley English valedictorian who wasn’t afraid to drop allusions to Greek mythology?
But hey, the album’s not out yet. Let’s hope with a few tweaks Third Eye Blind will have something on par with the rest of their catalogue by the end of the summer.
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SXSW review: Jimmy Webb & the Webb Brothers
(11 p.m. Saturday, Prague)
As far as Your Humble Correspondent was concerned, Saturday night was Family Night at South By Southwest. Let’s see, there was Alyssa Suede (sister of Beck) playing on one end of Sixth Street while Solange Knowles (sister of Beyoncé) was playing on the other. And then there was Jimmy Webb and the Webb Brothers, who were billed to perform in the dungeon-like confines of Prague, near Fifth and Congress.
Jimmy Webb? The “MacArthur Park” and “By the Time I Get To Phoenix” Jimmy Webb? And there were Webb brothers? Who knew?
Turns out that not only are there Webb brothers (that is, Jimmy’s sons), there are a mess of ‘em. James, Justin, Christian and Cornelius Webb all joined their dad onstage for a musical family reunion. “This is the first time Jimmy Webb and the Webb Brothers have played in Austin,” he announced, adding, “Or anywhere else. This project has been a spiritual experience for our family, and we’re glad to share it with you.”
The evening began inauspiciously, with one of the boys beseeching the crowd for a pair of reading glasses they could borrow for their dad. And, sure enough, in one of those not-infrequent moments of happy SXSW propinquity, the needed spectacles were promptly provided.
On their own, the Webb Brothers have released three albums, including the acclaimed 2001 set, “Marooned.” But on this night, their main role consisted (apart from singing two original compositions) of backing up dad.
And that’s not a bad assignment. Webb, after all, has been responsible for some of the most enduring pop songs of the past 40 years, and his and his sons’ all-too-brief set permitted only the briefest overview of his repertoire.
Still, fans were treated to up-close-and-personal renditions of “Galveston,” “The Highwayman” (the inspiration for the country supergroup of the same name), “If These Walls Could Speak,” “Wichita Lineman” and, after a thunderous ovation, an encore of “Adios.” Throughout, the family affections shone through, lighting up the dark confines of the underground club.
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SXSW review: Andre Williams
(11 p.m. Saturday, Continental Club)
“There’s a lot of people out there,” said one of the men in the dapper green suits in the back room of the Continental Club Saturday night.
A discussion about the pros and cons of a packed house ensued between this man and another man in a green suit. There were other men in green suits milling about, rushing their drinks and unabashedly inhaling stuff through their noses. Eventually, all of the green suits, plus two tattooed go-go dancers, took to the stage and settled into a galloping instrumental in the big-band style of the Blues Brothers. It was the equivalent of rolling out the red carpet. For whom, you ask? For the Black Godfather, of course, Mr. Andre Williams.
Dirty old man Williams is a purveyor of what one bystander called “R&B porn.” To play with the 72-year-old is to not only pay homage to him — the vices of life have debilitated him to the point that he doesn’t get out all that much anymore — but it’s to also join him on a journey to Sleazeville, where words like lips, hips, and potato chips dominate the dialogue. To say the line between musicality and comedy is straddled is an understatement.
In between one of his classic songs, “Jail Bait,” which pretty much speaks for itself, and another song wherein he repeated how he’s a bad version of what Rick Perry said adios to a few years back, Williams blessed Austin for the quality of its female population (his actual words were much richer). This got the attention of the Continental’s in-house dancer/back-room bartendress Clara Reed, who, sensing Williams’ dancers were on a smoke break or something, took to the stage and busted a move. Williams promptly raised his arm and shook his hand like he was about to roll dice.
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SXSW review: Alyssa Suede
(9 p.m. Saturday, live.create.lounge)
Alyssa Suede is Beck’s sister.
OK, that’s out of the way. She is also a young singer-songwriter from Los Angeles who made her South By Southwest debut on Saturday night at the live.create.lounge, an art gallery on Neches Street that was pressed into service as an SXSW venue.
On the one hand, combining art and music is a great idea. On the other hand, the space was an abysmal acoustic space, tall and boxy with a metal ceiling. One might as well try to sing in a silo or an oil tank.
Oh, well. Suede was a gamer, performing an eight-song acoustic set accompanied by her father, David Campbell, on violin.
