An eMusic Guide to South By Southwest 2011
It's nearly upon us: South By Southwest, the annual exhilarating and crazy-making music festival that threatens to destroy even as it excites. Every year, hundreds of bands converge on Austin, Texas, each of them vying for audience attention and a small bit of that ever-elusive buzz. Trying to make sense of it all is enough to lay a person flat-out, exhausted. Don't let it come to that: Here are our picks for the 35 up-and-comers you won't want to miss. And be sure to brush up on the artists playing eMusic's SXSW Day Party at Beauty Bar from noon to 5 p.m. on March 16.
Agalloch
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WHERE THEY'RE FROM: Portland, Oregon WHO THEY'RE LIKE: Brave Murder Day-era Katatonia; Ride, if they were heshers WHY THEY MATTER: Agalloch are part of a crew of metal bands rethinking what it means to be a metal band. Their 2010 album Marrow of the Spirit earned accolades from some decidedly un-metal quarters (we're looking at you, NPR) for its devastating beauty and mighty swirls of sound. J. Edward Keyes
Anamanaguchi
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WHERE THEY'RE FROM: New York City WHO THEY'RE LIKE: Mega Man, The Legend of Zelda, Metroid WHY THEY MATTER: Leading members of the bizarro "chiptune" scene, Anamanaguchi make wild, revved-up, quasi-punk songs dependent largely on the music processor from an old 8-bit video game machine. Really. This is Nintendo-punk, designed to rescue princesses and princes from boredom. JEK
Black Milk
Blueprint
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WHERE HE'S FROM: Columbus, Ohio WHO HE'S LIKE: A Tribe Called Quest, Atmosphere, P.O.S. WHY HE MATTERS: First turning heads with his mighty 2005 breakthrough titled, of course, 1988 Blueprint lays his fierce fighting-style rhymes on top of beats that stray toward the more psychedelic fringes of R&B. Think the production on early Def Jux records with fewer helpings of THC, and you're getting close. JEK
Charles Bradley
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WHERE HE'S FROM: Brooklyn, New York WHO HE'S LIKE: Donny Hathaway, Otis Redding, James Brown WHY HE MATTERS: Discovered during his full-time gig as a James Brown impersonator by Daptone main man Gabriel Roth, Bradley takes that label's classic-soul aesthetic to new heights. His voice contains decades of heartbreak, and it sounds beautiful crackling over vintage instrumentation, courtesy of labelmates Menahan Street Band. His worked-up live shows are already the stuff of legend. JEK
Class Actress
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WHERE THEY'RE FROM: Brooklyn, New York WHO THEY'RE LIKE: An '80s electropop diva with the hormones of a high-school drama nerd WHY THEY MATTER: Before she assumed the name Class Actress, Elizabeth Harper was a folksinger with a penchant for the kind of moody lyrics not usually heard over electronic beats. Combining the two, she makes music that's both deep and danceable. Maris Kreizman
Cloud Nothings
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WHERE THEY'RE FROM: Cleveland, Ohio WHO THEY'RE LIKE: Superchunk, I.R.S.-era R.E.M., a hyperactive Teenage Fanclub WHY THEY MATTER: One-man wunderkind Dylan Baldi has grown from sloppy bedroom auteur to full-on power pop genius in the space of just a few months. The group's self-titled debut radiates all the best elements of early-'80s alternative rock and leavens them with the right amount of '00s raggedness. JEK
Dum Dum Girls
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WHERE THEY'RE FROM: California WHO THEY'RE LIKE: The Runaways in a fistfight with the Ronettes WHY THEY MATTER: Of all the young bands that bust out of their bedrooms over the course of the last five years, the Dum Dum Girls are among the most promising. There are actual songs beneath those layers of fuzz and, if new EP He Gets Me High is any indication, they're fully ready to cast off the lo-fi tag and grab audiences, sneering, by the jugular. JEK
Edwyn Collins
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WHERE HE'S FROM: Glasgow, Scotland WHO HE'S LIKE: The Smiths, The Drums, The Go-Betweens WHY HE MATTERS: I shouldn't have to tell you this, but just in case: Collins was the founder of seminal fey post-punkers Orange Juice, basically writing the template for a whole strain of '00s indie rock about 30 years too early. His music since then has been defined by a combination of brilliant tunesmithing and perfectly-aged sarcasm. A 2005 cerebral hemorrhage threatened not just his career, but his life, but a genuinely miraculous recovery and a supernatural work ethic finds him returning to claim his rightful crown as king of the smartasses. JEK
The Fresh & Onlys
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WHERE THEY'RE FROM: San Francisco WHO THEY'RE LIKE: Beat Happening with a 1960s garage-rock fetish WHY THEY MATTER: They are one of the most blindingly prolific bands in a scene where full-length albums pile up with the speed of most band's tweets, and somehow they've still yet to record a single dull or superfluous-feeling song. Lead F&O Tim Cohen's cock-eyed, Calvin Johnson warble meshes endearingly with their jangle-infused take on greasy early rock and roll; the result is a four-track mash note to just about any pop-music era's ideal of Do-It-Yourself. Jayson Greene
