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← back to Blog Archive	I know, you have been waiting breathlessly for the third and final review of SXSW which finished about six weeks ago. Apologies. Here it is. Day Five Friday. It is the second last day. Austin downtown was a zoo last night - the mix of March Madness/St Patrick’s day (which I find hilarious)/Spring Break and SXSW - all congregating on Sixth Street - is just becoming impossible to navigate/suffer/enjoy. But one must try. It is midday and for the first time ever I am at SXSW with two of my kids alongside me. We pick a sensational show to commemorate this event. Vagabon live at Valhallas were just spectacular. Go listen to Laetitia Tamko, who is Vagabon, the Brooklyn based Cameroon artist. The song Fear and Force is a great introduction. *Vagabon* Back to Flood magazine’s Festival at Cedar Street Courtyard. Free drinks!! and Great bands with a great view!! From our vantage point above the stage, we watch LA’s Mondo Cozmo, who are another band who may have the breakout pop rock hot from SXSW this year with their song “Shine”. *Mondo Cozmo* Then we hit another of those frustrating moments. The next band is due to be Jain, the French electro pop sensation sweeping across the European mainland. Only thing is, she got their times wrong and has not turned up, expecting to be on in two hours time. Eventually she makes a dash to the place and after a full 30 bloody minutes to soundcheck an act which only has pre programmed music on a fancy keyboard, the one woman show finally takes the stage. Not bad but not worth a one hour wait, although the free drinks helped pass the time. The crowd did love her. *Jain* This was the entire musical accompaniment. Together with its personal roadie, who could not get it to work. *Time Thief* We take a few long walks first to Little Woodrows to see the in your face shrieky rock n roll noise of White Reaper, but by now the afternoon bars are filling up with noisy St Paddy’s day green dressed party seekers in the off the main SXSW drag venues. Not the best setting to listen to a band. So we head to a venue new to me, Handlebar and their rooftop patio to hear the sound of a “heartbroken girl in her shitty apartment in Brooklyn” as she describes herself. She calls herself Pronoun and is yet another act from NYC. She is the one with sunglasses and together with her band she had a lovely little indie lite pop lo fi beat thing happening. *Pronoun* Back to Sidewinder where Sundara Karma are playing. Think a cross between Cheap Trick, Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel and early Japan. Big hair, big riffs. Glam rock has not gone away, it is alive in Reading UK!! Excellent. *Sundara Karma* Eve’s new haircut enjoys the show. I think by then we were wilting in the heat so we headed to dinner, took a rest and said farewell for the evening to Elliot, who headed off to meet his old school friend who is now a Texas Longhorn. In the midst of several hundred options of live music - they went off and solved a mystery for me. In all the years of attending SXSW, I must have walked by a venue called Barbarella’s on Red River Street a thousand times, but had never gone in, as they never had any live music. Well Elliot and his friends did go there and it turns out it is an 80’s disco club, at least this year. Eve and I went off in search of more rewarding stuff. To Mohawk’s tiny indoor room where another of the much talked about Scottish bands are playing. Catholic Action were a typical Scottish band in geetars, catchy choruses, dry humor inbetween songs and a worrying fashion style composed of sensible trousers, nylon skinny rib polo neck shirt, even more sensible shoes and an oversized cap. Obviously not taking themselves seriously, they were great fun. *Catholic Action* To the winner of the most bizarre show of the week. Duchess Says hailed from Montreal. The music was pretty standard fare rock but the female lead was a complete headcase. Best bit was when she walked off stage and handed a person a big felt pen, instructing them to write anything they wanted on the back of her silver jacket. The person was myself. I was polite, I drew a spectacular face. She carried on through the crowd and when the jacket was completely covered in graffiti she moved on to her body being written on. More performance art than a music show but interesting for a while. *Duchess Says* Barracuda had a great line up so we escaped the street throngs and saw first Airwaves from England, this year’s Arctic Monkeys. Choppy pop. *Airwaves* Next up were one of my A-listers, Big Thief from New York. Brilliant. Yet another great band led by a spectacular female singer/songwriter this week. Her name is Adrianne Lenker, and she describes her music as painting in vivid tones “the process of harnessing pain, loss, and love, while simultaneously