One thing that struck this listener was how fast the young 23-year-old is progressing musically. According to her bio, she only began her career two years ago. One of her earliest songs, “A Thousand Times,” was full of earnest and overdone imagery, the sort of thing many fledgling songwriters begin with.
But the song that followed, “Anybody Out There,” which she was performing for the first time, was more melodically sophisticated and more mature and fully realized lyrically. The two songs, she said after her set, were written only 15 months apart.
“Everywhere you go in Austin,” she said at one point, “people are making music in the street and … and … in elevators.” That was as charming a summation of SXSW as yours truly heard all week.
Suede’s set was drawn for the most part from her debut album, “Black and White In Color.” Singing in a jewel-like voice (some might say a Jewel-like voice, but that’s neither here nor there), she moved with assurance between the upbeat pop of “Ferris Wheel” to the floating, dreamy “Jack and Jill” to the somber, contemplative “Hollow.”
One hopes she will return soon, perhaps with a band, definitely to a more forgiving performance space. On the other hand, there are always those elevators …
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SXSW review: The Wooden Birds
(9 p.m. Saturday, the Parish)
After his six-year sojourn in Brooklyn, it’s good to have Andrew Kenny home.
As the leader of Austin’s indie sensation American Analog Set, Kenny built a devoted underground following with his soft-spoken, rustling anthems.
And as fans learned at Saturday’s Barsuk/Merge Records showcase at the Parish, he’s picking up right where he left off with the aptly named Wooden Birds. Much like the songs of the Analog Set’s “Know By Heart,” the new tunes are delicate and organic, with a keen attention paid to intricate detail. Backed by brushed drums and a second percussionist who mostly shakes maracas and tambourines, the songs drift through smooth clean guitar and Kenny’s near-whispered vocals, creating a dreamlike atmosphere.
The simple yet sharp observational nature of the lyrics matched the powerfully understated music, as entire stories were often brewing beneath single stanzas. In set opener “Sugar,” Kenny noted, “Your little brother is a little shy/He keeps a Bible by his bedside/Under a bottle and some dim lamplight.” And in the more upbeat “Seven Seventeen,” he realized, “She was seven when I was seventeen.”
Kenny’s persona couldn’t fit the songs any better. The lanky, bright-eyed and thin-faced bass player bent his knees and grooved his hips to the beat of the midtempo numbers, and when each one was done, he’d turn to his four-piece band and meekly pay them compliments like, “That was pretty good, guys. Great job.”
To the glee of Analog Set fans, the Wooden Birds included a performance of “Aaron and Maria” in their set, but judging by the strength of the new music, they won’t have to rely on old material for long.
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SXSW review: Telekinesis
(8 p.m. Saturday, at the Parish)
“I was walking through the night/Underneath the starry, starry sky,” the frontman of Seattle’s emerging Merge Records artist Telekinesis sang with tightly closed eyes, and I just about rolled mine.
But only a minute later into Saturday night’s Merge/Barsuk Records showcase at the Parish, Michael Lerner laid down his small acoustic guitar, took his place behind the drums and never looked back. He and his band ripped through a half hour set of hook-heavy pop that sounded like the near-perfect soundtrack to a sunny day on the Santa Monica pier, but had just the right hint of gritty distortion and foggy melancholy to place it in the Northwest.
For a drummer who simultaneously sings and plays, Lerner was surprisingly accurate on both accounts. With his eyes closed and his head pointed slightly upward toward the microphone above the snare, he banged out rhythms with wildly flailing arms and sang with practically unwavering pitch.
The showcased songs came from Telekinesis’s upcoming self-titled debut, which was produced by Death Cab for Cutie’s Chris Walla, and the similarities between the two artists were apparent. Songs like “Coast of Carolina,” with its jutted blasts of guitar, could almost pass for a Walla solo song or early Death Cab tune if its more famous counterparts were given an adrenaline boost.
Telekinesis might not have the most substantive catalogue just yet, but without so much as an album for sale, their catchy songs and tight live show put them ahead of the game.
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SXSW review: Lou Barlow
(10 p.m. Saturday, the Parish)
Lou Barlow, frontman for indie rock group Sebadoh and bassist for Dinosaur Jr, told the audience at the Parish that Merge had invited him to be part of the showcase before they knew he had completed a followup to his 2005 solo release, “Emoh.” Joining him on stage was guitarist Imaad Wasif. In a low key set, which was often overpowered by conversations going on elsewhere in the room, Barlow played a collection of material from his upcoming album, as well as a few from his prior release.