Gayngs
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WHERE THEY'RE FROM: Minneapolis WHO THEY'RE LIKE: Imagine Seals and Crofts and Prince WHY THEY MATTER: This curiously romantic group's debut, 2010's Relayted, was one of the year's most entrancing and underrated albums of the year. Their expansive live show is like one long slow dance, rippling with sexy keyboard breakdowns, hazy vocal arrangements, and a mystifying theatricality. Sean Fennessey
Generationals
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WHERE THEY'RE FROM: New Orleans WHO THEY'RE LIKE: Spoon, The Feelies, a tinier Strokes WHY THEY MATTER: The Generationals write songs that sound like apostrophes: tiny, clenched balls of sound that bounce along nervously, clenched vocals over crazy rhythms. Live, they are impossibly tight, the whole band locking tight into a millisecond groove and riding it through the length of their gently twinkling pop songs. JEK
Goes Cube
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WHERE THEY'RE FROM: Brooklyn, New York WHO THEY'RE LIKE: Trap Them, a more primitive Baroness, an angrier Fugazi WHY THEY MATTER: Goes Cube walk the narrow line between metal and hardcore, marrying the punishing riffs of the former to the latter's unchecked aggression, and dousing with a heavy dash of psychedelia. What results is a dank, imposing concoction, as threatening as bared fangs. JEK
Harrys Gym
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WHERE THEY'RE FROM: Bergen, Norway WHO THEY'RE LIKE: Bat for Lashes, Kate Bush, Chelsea Wolfe, Florence & the Machine WHY THEY MATTER: Ignore that terrible name Harrys Gym write bewitching songs centered around a veil of synths and Anne Lise Frkedal's aching voice. They're still bubbling under the radar but expect that to change soon: Their strange, incandescent melodies are impossible to deny. JEK
Jamie Woon
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WHERE HE'S FROM: London, England WHAT HE'S LIKE: Breathy, theatrical blue-eyed soul vocals over unexpectedly swishy, dance-floor friendly production by dubstep's reigning master of dank, Burial. WHY HE MATTERS: With the breakthrough of electronic music phenom James Blake, there's a soulful, bluesy, glitch-damaged something in the London air these days. Woon's voice doesn't detonate the melismatic fireworks that James Blake's Antony impression does. But it's every bit as dramatic: Woon's mother was a Celtic folk singer, and you can hear that trembling clarity in his delivery. JG
The Joy Formidable
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WHERE THEY'RE FROM: London, England, by way of North Wales WHO THEY'RE LIKE: The Breeders, had they managed to sound as stadium-ready Arcade Fire WHY THEY MATTER: A three-piece band that sounds much bigger than the sum of its parts, The Joy Formidable command attention with waves of guitars and walls of sound and tons of charisma. Live, you might not always be able to make out exactly what frontwoman Ritzy Bryan is singing, but the feeling she conveys is visceral (there's a reason why the word "joy" is in the band's name). MK
Junius
Killer Mike
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WHERE HE'S FROM: Atlanta WHO HE'S LIKE: Like OutKast but with a bitter fury and a barrel-chested gruffness. WHY THEY MATTER: Though Mike was once affiliated with Kast, he's since struck out on his own to record some of the most scintillating, and inspiring hip-hop in recent memory. Iconoclastic in his views and ferociously committed to his craft, he is among rap's best live performers. SF
Kylesa
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WHERE THEY'RE FROM: Savannah, Georgia WHO THEY'RE LIKE: Baroness going through a massive Jawbreaker phase WHY THEY MATTER: Kylesa's Spiral Shadow is a uniter, not a divider. For the metalheads: a bevy of split-knuckle riffs and relentless, punishing volume; for the indie kids: crystalline guitar leads and sing-along choruses; for the acid-eaters: the perfect amount of bong-hit haze. But don't let the stylistic catholicism fool you: Live, Kylesa remains a formidable and un-fuck-withable hard rock force. JEK
Lady Lamb the Beekeeper
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WHERE SHE'S FROM: Portland, Maine WHO SHE'S LIKE: Samantha Crain, Hurray for the Riff Raff, Mirah WHY SHE MATTERS: Lady Lamb the Beekeeper is singer/songwriter Aly Spaltro, and she had my undivided attention only about 30 seconds into the first song she played in Brooklyn earlier this month. It's minimal banjo- and electric guitar-driven rock music (she stopped playing her acoustic guitar because she doesn't want to be classified as folk), and while her stunning alto can be rough around the edges, the strain in her voice when she reaches for the high notes are part of her charm. LL
No Joy
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WHERE THEY'RE FROM: Montreal WHO THEY'RE LIKE: Courtney Love, if she had gotten into shoegaze WHY THEY MATTER: "Dude, NO JOY is the best band ever. Two hot blonde girls just shredding away." So tweeted Best Coast's Bethany Cosentino about her labelmates, the grungy rockers who channel Veruca Salt as much as they do My Bloody Valentine. In live performances, the blonde hair that artfully hangs in their faces manages to look shiny and filthy at the same time, just like their music. MK
OFF!
