SXSW, A.C. Newman and more
Which way to free beer?
We kicked off the first day of the SXSW music fest extravaganza orgy by rolling up to Mohawk on Red River to try to catch local songstress Caitlin Rose. The door guy said both stages' sets were running about a half-hour behind (thanks, dude) so we used the time to head next door to the Bitch Magazine party at Club Deville, where Paper Chase were onstage dishing out their rap-leaning, white-boy rock.
It was aggressively rap-rocky but with piano keyboard parts that made it sound aggressively white. Actually, the bass player ruled pretty hard with his sludgy assault. But as a friend of ours once said, "I feel like I'm trapped inside a 'Stuff White People Like' blog entry."
So we went back to Mohawk to catch Rose, only to find out her set—as well as the sets of all the bands playing the inside stage—was right on time. Rose actually went on early, so being horribly misled, we headed up the street to catch the scrappy garage rock of The Thermals. Turns out, so did everyone else.
We've said many times that the only thing worse than being around a crowd of people who are nothing like you is being around a crowd of people who are exactly like you, so when you run across a dude so pathologically himself that he doesn't give two Tecate shits about the rest of it, you just kinda love the guy. Especially when he's wearing a shirt that says "Fast Zombies Suck" on the front and—you guessed it—"Slow Zombies Rule" on the back.
The whole thing about SXSW is that the day parties are free and often have free food and booze, so it's critical to get up early and mooch like you've never mooched before. Wednesday, there hadn't been so much as a free breakfast taco to be found. So Thursday morning, we got up early—early enough to catch a blogger panel called "Bloggers Are Now in Charge" featuring Nashville's own Janet Timmons from Out the Other, Glenn Peoples from Coolfer as well as the dudes from Brooklyn Vegan and Aquarium Drunkard. The panel was cool because it looked at the unique position bloggers are still in to be tastemakers while maintaining their own independence and street cred. But then it was time to hit the streets to find tunes and booze, hopefully the free kind.
Sometimes you're mapping out bands you're gonna see and someone texts you and says "Free food at the Filter mag party!" so you bolt to Cedar Street in the hopes of grub. We got there to see Portland band Hockey, who sounded like a dance-rock band backing Rod Stewart. Totally fine, just kinda forgettable.
When some chick said Entertainment Weekly had some free smokes, food and booze, we knew where to go. It was everything you wanted it to be, and by that we mean there were free mini-hamburgers, mini-corndogs and quesadillas.
Stuffed and pleasantly buzzed, we headed to the aptly named Peckerheads where Those Darlins were setting up for an at-capacity crowd. The Red Stripe was warm but free, and the ladies blazed through a spunky set to the usual snakepit that even a broken bass string couldn't slow down.
(More SXSW adventures and photos galore at nashvillecream.com.)
Mish-mash
Friday night had some unusually strong electronic music choices for Music City—Kraak & Smaak at Exit/In, Coach vs. Kase at 12 & Porter and Mashville at Mercy Lounge. We were so wrapped up in the emotional catharsis of the Battlestar Galactica robo-pocalypse and Scene contributor Lee Stabert's roast lamb shoulder that we missed the Mashville debut of N.O.B.O.T.S. Word on the back porch was that we missed some serious hotness. DJ Orig's set was fun but sonically inconsistent; he had opted for zany eclecticism over auditory continuity, which can make it tough to rally your dance floor mojo. Wick-it dropped it and dropped it hard—bass boomed and our booties shook to his rampage through popular music, highlighted by a four-way soundlash between UGK, Dee-lite, M.I.A and Weezer.
Newman owns
A.C. Newman may have been going it alone as a solo act apart from the New Pornographers, who first brought him to the indie spotlight, but with a five-member backing band joining him at the Mercy Lounge on Saturday, it was clear from the first song that this would be no pet project for the power-pop savant. Newman quickly settled into his center mic with eyes clinched, swaying against his acoustic, slapping out staccato strums and caterwauling lyrics through his thick lisp.
Multi-instrumentalist Shaun Brodie manned his melodica for a tense rendition of "Like a Hitman, Like a Dancer," then swapped out trumpet blasts for synth-driven hooks with fellow keyboardist/guitarist Shane Nelkin across stage. If bass player Miranda Brown toughed out a cold between back-up vocals and sprightly whistles—a reserve bottle of throat spray on top of the amp behind her—drummer Jon Wurster (poached from Superchunk for the tour) cooly jabbed his drum kit to keep up with Newman's brisk pace.
For what turned out to be a damn fine show, the crowd felt a little thin and overly relaxed, with dreamy couples muttering lyrics in unison and plenty of head-bobbers with their hands stuffed in the marsupial pockets of their hoodies. But by the band's encore performance of "Town Halo," the audience was hanging on every riff and cat-calling for more. Leading the song's frenetic violin hook was Tara Szczygielski—incidentally, a spitting image of fellow Pornog Neko Case—intensely sawing the strings with such a country totter to her step you wouldn't have thought this was her first stay in Nashville. Newman and his band may have been a long way from home, but their undaunted pep proved the road hadn't worn them down one bit.
What, beer costs money? Not exactly a hero's welcome. Email thespin@nashvillescene.com.
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