And so the craziness that is SXSW continues on the Thursday here in Austin and at times crazy is the only way to describe it. The day started with the Yorkshire music party, who have a strong contingent of bands here even without Pulled Apart By Horses who pulled out late on to tour Europe with Blood Red Shoes. The organisers made us all feel at home with some good food including mini Toad in the Hole’s and did great on the music front too. Rockers Middleman kicked things off waking up those who were still feeling the effects of the previous night. Slow Club then followed with a short set, clearly forgot to set their alarms but the three songs they did play were good enough to make most there to want to see more. Hotly tipped for great things, The Crookes, continued the theme of the Yorkshire bands impressing the crowd with a dancey, happy set with songs about murders back home in Sheffield, including finishing off with an unplugged sing-a-long in the middle of the crowd. Penultimate band, Grammatics, played their nice ambient music complete with a cello and One Night Only wrapped up the short showcase.
The beauty of this festival is with the sheer number of bands playing you will always come across bands purely by accident. So while heading to Emo’s Annex, a small car parking lot any other time of the year, to see Montreal’s The Besnard Lakes, who despite also suffering from a touch of the Slow Club’s time keeping problems put on a great show, it was Memphis band The Magic Kids to surprisingly entertain us with their upbeat songs. The lead singer jumped off the stage to sing to a big punk guy dressed in a girl’s punk outfit, think kilted mini skirt with stockings and you have the picture, sorry if that is a picture you did not really want.
It was then back to Latitude 30 for the Welsh Music Federation’s day party, which seamlessly followed the Yorkshire one. The amazing Polly Mackey and the Pleasure Principle were once again on top form and gaining a lot of notice from not just the UK contingent but from places like San Francisco and New Zealand too.
It was then time for a walk, a very long walk, to Scoot Inn which is outside of Downtown but was worth it to see Toronto’s Holy Fuck’s first show of SXSW. May have only been 30 minutes long and a few teething problems, which if you have seen them before you will understand that with all that equipment something will go wrong once in a while. One of the front men, Graham Walsh, even said ‘I’m so sad’ as one of the little keyboards decided not to work. Thankfully no such problems later in the evening during their official showcase at Mohawks. The crowd still loved them despite not bouncing as much as you would expect at one of their gigs. The good news is that there is a UK tour coming up in May.
Before seeing Holy Fuck, there was plenty going on and started in the most surreal way. The Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt had an eye catching name so needed to be checked out and the New York state band certainly raised plenty of smiles by forcing the members of the crowd to dress up in the fancy dress costumes they provided. I know strange things seem to happen here (see last year’s news items) but this reviewer certainly never expected to watch a gig dressed as a cow. There was plenty of dancing going on by the assorted other costumed crowd too. Following on from that crazy fun show it was back to the normality of, and I quote the bands flyer ‘Panda’s playing instruments, singing and creating ambient hardcore’. The band in question was Latvia’s Instrumenti, as fun as it was to see panda’s playing, it was time for some real back to earth music.
This came in the form of The Whigs and our friends of R13, Fighting With Wire. Both bands have new albums coming out soon, although Fighting With Wire’s will be finished when they get back home from this little trip and from the evidence here both sound like they are going to be amazing. The Derry trio’s new stuff is just as rocky and plenty of new songs for the crowd to sing along too.
To finish the night, it was off to Rusty Spurs, a small venue to see Street Sweeper Social Club who as lead singer, Boots Riley, pointed out ‘we are more than a band, we are a social club’. Well they are more than that, not only is Boots Riley from The Coup the lead singer they have Tom Morello playing guitar too. They played, what they describe as ‘anthems for the revolution’ in a great funk rock style which it is fair to say that every member of the packed out venue loved every second. Following Boots, Tom and the boys were The Glitch Mob, which is one of edIT’s new bands. At 2am in the morning, he is joined by two others creating dance music on three very sophisticated looking drum machines, set up so the crowd can see what they do while dancing the night away. Maybe a little bit too techno for my liking but could not help but get into it and joining in before the legs called time.