The duo started out with “Too Much Freedom,” with Wasif’s fingerpicking complementing Barlow’s meloncholy folk. Wasif then went electric, adding a more psychedelic tone to the songs. Barlow and Wasif had an appealing musical back-and-forth going on, including on “Good Love,” from the upcoming release, when Barlow slowed the tempo and they played in unison.
Barlow’s songs are powerful, emotionally honest stories of relationships gone awry, and he played them with a rare intensity Saturday night. One standout was “Legendary,” a slow-builder sweetened by Wasif’s song-like guitar accompaniment. Barlow was clearly a little irked by the amount of talking going on, and late in the set he aborted a song, explaining that he and Wasif hadn’t played together in quite some time. It seemed for a moment that the set was about to take a wrong turn, but Barlow recovered and finished strong.
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SXSW review: Say Hi
Say Hi is a Seattle-based rock outfit led by singer/guitarist Eric Elbogen. Formerly known as Say Hi To Your Mom, Elbogen is a work horse. He’s released six albums since the band’s inception in 2002, including the forthcoming “Oohs & Aahs,” which the band played in its entirety on Saturday night at the Parish. Joined on stage by a bassist and a drummer, the music is rooted in rock, at times with turns toward garage and punk. Elbogen’s voice is soft and raspy, and he’s sort of an unassuming frontman for a rock band (definitely of the Criag Finn of the Hold Steady’s school of fashion), but he makes the music work.
Similarly, Elbogen doesn’t get too fancy with his guitar, only taking solos a couple times (although there was a bass solo). The more energetic songs are definitely his strong suit, with powerful refrains that add a nice tension to the music. Slower songs such as “November Was White, December Was Grey,” didn’t pack as much punch as the others, but didn’t ruin the set. Ultimately, it was a strong showing of a cohesive collection of songs which are definitely worth a listen when the album is released.
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SXSW review: P.J. Harvey at Stubb’s
(10 p.m. Saturday, Stubb’s)
Some of us never quite got P.J. Harvey. The British songstress - a cult favorite of indie circles during the 1990s - seemed too absent and affected. Honestly, her music usually just sounded too far “out there.” There seemed to be an underlying demand that we look down at our shoes, then slowly toward the sky. Too much contemplation never equaled enough. Harvey influences John Lee Hooker and Jimi Hendrix sure struck home, but go ahead and keep that cadet Captain Beefheart. We’ll take Howlin’ Wolf, thanks.
We change. We grow. We understand a little more about contemplation. Turns out, some of us still don’t get P.J. Harvey.
Of course, we were distinctly in the minority Saturday night at Stubb’s. Festival attendees from far and distant lands - Norway, Ireland and a Columbian musician playing Copa later - overflowed the barbecue joint to hail Polly Jean. “I like her because she’s legit and she’s got it together,” said Brendan Williams, 23, of Dallas. “She’s definitely got the voice. I could just listen to it forever.”
Harvey has said that she enjoys songwriting more than performing. However, when called on it earlier this week during a KGSR in-studio radio performance, she hedged. The 39-year-old insisted - almost as if instructed - that she loves to take the stage to sing for fans. Maybe she’s grown, too.
Her performance suggested otherwise. Though stunning in a white dress, Harvey hardly engaged as she opened with material from her forthcoming album, “A Woman, A Man Walked By” (due March 31). On the up side, her crack quartet piqued interest backing new songs - most memorably, “Black Hearted Love” and “Leaving California” - with a rotation of jungle drums, spiky banjo and floating ukulele. Harvey herself upped the ante on older tunes like 1996’s “Taut,” but not enough to convert doubters.
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SXSW review: Kanye West at Fader Fort
At 9:05 p.m. Saturday, Kanye West and his stable of G.O.O.D. Music artists descended upon the Levi’s/Fader Fort stage at 1101 E. Fifth St. for what would become a highlight of SXSW 2009.
If you had ever visited the Graphic Glass Studio on Fifth Street, you wouldn’t recognize it in its incarnation as the Levi’s/Fader Fort. All of the floor-to-ceiling “Sanford and Son”-type items in the warehouse had been removed for its transformation into a Levi’s store, complete with all the ambiance of a store from a high end shopping mall.
