SXSW 2009 :: Day Four

Andre: Fatigue would be an understatement for my condition on Saturday morning in Austin. Nonetheless, I pulled myself up from bed with sugary pop memories of the Pains of Being Pure at Heart and Headlights in the back of my head. I was feeling like I could be getting a bit sick or maybe it was the winter-length cough that comes along with living in Iowa. I threw away the list of bands I had scribbled onto a piece of paper for Saturday viewing. Instead, I corralled Craig into an important, if touristy, Austin tradition: bbq at Stubbs. Regaining a bit of energy with wonderfully tenderized cow and a full glass of sweet tea, we were back into the world, ready to tackle the final day of music olympics.

The Mess With Texas party was our first stop in the afternoon. Taking place in Waterloo Park, just a few blocks from the center of downtown Austin, Mess With Texas is quite a literally a festival within a festival. This free party situates two stages—a main stage and smaller, more intimate side stage—at opposite ends of the park, leaving lots of green space in between. The fact that it existed stunned me (I had missed it the year before even though the lineup had been spectacular) and I saw immediately how people could stay at Mess With Texas and not even bother with the rest of SXSW; that’s when it hit me, the absolute magnitude of self-contained events going down in Austin over the SXSW weekend.

Consider the hipster gumbo stirred up by Todd P and friends at Ms. Bea’s on Austin’s east side all weekend long. It was fascinating: I’d walk by and see folks hanging out there indefinitely, settling into the dusty parking lot by Ms. Bea’s with 30 packs of light beer, smoking cigarettes and catching up with old friends—Ponytail yelling in the background—like it was some sort of block party. Mess With Texas, a bit less “filthy hipster” and perhaps more “bespectacled music nerd,” also had a laid-back sunny afternoon atmosphere. Good weather, free food, and great music—Austin knows it’s so good it doesn’t even have to sell itself. It just gives itself away.

The music began on the side stage and I settled in for a Jason Lytle encore. A bit drunk and confused, Lytle inched up to the microphone and told the sound guy, “The level’s fine. I don’t sing very loud.” And thus, his new music unfolded in the tender confines of that voice that made Grandaddy so distinctive. On a dreamy tune, full of plucked acoustic guitars and gently pushing drums, Lytle sang, “I’m stoked to be back / After where I’ve been: I’m coming home,” and the whole audience just about sighed with love for this guy, as if he had packaged the entire sulk of his old band’s underappreciated career into ten seconds. The rest of the set mirrored much of his show from the previous day but the band closed with a dizzying piano-driven rendition of Sophtware Slump (2000)‘s “Jed the Humanoid.” If a bit fragile, Lytle’s reemergence in Austin is the promise of wonderful things to come.

I dashed from Lytle’s set to catch Cursive, those old Saddle Creek stalwarts, throw down the big guitars on the main stage. “Some Red Handed Sleight of Hand” from The Ugly Organ (2003) was a great opener, and then they ripped into…well, that entire record, except for a few interludes. The sound was a thousand emo-leaning post-hardcore cannons blasting off into the park and I couldn’t believe that after so many shows over so few days that these guys could still play their hearts out like that. Lead singer Tim Kasher tore into his guitar in a way that men in their mid-thirties should be afraid of. These guys were up there in the early afternoon, outside of their Midwest element, rocking out to a crowd that was securing a good spot for the later Vivian Girls set. But then I saw them, the young hardcore kids, jumping up and down, pumping their fists like they were hearing the soundtrack to their lives for the very first time.

I considered, for a moment, sticking around Mess With Texas for the rest of the day to catch those sought-after Vivian Girls, the Thermals, and Kid Sister. The park was so seductive, so easy to slip into, but I fought the pull and returned downtown, determined to keep it rogue all day long. Before pushing forth to the east side, I caught Loney, Dear and Titus Andronicus at the Red Eyed Fly downtown. Loney, Dear, for all the hype that had been buzzing around, was OK. He had a full band but was still playing his songs with backing tracks on a Zune. I didn’t get it. And then the sound guy had the show blasted to Metallica levels, which seemed a little inappropriate for a Swedish twee-pop band. Unimpressed and not wanting to waste any more time—shit, it was already Saturday, late-afternoon, SXSW was coming to a close—I walked over to Ms. Bea’s to check in on Todd P’s party. Some decent band was playing and I could see the kids pitching their tents for a night of full-on death party in Ms. Bea’s backyard. The lineup was impressive, with Thee Oh Sees kicking off at nine and No Age wrapping it up late-nite. I was alone and considered staying, giving in to the place for the rest of my quickly fading Austin experience. No, I couldn’t—I had to look for something more shocking, thinking that, perhaps, this is the problem of “expectation” that comes with such an absurdly packed festival. I demand to be emotionally moved by bands, to have some group kiss my senses and have me champion them as the next best whatever.