lf Arnalds
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WHERE SHE'S FROM: Reykjavik, Iceland WHO SHE'S LIKE: Joanna Newsom channeling Vashti Bunyan WHY SHE MATTERS: lf Arnalds's albums may be strange, mystic and restrained, but live she is a genuine charmer. Possessed of a goofy sense of humor, a schoolgirl charm and a seemingly bottomless well of covers, she abandons the "strange chanteuse" persona of her albums in favor of the precocious, easy-to-laugh schoolgirl albeit one who can do a mean take on the John Prine catalog. JEK
P.O.S.
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WHERE HE'S FROM: Minneapolis WHO HE'S LIKE: A hip-hop Fugazi WHY HE MATTERS: With his mile-a-minute lyrics, white-hot political ire and cannonball drum tracks, P.O.S. is the rare rapper that's proven able to successfully hardwire a punk-rock aesthetic into driving, aggressive hip-hop. His songs are explosive, detonating immediately and raging full-on for the duration. JEK
Raphael Saadiq
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WHERE HE'S FROM: Oakland, California WHO HE'S LIKE: Smokey Robinson, early Marvin Gaye, the Four Tops WHY HE MATTERS: Though he's signed to a major label, and was part of a multi-platinum '90s R&B group, there's still something under-the-radar about Raphael Saadiq. Hopefully, this is the year that changes: like his contemporaries in the Daptone stable, Saadiq worships at the altar of '60s soul. With his silky, Smokey-channeling vocals, Saadiq proves it's possible to be a throwback without being retro. JEK
Sam Amidon
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WHERE HE'S FROM: Brattleboro, Vermont WHO HE'S LIKE: Depression-era folk field recordings being devoured by a dysfunctional modem; or the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack stranded in Tron WHY HE MATTERS: Sam Amidon's ingenious blending of ancient sacred hymns and folk songs with odd art-song curlicues string quartet flutters, circular plucking, stabs of digital noise tweaks some deep, mysterious inter-genre line of force, clearing out a fragile little space where distinctions between classic American folk music, church hymns, contemporary classical, and indie rock seem irrelevant. JG
Sea of Bees
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WHERE SHE'S FROM: Sacramento, California WHO SHE'S LIKE: Early, spooky Cat Power, Kristin Hersh, the way Holly Miranda sounds live WHY SHE MATTERS: Julie Baenziger sings like an oracle dispensing secrets: a tiny, mysterious voice that coos and gasps and sighs never stating, always suggesting. The music she makes as Sea of Bees glitters like suncatchers: tiny, refracted notes, that swell and subside. Hers is music of whispers a hushed beauty that raises gooseflesh. JEK
Smith Westerns
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WHERE THEY'RE FROM: Chicago WHO THEY'RE LIKE: If George Harrison produced Ziggy Stardust WHY THEY MATTER: There are fewer younger (or better) touring right now and Smith Westerns are only just figuring out how to translate their gorgeous new album, Dye It Blonde, to a live setting. Don't miss the tossing hair, the flailing limbs and the sounds of genuine teenage dreams. SF
Surf City
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WHERE THEY'RE FROM: Auckland, New Zealand WHO THEY'RE LIKE: Every Flying Nun band you ever loved WHY THEY MATTER: In the grand tradition of the Bats and the Clean, Surf City offset wistful melodies with buckets of buzz, letting some songs hurtle forward while others sustain a steady, controlled drone. But don't let the distortion fool you: Surf City are pop princes going undercover in ratty garb, fully in-step with indie's recent retro revival. JEK
Those Darlins
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WHERE THEY'RE FROM: Murfreesboro, Tennessee WHO THEY'RE LIKE: Loretta Lynn sitting in with the Dum Dum Girls WHY THEY MATTER: The award for the most Radical Transformation of 2011 belong to Those Darlins. Having established themselves as whiskey-chugging country girls on their debut, the Darlins have planted their boot-heel and spun a full 180, incorporating the reverb and wallop of bands like Vivian Girls and Talulah Gosh into their down-home twang. It's music that stays true to its base while fully assimilating the sounds of right now call it "gestalt country." JEK