letting go, looking into your own eyes through someone else’s, and being okay with the inevitability of death.” Once more not the first words that come to my mind in trying to describe her brilliance, but I can live with that. Special. *Big Thief* If someone gave you the opportunity to go see Finland’s biggest and best indie band, would you? We did. Satellite Stories. Thirty minutes of undemanding catchy choruses. In Palm Door, where we would return later and have one of those SXSW moments. *Satellite Stories* Elliot got his disco shoes off and joined back up with us at the spectacular Esther’s Follies whose kitschy foyer defies description. We see A-Town Get Down, Austin’s own funk should revue band and then, perhaps the show of the week…... Top of my list to see this week was Anna Meredith, described by DIY music site as “Vibrant and kaleidoscopic in a way few musicians could ever muster… a talent like no other”, Anna has a spectacular resume, including being Composer in Residence of the Scottish Philharmonic Orchestra, writing symphonies for nursery children, music for park benches in Hong Kong and sleep-pods in Singapore. But best of all she has her own spectacular sound. Probably the only show to feature Eno like synths and a Tuba player together this week, the show was also attended by Bob Boilen of NPR who described it as as one of the "most uplifting musical moments" he's seen in his lifetime. She was phenomenal. Go buy her album, Varmints. *Anna Meredith* Remember I told you that the earlier, sparsely attended shows were not the least attended of the week. Here is why. To wrap up Friday I convinced Eve and Elliot, and Al and Andy, my two fellow SXSW friends to go back to Palm Door on Sabine to see Big Jesus. I had heard a song or two of theirs and they sounded good but I should have been more alert to their own music description of dreamy and bludgeoning. Yes bludgeoning. Well anyway, in we walked at one minute to one am. Inside, counting us, newly arrived, there were eight people, and we were five of them. The band appeared to be waiting till we arrived and launched straight into their wall of noise set. After the first song two people left. After the second song the other person left. It was now a private show for us five and despite it being 1.15 am, and the loudest show of the week, we felt duty bound to watch till the end. Unfortunately they took this to mean we were huge fans and played their full set. They were not bad really but it was a long way to come, from Atlanta, to an empty room. *Big Jesus.* The fifth member of our own group took this photo. Just us and the band. Day Six. Saturday The Austin view from the hotel room. Started overcast but became a heatwave. If Friday was a day of must see bands, Saturday was a day of the others, in fact in keeping with the last few years, the music choice was substantially less on the final day. So we took it easy. Back to Barracuda to see a few bands in the afternoon. Starting with London’s Dream Wife again. *Dream Wife* Then we took a walk to Waterloo Records to see a bunch of bands but by the time we got there the sun was killing me. So, we walked back. and just chilled before heading into the Flatstock Poster convention and saw Chile’s Slowkiss, Great stage design which the music did not quite live up to. *Slowkiss* Off to Casino El Camino for the best burgers in Austin accompanied by the coolest Jukebox choices in the US of A. Then as I had been telling everyone about Magic Giant, I heard that they were going to play an early evening show in a hotel nearby where we were. Andy, one of our friends, was very keen to see them too, so he joined the three of us and we headed to the Holiday Inn Express hotel. When we go there we were directed to the swimming pool. Imagine my embarrassment to see there were no musical instruments on the “stage” (a space between two pillars at one end of the pool) but just a keyboard computer thing again. I double checked with the hotel to be told that it was Magic Island who were playing not Magic Giant. An easy mistake to make but as Magic Island were a dream Pop one woman band from Germany whose songs are a kind of romantic lullabies, weaving together equal parts R&B and New Age, and gaining their power from their gentleness - her words not mind, I was a bit apprehensive about wasting thirty minutes here. However she was quite good, played most of the songs under the beating sun and put on a show even though there were kids splashing about in the pool. We rested on lounge chairs and enjoyed. *Magic Island* *Not Magic Giant.* After that faux pas, we needed high energy. Back to Esther’s Follies to see the Greenland crowd, Small Time Giants, for the second time this week. *Small Time Giants.