I slinked down to the Fader Fort and considered waiting in line to see Kanye but then stopped. Eventually, I gave into Craig’s incessant text-message prodding to see Danish folk/electronic/post-rockers Efterklang. I pushed my way into a packed Emo’s and cracked Craig on the shoulder. It was good to see him again. I shed my expectations and for the first time in hours just relaxed, watching as Efterklang’s members peacefully navigated through a long and difficult soundcheck. And then it began: their dense compositions announced themselves like the horns of an infantry, veering between lushly paced Sigur Rós soundscapes and full-on Explosions in the Sky detonations. There were maybe six or seven of them on the stage, playing guitars, keyboards, electronic devices, drums, percussion, and singing; they comprised an ensemble with no extraneous members, each with impressive restraint. Every song revealed itself as a suite, several movements building on one another towards gripping and progressive architectures; each seemed like it could be the last; the one they called “short” was at least six minutes. This was something special, and from the way the band was smiling, almost in disbelief of how well they were pulling it off, it seemed like each one of their shows could be different from the last. There wasn’t a soul at Emo’s calling bullshit on Efterklang.

We left Emo’s in a state of pure glee and when we walked into Mohawk the Mae-Shi were already mid-set but we slipped right into the crowd as if we had been there are along. They were rocking out their punk-drenched, energetic LA art rock, just like you’d expect, but they had thrown a huge parachute or tent-cover-like thing over the audience. They could have been trying to kidnap and murder us, but it looked like fun, so Craig and I eased under the tent cover with 100 other people dancing up and down. The band kept playing quieter, clearly preparing us for some explosion we wouldn’t be able to process. And just when they reached their quietest moment and we knew they’d come crashing back in with a wall of noise, they lifted the tent cover and Chicago rapper Kid Static was standing there with a mic in his hand about to rightfully tear up a nasty live version of “Run to the Facts.” It was at that point that I could see the tiny molecules in my soul unravel and dance their faces off, bumping into the asses and arms of the people around me, spilling tallboys of Lone Star. The night was over with that Mae Shi set, the whole trip was game-set-match. Sure HEALTH was coming on but I had had enough, in the best of ways. And I knew that SXSW owned me.

We wrapped up the evening with several nite caps of Tecate at Deville, where Craig’s level of inebriation became damaging to his credibility as a coherent human being, though coherence wasn’t a necessary credential for this showcase. Ponytail was rocking the stage in utter confusion, their music complex, the crowd half-knowing they should like it because the blogs had told them so, half-afraid to give in because they didn’t want to look as weird as the band, and Ponytail probably wishing they were at Ms. Bea’s watching Woods but still giving a good go at the kinds of songs that never get old in a live setting. I was mostly talking to friends, thinking every last endorphin had been spent on the Mae Shi. Again, I had one more wave in me—or at least Titus Andronicus, the show closers, wanted me to. Playing their umteenth showcase, the Titus boys seemed entirely un-phased by anything or anyone. They were purely insular, not standoffish, happy with themselves, with their music, and the fact that there was an audience to hear their golden nuggets of rock. What other band can embrace both the classic rock and punk riffing of the 1970s like Titus Andronicus? [Many – Ed.] And all the while with philosophical lyrical rants that are both excessive and gripping? Because they choose to rock out so much and sing songs the length of Joan Didion essays, everything became epic.

I turned around and Craig was gone. He had turned rogue one last time. When I went to meet him in on Sixth Street it was a parade of poisoned weekenders: the bands, the writers, the locals, the college kids, and some thick mean-looking ooze of folks that must constitute the bridge and tunnel aspect of Austin, or perhaps they come through the pipelines or the water ducts into this warm and beer frothy desert. No one was getting punched out in front of me like the first night but I knew someone was getting taken out blocks away and that wedding bands were slipping off ring fingers and that the line for warm brats wouldn’t let up for 90 minutes. I thought Titus had said it best when they remarked, “Now let us never speak of it again,” knowing darn well that we would. It had all happened so quickly—the weekend in Austin and the onslaught of music. The Wrens had seemed like a minor victory and I had almost forgotten that I had seen the Avett Brothers. I sat on the edge of the bed in silence, with a cup of water, and I knew that Craig was going to snore and that the drive back would be long.