Do south

The Mirror reports from the 22nd annual
South by Southwest music festival

ARE THEY NOT MEN? Devo

by LORRAINE CARPENTER

“Fuck y’all” is such a common saying in Texas, it’s printed on souvenir shop t-shirts. But so is “Keep Austin Weird” and “I [heart] 6th Street,” sentiments that are in higher supply at what’s gotta be the best music conference of its kind, Austin’s South By Southwest, aka SXSW or, say the locals, “South By.”

Over four days and change, SXSW presents hundreds if not thousands of musicians, from utterly unknown punks, rockers, rappers and folkies to the likes of Metallica and Kanye West, who played unscheduled sets at this year’s edition. With free beer and BBQ and word-of-mouth happenings around the clock, most of them at venues concentrated within a 12-block radius, it’s Kiss’s vision come true—you can truly rock ’n’ roll all night and party every day.

It helps if you’re into electric guitars, as hip hop, electronic music and purist roots music are relatively scarce. On E6th Street, closed to traffic for the duration of the fest, music pours out of roughly every fifth door, with bands often playing in the windows. You can mosey down the street, jammed with fellow party people, and simply wander in to watch whichever act catches your ear. It’s like Montreal’s Main Madness meets Amsterdam’s red-light district, with live music as the draw.

Hit the North

There are few better ways to kick off a festival than spending 90 minutes in a room with Jarvis Cocker. During his afternoon lecture about song lyrics, with the requisite wit (and pointing stick), Cocker praised the penmanship of such scribes as Scott Walker, Mark E. Smith, Dory Previn and Rihanna, and dissed infamously weak offerings by James Blunt and Des’Ree, whose song “Life” he sang karaoke-style. He also performed his very first composition, “Shakespeare Rock,” accompanying himself on acoustic guitar, but it was his rendition of “Babies” that really pleased the fans of his old band, Sheffield superstars Pulp.

Across the street from the Austin Convention Center, at a Canuck BBQ, the free beer had been sapped by what appeared to be a Plateau welcoming committee. Between the Pop Montreal, M for Montreal and Canadian Blast events, the local scene was very well represented at SXSW, with familiar faces at practically every turn.

On Wednesday night, I saw Echo and the Bunnymen at Emo’s, topping a typically odd bill—the Circle Jerks and Juliette Lewis’s new band (the New Romantiques) preceded them. Ian McCulloch’s voice isn’t exactly what it used to be (and neither is his hair), but he pulled off such tunes as “The Back of Love” in what turned out to be a greatest hits set, featuring only a few new, fairly promising songs from their upcoming album, Fountain.

Go forward, move ahead

The Scouse quartet wasn’t the only band of old-timers at SXSW. On Thursday afternoon, I attended the Devo press conference, and witnessed the post-punk legends live on Friday night at the Austin Music Hall. They’re back, said Jerry Devo, because their “art school joke,” the theory of de-evolution, has truly come to pass. But luckily, Devo 2.0 sounds awesome, they’re a bundle of energy on stage, and the video montage that the show was choreographed to is as dazzling as it is loaded with socio-cultural criticism. Of course they played “Whip It,” “Girl U Want,” “Mongoloid” and “Jocko Homo,” but the new shit is actually on par. And that’s not just the tequila talking.

On Saturday night at an open-air venue called Stubb’s, PJ Harvey and John Parish previewed material from their next album, out in June. Dressed like some kind of hipster space stewardess, Harvey showed off her musical, theatrical range, from girlish balladeer to ballsy bitch commanding you to “stick it up your fucking ass!”

“Let’s bowl!”

Next door, Exene Cervenka (onetime frontwoman for legendary L.A. punks X) presented her new, Neko Case-esque steez. Luckily, I’d already had my fill of punk that afternoon at Spiro’s, thanks to Japan’s Peelander-Z, playing a Scout Events benefit for the Lance Armstrong Foundation. The sonically manic, stunningly costumed quartet repeatedly pulled such stunts as parting the crowd to create a bowling lane and rolling one band member toward the pins, leaving half the band to grind away at the soundtrack on stage. Call it gimmicky, but these crazy Asians are spectacular. Before that storm, however, came the calm of Montreal’s own Krista Muir, who schooled us on the correct pronunciation of ukulele (“huku leh-leh”) before playing a few fun ditties from her latest LP, Accidental Railway.

Also on the bill was San Francisco’s Scissors for Lefty, a punchy indie pop band worth looking into. Other discoveries included a lean Liverpool falsetto funk act called Wave Machines, Norwegian electro-pop wunderkinds Casiokids and San Antonio’s southern-style indie rockers Hacienda. There were also great sets by Portland’s arch indie pop act Viva Voce, who sound better than ever, Glasgow’s neo-Motown sad-sacks Camera Obscura and Toronto’s upbeat roots revisionists Elliott Brood. After four days of non-stop gigs and parties, it was almost too much to take in, but I’ll be back next year for more. First time was a charm.