By Keegan Pierce
Every year around Spring Break, thousands of bands and brands, as well as hundreds of thousands of professionals and partiers, descend on downtown Austin, TX. for the one-of-a-kind festival/conference/expo/billboard that is South by Southwest. Since 1987, the annual event has been a hub for all kinds of creative industries, showcasing music, movies, and more. Here’s some stuff I saw there this year.
Some Non-Music
A big part of the conference is the industry focused keynote speakers. I saw Conan O’Brien and Dave Kroll at one cutting it up about Conan’s new show, which won him a new fan. J.K. Simmons got stuck talking about his insurance ads, which was a nice nap, and I saw Mike Judge and the cast of Office Space do an anniversary panel for the movie. In my opinion, that panel was overly editorialized by the moderator. She didn’t let David Herman joke around.
SXSW runs on corporate sponsorships, which means that there’s all kinds of sponsored “activations” around. I got jumpscared in a confession booth set up on the side of the road to advertise some movie. I got a picture with Master Chief and in the USS Enterprise’s captain chair at a Paramount place. I saw Mark Cuban at a party hosted by the host of the “Call Her Daddy Podcast.” There were also giant eye-catching inflatable poops around by Poo-Pourri. Fun stuff. You can really feel the new skyscrapers around downtown.
Inside the convention center, there was a creative industries expo featuring all kinds of companies giving out swag for contact info and such. What I was most excited about was the Flatstock 92 print showcase. There were rows and rows of vendors showcasing and slinging their poster prints. As an amateur screenprinter, I was blown away by every booth and star struck to meet the artists behind gig posters that I have on my walls. I was honored to get a book signed by the OG Andy Macdougall and hear him talk about motorcycles.
Music
The first big show I went to was a crazy triple header of experimental rock music. First was the minimalist rock band Water Damage, whose artistic focus is monotony and whose motto as a group is "Maximal Repetition Minimal Deviation." I’ve been wanting to experience their radical repetition for a while, and it did not disappoint. While I’m not sure that they played any more than one song, the members deftly wielded their repetition to constantly reveal new patterns and textures in the loops like a violent William Basinski. A special treat for the weekend was the reformation of the short-lived dub offshoot of At the Drive-In, (which would become The Mars Volta), De Facto. It’s really saying something that De Facto is perhaps the strangest turn for the band members Omar and Cedric considering their other genre-redefining projects. Still, next to the driving bass of ATDI and the proggy-weirdness of Mars Volta, their improvised, Scientist/King Tubby-esque, instrumental dub kind of makes sense as the bass drives and the keyboard strikes and weaves. Finally was the headliner, Mogwai. The songs of the Scottish post-punk band are less structured and more shaped. Each of their songs starts as a seed– a little line that repeats itself– and crecendos into ear splitting volumes pummeling your chest. It’s inescapably moving because the music moves so much itself like the breaths of a giant– in dynamics, speed, and tonality. It’s like a meditation CD turned up so loud that it pumps your blood for you.
The next night, I got my blood pumping to Veeze. Veeze practically slurs his raps in a deceptively laconic Detroit flow, which can hide all of his great one liners and make it appear like he’s not even trying. I’m a big fan though. If you can see past his bleary-eyed veneer, I really think he’s got the hooks and bars. Teezo Touchdown was up next. He’s also totally up next – a great performer who works the crowd way above his weight class. Just gotta get some better songs lol.
One of the biggest established names on the lineup this year was The Black Keys, who came promoting a new album and a film. While they performed a number of sets throughout the week, I know I caught the best one at Mohawk when they were playing songs from their 2021 album, Delta Kream. That’s because it’s an album honoring the Mississipi blues that inform the Black Keys sound, and I love some MS delta/hillcountry blues. In a way, I was reminded of the acoustic Beck show I saw last time I was at SXSW, where he wore his country and blues influences on his sleeve for an intimate set. In two ways, The Black Keys’ set was not like that. For one, The Black Keys went a step further by bringing out their heroes turned collaborators Jimmy “Duck” Holmes and Robert Finley (and others I didn’t see because my bike got stolen right before I went over), to play on the stages before them. “Duck” Holmes had me laughing and hollering at his alternatingly raunchy, devastating, and worldly blues. Known as the last Bentonia bluesmen, he stands, at the age of 76, as the last known steward of his regional style of blues. I’m very glad The Black Keys brought him out. Robert Finley, legally blind, age of 70, only released his debut album 6 years ago, but he his soulful blues voice shows his life drenched in the gospel and blues of Louisiana, which is why Dan Auerbach of the Keys collaborates with him and brought him out. To prove I was in the right place, I got to shake hands with the frontman of Spoon, my favorite band, who was also there to check it out. The Keys were good too.