Likewise, West’s performance was something of a transformation, too. West was as good as he needed to be (many people had been waiting for him to play based on a rumor since the early afternoon), and it was better than it had to be (he killed for two hours). The show resembled one of those “cavalcade of stars” tours from the late 1950s/early 1960s: West would perform two or three of his hits, then he’d bring up one of his proteges from his G.O.O.D. Music record label imprint and share the stage or feature them outright. Although West (and his ego) are notorious for being his own worst enemy, he really reined himself in Saturday night; he graciously played the role of a generous headliner and an excited mentor and label boss spotlighting his stable of artists in what was a marketing coup (for all parties involved).
“Amazing” from West’s most recent, most experimental work yet, “808s and Heartbreaks” started off his set with a pitch-perfect stomp, pricking up ears with its modern-yet-tribal groove and maxed-out Auto-Tune vocals.
“Gone” - one of the best tracks from his breakout sophomore album “Late Registration” — came in quick succession. The creative DJ then elevated the crowd further with a bit of “Drive Slow” as bodies and booties bounced in unison.
West was clad in a T-shirt and sleeveless jean jacket - and only one gold necklace (and a watch that’s probably more expensive than all our salaries combined). He looked more old school, and had shed the urban-futuristic-Afro-punk accouterments that he’s recently flirted with. Considering he didn’t have a soundcheck, nor any of the enormous stage show props he’s grown accustomed to using, his performance was spot-on evidence that his talent is not based on overblown production.
West’s diction was excellent, cutting through the bombast of his live band and DJ. And it’s worth noting that his band - bassist, drummer, guitarist, percussionist, keyboardist, DJ (with now requisite Apple laptop) and backup singer - were flawless. The percussionist played electronic drums and over-sized congas in time to the DJ, emphasizing the hypnotic snare beats, providing synthetic and organic tones. The live snare and kick drum were pegging the mixing board in the red, and cleaning out earwax, just the way it should be.
Likewise, West’s band used dynamics better than most bands, which tend to play with everything turned to eleven, loud and proud, full of nervous energy, never thinking to bring it down.
The star-packed show was carefully constructed with a song cycle that built in intensity over the course of two hours and reached a crescendo when super-surprise guest Common came on stage to perform his songs “Universal Mind Control” and “The Light.” At the end of “The Light” Erykah Badu appeared out of nowhere, representing Dallas and female power worldwide. Badu then flexed her skills in a freestyle joint with Common and West. Common is one of West’s longtime friends and collaborators, and his and Badu’s arrival sparked West’s biggest, most sincere smiles of the evening.
“I (expletive) forgot the words…I got too excited Austin!” West said during his climatic hit song, “Good Life.” Then as if to help out their mentor, all of the G.O.O.D. artists and Common returned to the stage as West found his footing again. The song’s lyrical reference to West’s grandmother and his recently deceased mother (who was also his manager) seemed to elevate the song in the audience’s consciousness; everyone appeared to appreciate the moment for its realness.
Whether you love him, hate him, or are apathetic, it’s nearly impossible to deny West is something of an anomaly in pop music in that he has critical acclaim, mainstream appeal, indie rock cred, Grammy awards and platinum-selling albums. West’s albums rest alongside Radiohead records in the vinyl collections of critics and tastemakers. From the hipster Pitchfork Media set to top 40/urban radio worshipers, West has both a ghetto pass and a suburbia pass, and his Saturday evening show proved that he can rock both arenas and a small 1,500-capacity boutique micro-festival.
The four-day long Levi’s/Fader Fort event was free for all, and included unlimited free booze and drinks (but alarmingly no food - a horrible planning flaw). The Levi’s/Fader Fort was evidence that the worldwide “economic downtown” apparently has not touched neither Levi’s nor Fader Magazine as the production price-tag of the event would likely be enough to feed a small West African nation for a month (or more); also, toward the end of West’s set, he shouted “Levi’s get that check ready.” Austinites appeared to be in the minority, as New Yorkers, West Coasters and assorted folks from around the world appeared to make up the majority of the audience (I overhead too many conversations about Williamsburg and the Bay area).