* Up to the 18th Floor Hilton Garden Inn for Young Mister. Pleasant eighties soft rock, I thought, the twenty somethings were bored. Back to Barracuda again , who probably had the most consistently interesting showcases of the week. And. We walk in to a band none of us had heard of, on no-ones’s list and they were spectacular. Half Waif was their name. Yet another band led by a brilliant female front person. Nandi Rose Plunkett writes, records and performs under this name Half Waif. Nandi was the daughter of an Indian refugee mother and an American father of Irish/Swiss descent. Another brilliant immigrant of mixed nationality. A great voice and some of the best electronic pop music I have heard for some time. *Half Waif.* Then we popped inside (Barracuda has an outdoor and indoor stage and there was a choice of bands all night) to see Skott, who no matter how I try, I have no memory at all of the band. Even when I searched them on the internet thing I still could not recognize them, so probably not a good sign. Next we see Alexandra Savior. She had a big floral dress and sort of spoke sang her way through quiet ambient sounds. this time I was a bit bored but Elliot thought she was great. Turns out she has been writing songs with Alex Turner of Arctic Monkeys and guesting on a song by Cam Avery of Tame Impala and Pond fame. So she has something worth exploring. *Alexandra Savior* Now to one of the leading contenders of worst act seen during the week. So bad that I had to leave where they were playing and go to the inside stage where no one was playing before I felt capable of taking a photo capturing them in none of their glory. This is them through the appropriately dirty perspex glass. They were called Sports. An adjoining door with Sports doing their stuff. Worth hanging around though to see Gold Connections, a pretty apt name for a band formed by a close friend of Will Toledo, of Car Seat Headrest. In fact the main guy of Gold Connections, also call Will, Will Marsh, played in early incarnations of Car Seat Headrest and Will Toledo played in early Gold Connections stuff. All round good stuff, jangly guitar southern rock. *Gold Connections* night, and SXSW, were drawing to a close. Remember Elliot had no badge so we had to pick our venues where one, they were letting cash paying folk in, and two the queues would be small enough that he could get in. So we went for the two old favorite venues again, first Esther’s Follies, to War Party, who apparently are a Post Punk band from Fort Worth Texas. I would more accurately describe them as an absolutely typical SXSW band. Some great songs, great musicianship, enjoyable show, but likely never to hear then again. Check out a song called Pure Destroyer to see what I mean. *War Party* OK, it is 1am. Last show of SXSW 2017. To the peace of the 18th Floor Hilton Garden Inn to see another band from Nashville. The Outer Vibe were a dance/funk/surf guitar combo. I could sense this was not going to be a typical gig as we headed up to it in the lift. There was a family having a domestic squabble about their daughter’s boyfriend and an exceedingly drunk, long haired, middle aged biker sitting at the front shouting at the sound engineer . “ Everything in moderation, for Fuck sake” . The band started up, bemused, and were only one song into the set when the father of the by now crying and arguing family got up and made a song request to the lead singer. Despite all this, the band played a good show, they would have been great and better suited to the 18th floor of a slick Vegas night club, but they tried hard. After a few songs we left, like leaving a movie half way through, but it felt right. *The Outer Vibe* And with that SXSW 2017 was over. Elliot headed back to Boston the next day, Eve to Edinburgh and myself to Portland. I had seen 99 bands over the six days and as this was as good as it could get, watching great music up close and personal in the company of two of our kids, with the likelihood that our third would never visit SXSW, unless he was on the stage, I decided that this was it. Eleven years of attending SXSW. Time to go out on a high. So this was my last one. Here is my favorite photo of the week taken on the final day, the three of us together!! The music highs of 2017 were many. I saw 99 bands from around twenty different countries in about 50 different venues. The most represented American music scene of the bands I saw was easily Los Angeles, then New York followed by Nashville. Internationally it was London, Scotland, Australia and Germany. My favorite acts were: Michigan Rattlers Weaves Rainbrother PWR BTTM NeHi Sundara Karma Half Waif Baskery Beach Slang Kevin Morby Sam Cohen & The Resistance Radio Revue Summer Cannibals Jean Michel Blais & CNCF Girlpool Die Heiterkeit The Spook School Foxtrax Big Thief Vagabon Anna Meredith And that is it. Farewell SXSW for good. Next year I will take in a different musical festival of a similar ilk in some other part of the world. Cheers Ronnie

