SXSW WRAP-UP: BREAKOUTS AND BEAT-DOWNS

It’s been a wild end to a strange week –Killer Mike was attacked by a stage rusher during a Run the Jewels set and apparently tore his rotator cuff, relegating me to the status of second-most-famous-person-who-got-attacked-at-SXSW-this-week. While I’m not quite sure when SXSW became so carnage-laden, it’s a strange riptide in a year where it otherwise felt like SXSW was scaling back to size. There were no surprise appearances by Kanye with a hologram of John Lennon, fewer corporate stages (McDonalds excepted) and a lot of the action has moved to houses and yards on the east-side away from the Bourbon Street without the history that 6th Street has become. As a result, there was more room for emerging artists to percolate, and percolate they did.

On the pop side of things, it seemed like a few stars were in the process of being born. The Neon Gold showcase was packed and featured artists like Marina and the Diamonds, while the whole week felt to (an admittedly biased) me like a launch party for HOLYCHILD, who ended the week with a triumphant set on the IFC stage. With two gripping male back-up singers, up to three percussionists at a time and an audience that already follows Liz Nistico word-for-word, HOLYCHILD inverts common formulas while the musical hooks keep pulling you in.

Years & Years also got consistently high marks, as did emerging rockers Catfish & the Bottlemen and Philadelphia’s Districts, who played an intense and churning set as the Friday night rain fell over Stubb’s. With heavy publishing chases afoot, both Amsterdamn and Highly Suspect powered through the week, with the latter shredding a final Saturday set at the Outbreak house in the former Antone’s space. As their single “Lydia” starts to power at radio, Highly Suspect are one to watch, or better yet, one to experience.

You could feel momentum building for a number of other artists as well: Oklahoma’s BRONCHO played bouncy hiccup rock, Pity Sex and Pianos Become the Teeth balanced tunefulness and intensity, Gateway Drugs placed their flag in the future of shoegaze, Badflower rocked while long-buzzed-about acts Best Coast and Courtney Barnett spread their nets wide and were consistently on people’s lists. On more acoustic and compositional fronts, Lucette, Trapper Schoepp, The Lonely Wild, Natalie Prass and Elle King all deserve mention.

Refreshingly, some of the week’s other standouts were Texas-grown. Amongst the alt country and blues-rock, people sometimes forget that Austin has always harbored a solid punk scene, with flagship acts like the Skunks, the Dicks and MDC. Today that tradition lives with Power Trip, who fleck their hardcore with bits of metal and completely incinerated the Brooklyn Vegan showcase at Red 7.

On Saturday, meanwhile, the Jackalope hosted a brace of great Texas punk bands, including Austin’s own Riverboat Gamblers, and then an amazing new project, Drakulas, which features Rise Against’s Zach Blair shredding power chords alongside part of the Riverboat Gamblers. Blair did double duty, joining Quicksand’s Walter Schriefels in the mighty Vanishing Point as well. Other punk legends could be found across town at the Gypsy as Scream’s Pete Stahl fronted doom thunderers Goatsnake, and elsewhere in the week the current version of the Damned made an appearance.

Beyond some of the new artists, a few revamped classics got their due over the course of the week. The devoted faithful of Swervedriver (myself very, very much among them) were treated to two distinct sets at Red 7 on Friday, drawing from their classics Raise and Mezcal Head as well as their excellent new release. Raves were also heard for Failure’s Saturday night set, as Ken Andrews and company work on a new album while revisiting their criminally-underrated early work. Australia’s the Church has returned as well, and while they didn’t always indulge audiences with “Under the Milky Way,” the shows were loud, dramatic and packed.

The other refreshing current in this week was that you could feel some of the roots and country currents that first shaped SXSW coming back in larger force. While those elements have always been part of the festival, it’s nice to see that this year’s most discussed acts included Madisen Ward and the Mama Bear and the inimitable Fantastic Negrito, who both draw from deeper tradition. For his part, Fantastic Negrito may have come closest to “winning” SXSW, proclaiming to the Lucky Lounge that he felt the need to live up to the hype, all while making hype seem something more like “testimony” as he floored the crowd.

In other corners of the festival, you could just sit back and enjoy the honky-tonk of Flint, Michigan’s Whitey Morgan and the 78s, catch Houndmouth, hear Ryan Bingham pull from his great new album or take in the rhythms of Jamestown Revival or Shakey Graves.

For all its crazier, scarier moments, SXSW at its best is about the music, and, when it connects it makes it all worth it. Not a bad metaphor for the music business itself, really. Blood on the floor, eyes to the sky and ears to the guitar, another SXSW is in the books as the bands and fans hit the road. Spring is here (well, outside New York at least), and the cycle continues….

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SXSW Dispatch #2