Setlist
1. Amazing
2. The Good, the Bad, the Ugly (Consequence featuring Kanye West)
3. Don’t Forget Em (Consequence)
4. Gone (Consequence featuring Kanye West)
5. Drive Slow (featuring GLC)
6. Big Screen (GLC featuring Kanye West)
7. Spaceship (featuring GLC and Consequence)
8. Disperse (Consequence featuring GLC and Really Doe)
9. We Major (featuring Really Doe)
10. Plastic (Really Doe featuring Kanye West)
11. Crack Music (featuring Malik Yusef)
12. spoken word interlude by Malik Yusef
13. Diamonds Are Forever
14. Getcha Some (Big Sean)
15. Way Out (Big Sean & Mr. Hudson)
16. Anyone But Him (Mr. Hudson featuring Kanye West)
17. Stay Up! (Viagra) (88 Keys featuring Kanye West)
18. Everybody (Fonzworth Bentley)
19. Welcome To Heartbreak (featuring Kid Cudi)
20. Sky Might Fall (Kid Cudi)
21. Buggin’ Out (Consequence, Kid Cudi, Kanye West)
22. Day ‘N’ Nite (Kid Cudi)
23. Universal Mind Control (Common)
24. Get Em High (featuring Common)
25. The Light (Common & Erykah Badu)
26. freestyle session (Common, Erykah Badu, Kanye West)
27. Heartless
28. Paranoid (featuring Kid Cudi & Mr. Hudson)
29. Good Life
30. Love Lockdown
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SXSW review: Kat Edmonson at Elephant Room
(The Elephant Room, 12:45 a.m. Saturday, the Elephant Room)
By the time one o’clock on the last night of South By Southwest rolls around, one feels a strong kinship with the guy who said, “I don’t want the ham and I don’t want the cheese. I just want out of the sandwich.”
But every few years, Fate hands you a present for your perseverance, and this year it came in the form of a willowy young jazz singer named Kat Edmonson, who had the unenviable task of hosting the last showcase of the last night of the festival at the Elephant Room.
I’d been turned on to Edmonson by a fellow writer at this paper, who hands out raves about as often as Scrooge hands out Christmas bonuses. So when he all but nominated Edmonson for homecoming queen, I paid attention.
Happily for the capacity crowd at the Elephant Room, Edmonson was just as naturally gifted and supple a vocalist as advertised. Much of her Great American Songbook material was familiar: Hello, there, “Summertime,” how’s it going “Angel Eyes,” what’s up with you, “Night and Day.”
But Edmondson, her pianist partner Kevin Lovejoy and a great combo that included Ephraim Owens and Chris Maresh provided tasty, inventive and at times counterintuitive interpretation of those classics. A lot of the time, wisely, they stepped out of the way and let Edmonson’s natural touch and pure tones (her vocals sounded almost like horn lines to this listener) have their way with the timeless material.
Edmonson is a slender young blonde who doesn’t look old enough to buy a drink in the joint, let alone command center stage, but she falls naturally into the headliner’s role. Even attired in jeans and a peasant blouse — not exactly the classic chanteuse’s ensemble — she came across with aplomb and real authority.
A surprising version of John Lennon’s “(Just Like) Starting Over” and a nimble rendition of “I Walk A Little Faster” brought an end to this writer’s personal SXSW and Edmonson’s set. I’m happy to see the 2009 edition of the festival recede into past tense, but I look forward to sitting ringside and watching Edmonson and her combo work again, real soon.
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SXSW review: Kim Phuc at Beerland
Gunslingers, Obits, Flower Travellin Band, Kylesa with their old bass player amping up the band’s energy, the awfulness of Tricky….these are the things I thought I would take away from SXSW.
Then I saw Kim Phuc, a mid-tempo punk rock band from Pittsburgh. Two guitars, bass, drums, singer. Pretty straightforward., you might think.
Two songs in and I knew this was something I was not going to see everyday. There’s nothing in the world like being floored by a band you know very little about. Suddenly everything seems filled with possibility: “if these guys are this good, what else is out there I don’t yet know about that’s this good?” That’s the sort of thing that keeps us music dorks looking over the next hill again and again even though nine times out of 10 there’s nothing in the valley at all.
Two songs in and I recalled something Daivd Yow once told me in an interview for an oral histroy I wrote on the band Scratch Acid. He said with Scratch Acid, he consciously moved away from hardcore’s speed and into something slower because “it was more like getting beaten up.”
This is a really smart way of saying that at slower speeds, punk rock has a little more freedom to move. Those high velocity boom-BAM-boom-boom-BAM tempos can sound a little confining.
Kim Phuc, on the other hand, was just devastating.
First, they wrote real songs. Not strung together riffs, not a couple of parts played a breakneck pace. Real songs. Heavy, noisy, cruel sounding songs filled with rage and fire.