SXSW offers the unique opportunity to see a lot of small international bands that don’t normally tour the states. I saw Tokyo Syoki Syodo at a stage of Tokyo artists. This Japanese punk band brought an infinite amount of energy and little chocolates to give to the audience and it was a blast seeing them tear down the club. There was also The Canada House down the street, where I caught the end of a buffet but no bands that really excited me. I think the Canucks just don’t really have good music and that The Unicorns are a bit of a unicorn. (I kid– really, I just didn’t go at a good time, and this Yankee thanks ye for the sandwich.)
Our Southern neighbors were out in full force, however. The burgeoning Latin American influence on pop music was clearly heard at the festival (or at least at the shows I went to). I saw American groups like the Chicago-based “psychedelic tropical” band Cabeza De Chivo or the hometown cumbia group Los Bravos De La H driving the dance floor harder than any other acts. Meanwhile, the Mexican star Peso Pluma’s set at ACL Live was at capacity from early in the afternoon and was the most hyped concert all week. I saw one of the openers, the Puerto Rican singer Pink Pablo, at another showcase, and I totally recommend checking out his unique blend of sounds, but I wasn’t cool enough to get into ACL Live that night.
Instead of the Peso Pluma show, I saw the breaking London-based, indie-darling trio (quintetto live) Bar Italia. The set captured the entrancing and moody sound of their records; however, with live drums and bass replacing the programmed rhythm section on the album, there was an added edge of energy as the band ploddingly entwined their melodies. The audience was completely dialed in. Unlike many bands at SXSW that are still building a fanbase, Bar Italia had a packed house singing along, and while their blend of lo-fi, post-punk, and shoegaze might not seem to lend itself to mosh pit formation, the excitement boiled over, and you know that I was throwing elbows. I met this cool dude there who had just graduated from college radio, and I asked him where to go next.
He introduced me to Zheani, a self-described “Australian artist, musician, and occultist.” Equally infectious, scary, pummeling, and grooving, I never would have heard her otherwise since A) I haven’t explored a lot of occult electo pop and B) She claims to be shadowbanned because of the videos of her scantily clad running around the Australian outback that often accompany her music.
This takes us to a whole host of Texas bands I saw!
I randomly stumbled upon Joe “King” Carrasco returning to SXSW. While he is listed a notable musician of the year 1990, the “King” of tex-mex, who has a song with the king of pop, was playing a random small stage in East Austin next to the food truck I ordered chicken at. Even if his spotlight has changed, I think that his audience consisted of the same people at 1990. A polo’d fan was harassing him before the set about doing a cruise, which is probably the catalyst for me seeing him as a Tex-Mex Jimmy Buffet.
The most impressive soloist I saw was the Texas born multi-intstrumentalist Blue Lakes. He designed his custom zither especially for his playing style, which is to say that he’s masterminded completely unique aural landscapes. I saw him inside a beautiful historic church sancutary, which further elevated the zither’s spell as it washed over me. It was ultimately serene.
Behold! born from the ashes of various psych rock acts across Texas and possessed by an interdimensional being of funk, the band Grandmaster! This band has an expanding universe of lore following it with a YouTube series documenting their story of being possessed by this cosmic force of funk that writes all of their songs. I did an interview with them while they were loading out, and the members I grabbed were worried that they weren’t familiar enough with the forbidden knowledge to tell me about it. “Just make it up!” their band leader said, which I think sums up this silly, funky, and cosmic band.
I’m like 90% sure that Nolan Potter of Nolan Potter’s Nightmare Band was filling in for a member in Grandmaster – I definitely saw a case with his name on it there. I ended up walking past this band a few nights later and stopped by. They were pretty groovy, but I couldn’t really get lost in the jam because this dude sitting on a block close to me started a fight with the people in front of him by aggressively tapping them with his cane to get out of the way, which lead to security coming over and yells exchanged.
After evacuating that scene, I headed over to Revival coffee to wait in line for the Houston legends Propaine, Sauce Walka, and Z-Ro. Shouts out to them all for showing up late else I probably wouldn’t have gotten in. I got stuck just outside the gate at capacity. Even bigger shouts out to the security guard out there who saw my Houston radio badge and fought for me to get in to see the Houston rappers. I did get in before it got real, and I had my H in the air. A fitting end to my time in Austin that got me excited for the drive back to Houston.