South By Southwest 2010 – Part 3

Herbie hits his stride.
Friday 19th March
Surfer Blood and mornings didn’t seem like they liked each other for a while. The band that confessed to ‘forgetting to sleep’ can probably be forgiven because of their hectic SXSW schedule. They played a total of 10 shows over the 5 days.
Surfer Blood shows have been hard to get into all over town this week, that’s the only reason I’m awake at this unearthly hour. Lead singer J.P Pitts emerged to a very shaky start during ‘Floating Vibes‘ but soon warmed the vocal cords to hit his stride.
Their baby faced guitarist pulled out a sheepish solo with his teeth during ‘Catholic Pagans‘ which was met with a mixed response from the crowd, no Hendrix indeed. It seems that JP Pitt’s faith in the band may well be paying off after investing in microphones instead of more schooling. They have struck a great balance between indie, surf tunes, preppy rock and actually having decent songs with catchy hooks. More impressive is that they sound as good live as they do on their debut Astrocoast. ‘Swim’, ‘Fast Jabroni’ and ‘Twin Peaks‘ makes Surfer Blood already sound like the perfectly packaged band to have crack at the UK and European market this festival season.

Surfer Blood

Chapman Family were first on stage at Latitude 30. I’ve been following these guys since their demos after a tip of from a UK based friend. The demos and early songs show a lot of promise however the live show was style over substance for me. They have some great songs, ‘The Kids Are Not Alright‘ and ‘Lies, Lies. Lies‘ are worthy of a listen if you are into the heavier side of indie. I’m not sure if the NME radar tag has gone to their heads, but the stage theatrics detracted from the performance. New rock show ponies is the new tag, that cool? Wrapping your neck tightly with the microphone cord and reeling about on the floor makes me me want to tug harder on it. Playing loud isn’t a problem for me either, only when it’s an intentionally abrasive cluster fuck. No thanks.

Local Natives were unfortunate enough to play one of the shittest sounding venues of SXSW, The Galaxy Courtyard – a makeshift marquee in a beer garden playing tunes over a car stereo. However four part harmonies and ace drumming interludes gave us a brief glimpse of what this band is capable of. Despite the very short set and the sound issues the crowd gave rapturous applause for 5 tunes from their debut offering ‘Gorilla Manor‘. We were also treated to a quirky but distinctive Talking Heads cover ‘Warning Sign‘. It all wrapped up with ‘Sun Hands‘ and a group drum off (and not in a Phil Collins way) with touring buddies Fools Gold. Hopefully we get the pleasure of hearing a full set from Local Natives in Australia sometime soon.

The start of a Born Ruffians set at Emo’s means that I’m in the wrong place at the right time, not a massively terrible mistake to make though. Having already seen Born Ruffians I stick around for the opener and then hot foot it round to Emo Jr’s for Danish dance kings Who Made Who. The front 2 rows of the 100 person capacity venue were obviously already aware of what they were about to see. Within a matter of minutes Who Made Who had everyone in the venue pogoing to ‘Satisfaction‘, complete with guitar slide beer can to provide excerpts of Mr.Ozio’s ‘Flat Beat‘. Following up with a couple of equally infectious tunes from 2009′s The Plot they had the crowd in the palm of their hands. So far it’s the best overall reaction to a band at SXSW. Because there are so many bands and show on the program it leads to some elements of the crowd hanging out at the back of venues chatting loudly, but gladly not in this case. Playful interplay and pigeon English endears the crowd to the trio. They had a extremely short set playing ‘Out The Door‘ and ‘Rose‘. I later mentioned to lead singer Jeppe that the crowd had gone ape shit for them, he replied ‘Well, were pretty fucking good though hey?‘.

I though maybe I’d been Punk’d when I haplessly stumbled on the Billboard venue for The Death Set. These chaps must be stoked, because for the moment they are getting away with scam of the century. Not being able to play instruments too well has been a given for a lot of punk bands in their early years. Where The Death Set fail this is that they don’t have any redeeming features at all. Seemingly the only talentless band at SXSW this year. The best part of the show was when Aussie born lead singer Johnny Siera surged into the crowd, snagging the mic lead and treating us all to silence. I tipped the barman extra in the marquee before leaving, no one show have to put up with that shit.

Tim Harrington of Les Savy Fav

‘Seek Magic‘ was on the top of a lot of ‘best of the year’ lists for 2009, so a trip to Klub Krucial for Memory Tapes was on the cards. The live show was something to looks forward to and I always wondered how Dayve Hawk (man behind Memory Tapes among other bands) would cobble together a live show being a one man band and all. Mixed is the answer, the band consisted of Dayve (on vocals, guitar and effects), Dayve’s mate (playing drums to a click track) and an electronic backing track. Live it did lack some of the glitchy goodness of the album and sounded heaps more guitar based indie. Hawk’s fuzzy lo fi vocals added a soothing quality to proceedings no more evident than on ‘Stop Talking‘ and ‘Graphics‘. However a slightly stronger vocal would have bolstered the show. Only having two members and a backing track did make if feel like a lot of the spontitnaity was taken out of the equation. The climax of the showcase was a extended, blissed out version of ‘Bicycle‘. To cap the set off we had a gentleman do the worm across the stage to the New Order sounding outro, magic! We’ve been promised a new album this year, let hope it’s as good as ‘Seek Magic’. I’m also hopefully that they’ll be more band members in future to try and recreate a more accurate reflection of the recorded material.

“A friend’s beige sports jacket bit the dust a short time later as Harrington squeezed his ample frame into it and burst through Incredible Hulk style after trying to burn it with a lighter”

Les Savy Fav entered the stage with mischievous lead singer Tim Harrington wearing a rather natty poncho. The girl next to me had obviously been to a Les Savy Fav gig before, stepping backwards straight away and pondering out loud about what was being worn under the poncho. ‘We’ve got a busy schedule, a showcase at 9 am tomorrow morning at Waterloo Records followed by a Zone party at midday. Ah, I think we’ve had our chance‘ mocked Harrington before ripping into the sponsors of the event with a couple of faux advertisements. Once again the sound problems were haunting the stage but the band didn’t help matters or seem to care. As soon as the opening riff for ‘The Equestrian‘ kicked in Harrington vaulted the barrier straight into the crowd. It was obvious from this point that the lucky 400 people in the tent were in for a fun night.

Within 3 songs Tim decided to rip off his shirt and started fucking with the stage lights, firstly clambering between the lights and the tent then unplugging all the lights in the venue. A helpful stage manager appeared a couple of minutes later to restore the lighting only to be unplugged by Harrington with no hesitation at all. He remained on the lights for a while smashing his hand against the tent and posing on top of the speakers. With no lights on stage fans threw glow sticks. Harrington took a couple, wrestled the tops off with his teeth and smeared the glowing contents all over his bare chest. The band were in blistering form, having to extend tunes to suit the antics of Tim.

A friend’s beige sports jacket bit the dust a short time later as Harrington squeezed his ample frame into it and burst through Incredible Hulk style after trying to burn it with a lighter. ‘The Sweat Descends’ was greeted by a whole lot of moshing and crowd surfing. Again the vocals cut in and out which didn’t seem to bother Harrington as he shouted the lyrics full bore at the audience. Time constraints of the festival brought the show to an end at 2am, much to the disappointment of the band and crowd. Harrington entred the stage again to shout the lyrics unaccompanied but ran into trouble with the guitar breakdown. It was amazing to see a band so on top of their game and clearly having a shitload of fun along the way. Les Savy Fav pulled out the best show of SXSW 2010 by quite some distance, the fortunate 400 punters will surely never see such a quality act in such intimate surroundings again.