SXSW reviews: The Ravonettes, Body of War, more

Saturday, March 15, 2008

The Raveonettes

Vice, 12:30 a.m. Thursday

The Raveonettes, who are New Yorkers via Denmark, lived up to the hype surrounding their distortion-drenched new release, "Lust, Lust, Lust" during their 12:30 a.m. performance at Vice.

One of the best parts of the performance was that the club was just big enough so that anyone with a wristband, a badge or $20 to slip the doorman was able to gain safe passage into the club. There was plenty of room to dance, chairs to stand on, and by the end of their set there was even enough room to see that many folks had departed to catch a 1 a.m. set at a different venue.

Much has been written about the Raveonettes' heavy Jesus and Mary Chain influence on the songs from "Lust, Lust, Lust," and it's all true. The Raveonettes definitely usurp the influential band's formula of fuzzed-out guitars crunching over four-on-the-floor drums and traditional pop song structure. But it should be noted that the Raveonettes name doesn't bear a close resemblance to the Ronettes by accident. Core members Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo also incorporate Phil Spector's wall of sound from the '60s into their pastiche of influences, as well as American West Coast surf music and elements from Italian psychedelic pop.

Remember how during SXSW 2007, the Swedish band Peter Bjorn and John played almost 20 shows over four days, which either made the band more endearing for their hard work or it made you never want to hear their hit single "Young Folks" ever again? The Raveonettes are on a campaign to rival Peter Bjorn and John — they're playing nine shows in four days — but luckily the Raveonettes don't have that one lone pop song at risk of over-saturation. Catch them while you can at one of their free day shows, because it's likely today's 10 p.m. show at Emo's will be nearly impossible to get in to see.

— V.M. Black

Evangelicals, Bon Iver, Jens Lekman

Mohawk Patio, 10 p.m., 11 p.m.

and midnight Thursday

Although I'm not overly familiar with the Austin-based Evangelicals, who originally hail from Norman, Okla., their set last November at the Fun Fun Fun Festival was enough to persuade me to put them on my list of bands to see at this year's SXSW at the Mohawk Patio. Drawing comparisons to the Flaming Lips for songs that are at once dark and airy, lead vocalist Josh Jones' vocals do sometimes seem to float off into the atmosphere while he simultaneously deals with weighty subject matter. The band attended to sound problems before they could start, but got going soon after, and played a solid set that included plenty of onstage theatrics as well a guitar solo or two thrown in for good measure.

Next up was Justin Vernon, aka Bon Iver. As a Yankee transplant who dearly misses the autumns and winters of New England (although I have heard that it has snowed in Austin in the not-too-distant past), the idea of a musician such as Eau Claire, Wisc.'s Bon Iver appeals to me greatly (according to his SXSW bio, his name is a play on the French "bon hiver," meaning "good winter"). Vernon's self-released debut album, "For Emma, Forever Ago," was conceived during a four-month solo recording session in a cabin during one of Wisconsin's long, snowy winters. Vernon was accompanied on stage by a drummer and a second guitarist, who complemented Vernon well as he made his way through a set that alternated between emotional ballads with vocals that border on wailing and more upbeat folk-rock style songs. At one point he asked the crowd to sing along; he was clearly having a good time on stage.

What was perhaps the biggest crowd of the night squeezed in for Swedish musician Jens Lekman. I had previously heard that Lekman was a solo act the last time he appeared in Austin, and I was pleasantly surprised when he appeared on stage with a full band, including a violin, cello and a laptop/DJ.

On his most recent record, "Night Falls Over Kortedala," Lekman relates feelings of romantic pain and loneliness over upbeat violin swirls that are evocative of disco and lounge-act pop from the 1960s. His set Thursday included a selection of songs from that record, which the band made their way through with great energy.

The set was not without some entertaining gimmickry, including the DJ mixing "Give Me Just A Little More Time" in the middle of "The Opposite of Hallelujah" as well as another point where the entire band put down their instruments to dance with arms extended.

