Another SXSW has come and gone, and as always, this year topped previous years with its music and general fun factors. I’m not sure if the festival improves every year, or if I just get better at doing SXSW each year, but either way I’m happy and very sad to see it go.
Here are some of the best (and unfortunately, the worst) of what we managed to wrap our heads around this year.
Best New Faces
Every year, we catch sets by bands that we’ve never seen before. This year, there were two bands that stood above the others.
SA – While Samurai Attack first formed in Japan in the ‘80s, their American exposure has been limited. This Japanese Oi! band was a welcome surprise. Despite the fact that they were adopting a musical style that is not typically associated with Japan, they did it with such passion, enthusiasm and lack of sarcasm that the whole crowd was immediately drawn in. Aside from their thick accents, it was hard at times to tell whether we were seeing a street punk band from Boston, or the Japanese equivalent. They make punk rock fun again; leave it to Japan to remind us that it can be that fun.
iwrestledabearonce – This is another band we happened upon that I was blown away by. Raw brutal grindcore that segues easily into complex jazzy music and bouts with electro, fronted by a female lead singer who can drop death metal growls with the best men in the genre, while maintaining a singing voice that was positively Bjorkish.
Biggest Surprises
SXSW is known for its surprises: bands either making special, unscheduled experiences or bands that you stumble upon without realizing how good they would be. This year was heavy with those, but there were two that really stood out:
Cosmopolitan – This three-piece party band from Mexico was a band we stumbled into while heading to see This Bike Is A Pipe Bomb. Guitar, drums and a laptop mixed with matching pleather Elvis suits are a combination that makes for an instant electronic dance party.
Metallica – The biggest surprise was not that the band was playing SXSW; rumors were running throughout the festival and had, in fact, started days before the festival began. The biggest surprise about this band’s appearance was that I enjoyed it so much. I expected rock star-sized egos and a performance of the band’s more recent, more commercially successful, less hardcore tunes. Instead, we were treated to an interview with guitarist Kirk Hammett that found him to be laid back and friendly, and a performance that was heavily weighted with classic old tunes, most notably “Master of Puppets,” and designed more to rock the crowd than to stroke the band’s ego.
Performances that We Knew Would Be Good (and we weren’t disappointed)
Circle Jerks - We really hit the ground running this year, with one of the first shows we caught being by none other than the legendary Circle Jerks. I had honestly thought I'd never get the chance to see these infrequently touring legends, and with this opportunity, I saw the roots of hardcore compressed in a barrage of short, fast punk classics.
Amanda Palmer – The solo set from the Dresden Dolls vocalist (and founder of the punk cabaret) was wonderful for its location – it was in a church – and for its content. Palmer, who we’d met at the airport on the flight in (which could also allow her to grace the “Biggest Surprises” list), and in a restaurant the next day, played a set that spoke to the amazing acoustics of the space, including an a cappella performance of “The Wind That Shakes The Barley,” sans microphone, and many of her softer tunes that don’t carry as well in a rock club.
New York Dolls – We caught this legendary band in a warehouse space late one night, and despite the fact that we were tucked in the back and could barely see the band, we didn’t feel left out of the action at all. They unveiled songs from their upcoming album (Spoiler Alert! It’s going to be great, if these songs are any indication), and blasted through classics like “Personality Crisis,” “Pills” and “Trash.”
The next morning, we caught the band again, from a similar vantage, as we stood on the street while they played on the roof of a bar for Rachael Ray’s party. Again, even without seeing the band, the performance was amazing.
Biggest Disappointments
Peter Murphy – Poor sound, a late-opening club and a set devoid of any classics made the performance by the legendary Bauhaus frontman one that was decidedly mediocre.
This Bike Is A Pipe Bomb – Despite having waited years to catch this Florida-based folk punk band, and despite the fact that they really sounded great, I was so disappointed by the lack of respect that they showed for the band that had played previously that I walked out on them after three songs. That pretension goes so heavily against what SXSW is about that it left a bad taste in my mouth.
Quaff – After seeing the members of this Japanese band promoting themselves all over 6th Street in full regalia, complete with giant hair and colored contacts, we knew this was a set we couldn’t miss. Unfortunately, there is no way the band could live up to its own hype. This amazing-looking band unfortunately plays exactly what they look like they should – boring trashy hair metal, like a tired clone of Poison.
