AUSTIN, Tex. — Adam Elliott, the drummer and singer of Times New Viking, summed up the South by Southwest Music festival between the frenetic songs by his band, a three-piece from Columbus, Ohio. Even if Times New Viking were no good, he said, “there’s a thousand other bands.” He added, “Those odds are pretty good.”
White Denim: from left, Steve Terebecki on bass, the drummer Joshua Block, and James Petralli on guitar. More Photos »
South by Southwest
Times critics and reporters post — in words and video — from the annual music festival in Austin, Tex.
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SXSW
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South by Southwest
The rapper David Banner on Saturday afternoon, when he danced with audience members and sprayed them with beer and water. More Photos >
Katie White, who is one half of the British duo the Ting Tings. More Photos >
Morgan Quaintance, guitarist of Does It Offend You, Yeah? More Photos >
He underestimated both his band and the choices. South by Southwest, known as SXSW, presented 1,775 bands in its official showcases, and with unofficial shows there were easily more than 2,000 bands performing in Austin during the festival’s four busy days, Wednesday through Saturday, along with a few stragglers on Sunday.
So this is not exactly an overview of SXSW, where showcases and daytime symposiums are well organized and what surrounds them is a ruckus of business and pleasure. One person could attend only a small percentage of the music.
There were about 12,500 registered participants at the convention, as well as the members of those 1,775 bands. Unofficial events — parties, promotions, and concerts like the 10-hour “Mess With Texas 2” show on Saturday — have swarmed around the official festival, providing additional chances to hear groups as word-of-mouth spreads.
White Denim, the Austin band that was the supercharged finale for my own SXSW — a power trio with a rocketing, punk-speed take on twangy Texas garage-rock — played seven shows from March 11 to 15. Lykke Li, a Swedish singer who delivered pop love songs with a cutting voice and wily acoustic arrangments, performed in four places on Friday alone.
SXSW Music takes place after the SXSW conventions on film and digital media, and the music festival is thoroughly Internet-savvy. Hundreds of songs from bands performing at the festival are available as free mp3’s at sxsw.com, along with video of presentations and performances.
Although SXSW is well adapted to the digital era, in some ways it is firmly old-fashioned. While it is a showcase for young bands, it’s an all-ages event. Lou Reed, whose keynote for the convention was an onstage interview, also dropped by to perform with younger groups paying him tribute. Daniel Lanois, who has produced albums for U2 and Bob Dylan, showed his new in-the-studio documentary, “Here Is What Is,” and performed his own songs and guitar pieces around town in duets with the drummer Brian Blade that moved between serenity and clangor. The Minimalist composer Steve Reich was also at SXSW to speak and to play host for performances of his compositions.
Lesser-known bits of rock history resurfaced, including a revival of the Homosexuals, a punk-era British band that made only one album of its jumpy, idiosyncratically structured songs. Its 57-year-old leader, Bruno Wizard, cackled and mocked the music business during a set at Spiro’s.
SXSW is a bastion of that endangered artistic unit, the album. The Lemonheads played through “It’s a Shame About Ray,” a 1992 album being rereleased this year.
Van Morrison, R.E.M. and My Morning Jacket built nearly their entire concerts on material from their new or coming albums, and each one played a committed, enthralling set. Mr. Morrison’s new songs held the sting of the blues; R.E.M. has reinvigorated its old guitar-band style for an album aptly titled “Accelerate”; and My Morning Jacket’s new songs put a streak of R&B — from funk riffs to falsetto vocals — in its ringing, expansive Southern rock. (R.E.M., My Morning Jacket and many other bands, including the perky collegiate New York City rockers Vampire Weekend, had their SXSW performances broadcast on NPR, where they can still be heard at npr.org/music.)
The most pervasive old-school choice at SXSW is gearing the festival toward live performance far more than recording. While recording companies (mostly independent ones) are well represented, SXSW also draws the booking agents, managers and club owners who provide more immediate support for musicians. In an era of plummeting CD sales and free downloads, most musicians survive on live performances, as the ancient model of the troubadour returns in the digital age.
At SXSW concert promoters can sample bands that are being, in essence, battle tested: playing abbreviated sets on hastily assembled equipment to unfamiliar audiences in Austin’s peculiarly shaped clubs. It’s a good test too for longtime rock stars who are, for the moment, not entirely in control, choosing to prove themselves against the energy of younger bands.
Another model for a musician’s career is to sell rights to songs as background music for soundtracks and commercials. That encourages exactly what live performance does not: reticence and generality rather than the vividness and specificity of a performance. Yael Naim, whose song “New Souls” grew popular through an Apple commercial, played a set determined to show she has more than 60 seconds of worthwhile music; she poured her rich voice into songs about loneliness and longing, and got a tent full of music-business professionals to sing along.
But some of my favorite bands at the festival were those that made their impact on the spot. Times New Viking merged guitar-rock and the keyboard drive of German rock; the Dodos, from San Francisco, worked up to manic propulsion with hard-strummed acoustic guitar and plinking toy piano. Atlas Sounds filled a club with guitar drone; then one member proffered an amplifier to audience members for knob-turning and extra feedback.
There were also gentler performers, like Laura Marling, a British teenager who writes folky, haunted songs, and Hanne Hukkelberg, a Norwegian songwriter who sang (in English) about the forces of nature in complex, odd-meter songs that sometimes had a tuba for their foundation.
With so many bands, SXSW encompassed genres from art-rock to zydeco. Although SXSW started in 1987 as a showcase for regional Southwestern music and independent bands and is still a vital stop for roots-rockers, it has also recognized that hip-hop entrepreneurship is every bit as do-it-yourself as indie-rock’s. Top-tier rappers including Ice Cube performed at this year’s festival, along with acts like David Banner, Clipse, Del the Funky Homosapien, the Cool Kids, and Cadence Weapon.
The festival is also treated as a gateway to the American market by foreign governments, which subsidize delegations of musicians. Britain had its own “embassy,” with a full schedule of bands through the convention. And it sent bands that have already been winnowed at home, including the irresistibly catchy Ting Tings, a duo who now have a major-label contract in the United States. They pump out danceable riffs echoing the 1960’s and 1970’s, while Katie White gets worked up with complaints like, “That’s not my name.”
Two other British bands also played fiercely kinetic groves: Does It Offend You, Yeah?, which ran on the dance-rock beats and synthesizer buzz of the late 1970’s, and These New Puritans, whose dissonant stomp and dark lyrics reached back to Public Image Limited and the Fall.
Yet South by Southwest is more than a marathon audition. It’s a chance for social networking in real time and space. The exhilaration of so many performances in such a short time is a morale booster for both business people and fans, and an annual reminder that the fortunes and misfortunes of the recording business don’t stop the music.
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