— Peter Mongillo

Syd Straw

Bourbon Rocks, midnight Thursday

Syd Straw deserves her own television show. It would probably have to run very late at night, but she made me laugh so hard at Bourbon Rocks Thursday that I had to wipe tears from my eyes.

Straw, of course, is a singer, not a comedian. Fans of the Golden Palominos will remember her stellar contributions to that illustrious band, which also featured some guys named Michael Stipe and Matthew Sweet. She has also sung with a long list of greats, including Rickie Lee Jones, Van Dyke Parks, Leo Kottke, Marc Ribot and Dave Alvin. Her voice is uncommonly bracing, like the first northerly wind that tells you autumn is at last around the corner. However, Straw has only managed to release two albums of her own, both cult favorites, the most recent about a dozen years ago.

But although Straw's long-anticipated third album, "Pink Velour," is apparently still waiting in the wings for a label or backers of some kind, she showed no particular inclination to promote it, other than to joke it was her first "in 200 years," and proffer a fine new song that, she said, was "like a newborn baby, and should be treated tenderly, and probably changed."

Straw brought a terrific guitar-mandolin army that included Austinites Gurf Morlix (on electric) and Rich Brotherton (on mandolin), both of whom seemed to be having a capital time. But when a fan called out "Great band!" she replied, "I don't deserve them! One day I will grow into them."

The bizarre clamor of Sixth Street and the unsuitability of a venue that let so much of that leak in led Straw to spend as much time hilariously marveling at the madness as actually singing. It probably didn't help that she had been introduced with wild enthusiasm by none other than Beatle Bob, which prompted her to muse, "I think we should do nine or 10 really slow ballads now" as a response.

Straw introduced one feisty song as having "the parenthetical title 'Don't date arrogant European avant-garde jazz record producers.' " She played a fan request for her old song "CBGB's" but only after a lengthy comedic detour and only with some prompting on the chords from guitarist Francis X. She also sang a ballad by Austin's Jo Carol Pierce, holding a spiral notebook to remind herself of the lyrics.

It was one of the most disjointed SXSW sets ever, but most of the crowd seemed to richly enjoy the rare spectacle of an artist simply reacting to the SXSW experience, which Straw summarized as "All about rubbing elbows in hell."

— Parry Gettelman

Samulnori drummers

Sixth Street performance

Foot traffic along Sixth at Trinity streets and later Neches Street about 9:30 p.m. slowed to a crawl or stopped altogether Thursday as crowds whipped out their cell phone cameras and watched as a group of Samulnori percussionists showed their stuff.

Playing four different instruments — from large side-saddle drums to small frying pan-like cymbals — the group of 15 Asian American students, most of them from the University of Texas, played the Korean-based music in round, marching formations while wearing red, white, blue and yellow robe-like uniforms.

The shows were brief, at about 10 minutes each, but were an out-of-nowhere surprise for the crowds milling about and heading to their ultimate destinations for the night.

Definitely one of those anything-can-happen South by Southwest moments that keep people talking after the music has stopped.

— Chad Swiatecki

Body of War

Stubb's, 7 p.m. Thursday

The premise behind "Body of War" — the documentary that premiered at the SXSW Film Festival, the compilation CD soundtrack and the all-star concert at Stubb's on Thursday night — is simple and powerful: No one has a greater moral authority to protest an unjust war than the soldiers who fight in it.

The soldier in this case is Tomas Young, who was crippled in an attack after less than a week in Iraq.

Young, in a wheelchair, watched the musical proceedings from the side of the Stubb's stage. The myriad performers in the two-hour event rendered what was referred to as his "soundtrack" — the artists he turned to to help him cope with the wrenching dislocations of paralysis and trauma.