Second, as writer Doug Mosurock noted in “Still Single,” his column for the excellent internet zine Dusted, “(Kim Phuc represents) three generations of a scene commingling on the same stage. Singer Rob Henry was in Direct Action, one of Pittsburgh’s first hardcore bands, Corey from Aus-Rotten and Caustic Christ is on bass, and the rest of the band is filled out, and was founded by, the kids who grew up under their direct influence. That’s something you don’t see all too often.”
Amen. This should happen far more than it does, in every musical genre. The vets can spot the cliches, the kids can show old dogs new tricks.
That said, Henry was the straw that stirred the pitch black drink. A big man, he waded into the audience without making himself annoying (i.e. running into people) howling like a wounded animal. He rolled on the floor, shirtless, accidentally covering himself in the glitter on the Beerland stage. He was a glitter covered mess of a man while the band pitched and thundered behind him.
My jaw was on the floor. I wasn’t the only one.
I almost never buy seven-inch singles anymore. I bought both of singles they were selling the minute they left the stage. I would release their next records myself if I could. Someone please make them famous.
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Maybe the single funniest thing overheard at SXSW this year
“Hey, there’s Pamela Des Barre. I go to the same Curves she does.”
You’re welcome.
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SXSW Review: XYX at Spiro’s Friday, then Beerland Saturday
XYX are a duo from Mexico, another act from the apparently absurdly fertile Monterrey scene (unless every single band from there is here this week). Drummer Mou Ortiz and bassist Anel Escalante played a whole mess of shows, but two stand out for the way they shifted the context of the band, opened up the ways to think about their music.
Friday, they played at Spiro’s on what has become a traditionally avant-garde rock bill brought to us by the fine people at WFMU, the legendary free form New Jersey radio station. They played with up and coming noisy oddballs such as Mayyors and Gary War and veterans such as the wonderful New Zealand band Renderers.
This made XYX’s music seem edgy and arty; this wasn’t unreasonable. Escalante’s bass drove the melodies, and there were melodies, complicated, buoyant bass lines that resolved into smart, catchy tunelets. Ortiz’s drumming was by turns devastating and lithe. Add an overplaying guitarist and you would have had a progressive rock trio the likes of which would have excited anyone who owned more than one King Crimson album.
Saturday, they opened local punk promoter Timmy Hefner’s non-SXSW showcase at Beerland. Here the band’s music also made perfect sense. Add a barre chording guitarist with a beaten up, sitcker-covered Gibson SG knockoff and a Marshall amp and you’d have a rock solid punk band with unusually smart bass lines.
The band made perfect sense in both contexts. They delivered excellent sets both times. Next year, I look forward to them opening some big, slick rock show at Stubb’s or on stage at Mess With Texas. The stuff could work anywhere.
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SXSW Scene Report: Final night madness
A special blend of exhaustion, tension, mild panic, regret and excitement — there’s nothing like the final night of SXSW, and this year was no exception.
Brief highlights:
The big news of the night, of course, was Kanye West’s performance at Fader Fort, where the crowd had gathered for hours awaiting his “surprise” appearance. He brought up Common and Erykah Badu as well.
Just a flew blocks north in an old Safeway, Perez Hilton’s party was in full swing. Hilton, donning a stunning pink version of Aretha Franklin’s inaugural bow hat, introduced each act, which included surprise guests the Indigo Girls. Ladyhawke in particular was impressive. A few hours later, Kanye got on stage and performed. That’s right. The Indigo Girls and Kanye West on one stage in one night. Surprise!
Further east, Kanye rumors (and more) were swirling around the other major SXSW party, the Red Bull Moontower. As other parties and showcases ended, the crowd here got bigger, of course, and everyone was ready for something close to magical. After all, this is where the party had gone on all night every night during the fest. But around 2:45 a.m., toward the end of Goldielocks’ set, organizers announced that the music had to stop because of safety and noise concerns. Erykah Badu had been scheduled to go on at 3 a.m., followed by the Crystal Method. As someone pointed out, why it was OK to be loud on a Thursday night and not on a Saturday night was unclear. Although disappointed, the crowd began to disperse relatively calmly.
Elsewhere, at SXSW venues across town, Echo & the Bunnymen, Jane’s Addiction and other classic groups sent their fans over the moon. Janelle Monae won over more converts, and the Waco Brothers played their traditional closing set.
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