Wolvhammer
Yellow Ostrich
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The focal point of the songs on Yellow Ostrich's magnificent debut The Mistress is Alex Schaaf's tender, pleading voice. It's a reedy, childlike instrument, similar in timbre and range to Neutral Milk Hotel's Jeff Mangum or Nils Edenloff from Rural Alberta Advantage. It's looped and layered, stretched, manipulated; it's stacked and used as an instrument to flesh out the empty spaces in his bare, searching songs. Aside from a pulsing bass guitar, it's the only sound on "Hold On," a kaleidoscope of "ohs" spiraling around Schaaf's heartbroken opening: "Now that we've started, it's sad to see it end."
more »The upside of such deliberate minimalism is that it creates a sense of intimacy. You hear the songs the way Schaaf first heard them: as bare, hummed melodies floating around in the subconscious, with only a few instrumental hash marks holding them together — a splotch of guitar here, a thunk of piano there. Like Bon Iver, with whom he shares a Wisconsin homeland, Schaaf is a secretary of the interior. He's sitting alone with his beloved in "I'll Run," watching cars, then contemplating a slow walk to the churchyard; his voice clangs across "Libraries" like a church bell pealing in a small town, the lyrics cautioning: "Once you leave, all your stories will be gone." At times it feels like a dollar-store Radiohead, with Schaaf's voice subbing in for that group's army of electronics. The few moments Schaaf boldly busts out of the bedroom are arresting: "Hate Me Soon" explodes into a kind of Jack White tantrum, bruised blues licks throwing knuckles as Schaaf wails over and over, "You're gonna hate me soon!" between the blows.
Schaaf's day job is digitizing old Super 8 home movies from the '40s and '50s, and that's fitting — there's a kind of yellowed nostalgia to The Mistress, dragged kicking and screaming into the modern age. The musical simplicity is fitting: most of Schaaf's lyrics are the kinds of intimate confessions that get whispered from one person to another in the small hours of the morning. There are moments of childlike fantasy — darting butterflies, singing whales — gentle confession and, near the end, open despair: "Mary, you are doing drugs — don't you think we know?" Schaaf sings, crestfallen, in the album's closing moments. The confrontation is followed by a crushing silence, before Schaaf's voice — all six harmonizing iterations of it — returns, a soothing cascade of sound. He sings only a single open syllable, but the meaning is clear: Schaaf's intention is not to judge — it's to comfort.
Yuck
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WHERE THEY'RE FROM: London, England WHO THEY'RE LIKE: College radio in the '90s WHY THEY MATTER: Yuck self-apply the "alternative" tag, and nothing could be more appropriate: blending the best bits of Dinosaur Jr. and Yo La Tengo with a rare melodic sensibility, Yuck radiate the kind of charm, optimism and naivete only kids just out of their teen years can. They put that bright outlook in the service of pop songs distorted just enough to bring to mind memories of dusty 7"s. If it were 1996, they would be on the cover of SPIN. JEK
Zoroaster
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WHERE THEY'RE FROM: Atlanta, Georgia WHO THEY'RE LIKE: Electric Wizard and Shrinebuilder exchanging bong hits WHY THEY MATTER: You've heard of space rock, but how about space metal? Zoroaster write riffs as expansive as the galaxy and pour them out like tar thick and black and slow. Add vocals that sound like a choir of alien baritones and drums that sound like they're being played with a baseball bat, and you've got the perfect soundtrack for HAL to kill by. JEK