For all the emotion attached to the event, however, it was, early on, a musically pallid affair for the most part. Musicians including Brendan James, Mason Jennings, American Bang, the Rx Bandits and Brett Dennen each performed one or two numbers in an acoustic format. They sang from a variety of perspectives — as soldiers, appalled citizens, Iraqi civilians, or from a spiritual plane — but an acoustic guitar only reaches so far across the crowded Stubb's amphitheater.

Things started to heat up with the rich baritone and quirky musical signatures of Serj Tankian (of System of A Down), who sang, "Wouldn't it be great to heal the world with a song?" No, it's a lot more complicated than that, riposted Billy Bragg, who followed Tankian. "We can't change the world with a song," said Bragg, who is as much a political activist as a musician. "But we have a platform, and it's how we use that platform that matters."

Ben Harper, the crowd-pleaser of the evening, followed Bragg onstage for a pair of songs, but it was left to Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine to really rouse the rabble.

Performing a furious mini-set that included some mordant anti-war material including "Gather Round the Stone," "Flesh Shapes the Day" and "Battle Hymns," Morello exhorted the crowd with cheerful, R-rated monologues before leading the cast of performers and a pogo-ing audience in a punked-out rendition of Woody Guthrie's "alternative national anthem" (as Morello put it), "This Land Is Your Land."

— John T. Davis

Liam Finn

The Ale House, 11 p.m. Thursday

Liam Finn undoubtedly has one of the hardest-rocking bands at SXSW — and it's just him and backing vocalist-percussionist-autoharpist E.J. Barnes. At the crammed-solid Ale House on Thursday, Finn mostly played electric guitar but sometimes set electronic loops of guitar going and pounced on a drum kit to up the ante. That might sound gimmicky, but he has such a natural feel for dynamics and subtle grasp of drama that every moment of the music felt completely organic.

It's hard to say whether Finn is a better guitarist or drummer, because he played both instruments with equal intelligence, finesse and ferocity. He's perhaps not as phenomenal a vocalist as his father, Crowded House frontman Neil Finn, but he has a very good falsetto. He delivered songs with exceptional conviction and blended his voice brilliantly with Barnes' high harmonies and even her first-rate rock 'n' roll scream.

Finn recently released his solo debut "I'll Be Lightning" to critical acclaim and considerable buzz. The album has those layered, finely textured, Beatle-esque arrangements that seem to be part of the Finn DNA. Liam Finn not only conjured the same richness live but was an absolutely captivating performer. (Judging by the number of Aussie and New Zealand accents heard just in the front rows, the word has already gotten around Down Under). He was not hindered even by the initial lack of lights on the stage, which merely prompted him to joke about how good the audience looked and to suggest maybe all the people in front with cameras flashing should take lots of pictures.

After a while, a few people with powerful flashlights came down front to provide some illumination, and one larger stage light shone half-heartedly from above. The dimness didn't impede the enthralled crowd's appreciation of powerful numbers such as the tightly coiled "Energy Spent" and fierce "I'll Be Lightning," although it was pretty awe-inspiring if you happened to be standing close enough to watch Finn play drums, as the kit seemed about to fly apart and his sticks were a psychedelic blur in the strobing of camera flashes. Finn and Barnes really went above and beyond on "Lead Balloon," which elevated into a vocal harmony freak-out that brought the White Album to mind.

Certainly it might have taken Finn a little longer to get noticed without the famous last name, and there's a definite genealogical connection between his music and that of both his father and uncle Tim Finn. His songs particularly recall the more thorny, less-appreciated (at least stateside) Finn Brothers collaborations. However, Liam Finn is such an amazing musician and brilliant performer that he's in no danger of standing in anyone's shadow.

— Parry Gettelman

Mike Rep

Soho Lounge, 10:40 p.m. Thursday

Rock bands with a mix of the young and the older in lineups are fraught with the potential for hackery of the first order. Referents, worldviews, a theory of the music's place in the world — all of these things are different and often competing. Or the younger members remain deferent to their elders, which does nobody any good.

Consider, for example, the generations of helpless locals who would back up Chuck Berry, who, according to myth, simply expected the locals to know his material forward and backward.

Sometimes, however, bands with an older leader and a backup band young enough to be said leader's children works out just great. Mike "Rep" Hummel's set at the Soho Lounge on Thursday night was just such an occasion.

Mike Rep was a proto-punk, which means that in those strange and confusing days after, say, Woodstock and before the Ramones, this Ohio native was cranking out primitive, anti-fidelity rock music with a one-man-against-the-world quality that was almost pyschedelic in its intensity. Why is he not famous? Well, that's how life works sometimes.

Thursday, he was using buzzy indie rock band Times New Viking as his backing back, and it's hard to think of a more sympathetic set of students. Rep cranked through his blasts of Rust Belt pound with joy and verve, TNV matching his every step. Thirty-year-old songs were followed by newer material, and of course they didn't sound all that different. The band also cranked through what might be the most demented (read: fantastic) cover of the Archies' "Sugar, Sugar" the assembled had ever heard. A very special night indeed. They are welcome back to Austin any time. How about a tour, guys?

— Joe Gross

Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue

Fado Patio, 10:15 p.m. Thursday

OK, here's the setup: A horn player from the inner-city wards in New Orleans walks into a faux-Irish bar deep in the heart of Texas. The punchline? A smokin'-hot set by Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews and his band, Orleans Avenue.

Shorty is living proof that the musical spirit of the city remains unbroken and unbowed, despite the travails of its citizens.

The scion of a musical family (his older brother, James, is a mainstay of the Treme Brass Band) and the product of a musically rich downtown neighborhood, Shorty alternates between trombone and trumpet and layers his Second Line beats with funk, rock, Latin accents, hip-hop and soul. Beyond his New Orleans tutelage, tours with Lenny Kravitz have clearly helped open his musical horizons.

Playing off, and in tandem with, saxophonist James Martin (who kills in his own right) and the rest of his ensemble, Shorty exhorted the crowd in the tiny venue as though he were playing for a sold-out Jazzfest crowd. Blowing clean, hard, precise lines over a stew of funky grooves, he romped through his own "Like Mike," Rebirth Brass Band's "Feel Like Funkin' It Up" and a jazzy version of "St. James Infirmary," among other tunes. Sometimes, he jumped up and down in tandem with the crowd, or just put down his horn and surfed the band's musical wave. His enthusiasm was, to say the least, contagious.

He proved himself a sly and canny showman, too. Prior to a Herculean effort at pulling the highest notes humanly possible out of his trumpet, he pulled a tube of lip balm out of his pocket, dabbed some on and cautioned, "Kids, don't try this at home."

Here's another bit of advice: Run, don't walk, to catch this guy next time he comes to town.

— John T. Davis

The Heavy

Elysium, 8:30 p.m. Thursday

Seeing U.K. funk rock band the Heavy play Thursday, it was hard to not feel as if someone was selling a false bill of goods. That's at least partially a compliment because the fivesome from Noid, England, sound like the sexiest, funkiest group on this or any shore on their great debut, "Great Vengeance and Furious Fire," which finally gets a U.S. release next month.

Full of sweaty Curtis Mayfield-mimicking vocals from singer Swaby, the record has a Stax-like muscle to its horns and rhythm section, which is almost a must to do that kind of music well.

So the problem with the band's hotly anticipated set at Elysium? No horns, just four-beat prerecorded horn figures played from a sample box hooked up to a keyboard that stood in ably for the real thing at first but soon became constricting. This was the case because soul and funk bands, particularly horns, bass and drums, work best when there's an elastic push and pull to the rhythm that allows for improvisation at the drop of a hat.

Lacking that moving pocket, you had an able band and a vocalist who's clearly a star in the making reined in almost as bad as a rap artist rhyming live over recordings, giving them no room for spontaneity.

The lesson in all of this? Next time, guys, drop the cash to bring on some real brass that'll let you shine even better than on the record.

— Chad Swiatecki