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I know, you have been waiting breathlessly for the third and final review of SXSW which finished about six weeks ago. Apologies. Here it is.

Day Five Friday.

It is the second last day. Austin downtown was a zoo last night - the mix of March Madness/St Patrick’s day (which I find hilarious)/Spring Break and SXSW - all congregating on Sixth Street - is just becoming impossible to navigate/suffer/enjoy. But one must try.

It is midday and for the first time ever I am at SXSW with two of my kids alongside me. We pick a sensational show to commemorate this event. Vagabon live at Valhallas were just spectacular. Go listen to Laetitia Tamko, who is Vagabon, the Brooklyn based Cameroon artist. The song Fear and Force is a great introduction.

Vagabon

Back to Flood magazine’s Festival at Cedar Street Courtyard. Free drinks!! and Great bands with a great view!! From our vantage point above the stage, we watch LA’s Mondo Cozmo, who are another band who may have the breakout pop rock hot from SXSW this year with their song “Shine”.

Mondo Cozmo

Then we hit another of those frustrating moments. The next band is due to be Jain, the French electro pop sensation sweeping across the European mainland. Only thing is, she got their times wrong and has not turned up, expecting to be on in two hours time. Eventually she makes a dash to the place and after a full 30 bloody minutes to soundcheck an act which only has pre programmed music on a fancy keyboard, the one woman show finally takes the stage. Not bad but not worth a one hour wait, although the free drinks helped pass the time. The crowd did love her.

Jain

This was the entire musical accompaniment. Together with its personal roadie, who could not get it to work.

Time Thief

We take a few long walks first to Little Woodrows to see the in your face shrieky rock n roll noise of White Reaper, but by now the afternoon bars are filling up with noisy St Paddy’s day green dressed party seekers in the off the main SXSW drag venues. Not the best setting to listen to a band. So we head to a venue new to me, Handlebar and their rooftop patio to hear the sound of a “heartbroken girl in her shitty apartment in Brooklyn” as she describes herself. She calls herself Pronoun and is yet another act from NYC. She is the one with sunglasses and together with her band she had a lovely little indie lite pop lo fi beat thing happening.

Pronoun

Back to Sidewinder where Sundara Karma are playing. Think a cross between Cheap Trick, Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel and early Japan. Big hair, big riffs. Glam rock has not gone away, it is alive in Reading UK!!

Excellent.

Sundara Karma

Eve’s new haircut enjoys the show.

I think by then we were wilting in the heat so we headed to dinner, took a rest and said farewell for the evening to Elliot, who headed off to meet his old school friend who is now a Texas Longhorn. In the midst of several hundred options of live music - they went off and solved a mystery for me. In all the years of attending SXSW, I must have walked by a venue called Barbarella’s on Red River Street a thousand times, but had never gone in, as they never had any live music. Well Elliot and his friends did go there and it turns out it is an 80’s disco club, at least this year. Eve and I went off in search of more rewarding stuff. To Mohawk’s tiny indoor room where another of the much talked about Scottish bands are playing. Catholic Action were a typical Scottish band in geetars, catchy choruses, dry humor inbetween songs and a worrying fashion style composed of sensible trousers, nylon skinny rib polo neck shirt, even more sensible shoes and an oversized cap. Obviously not taking themselves seriously, they were great fun.

Catholic Action

To the winner of the most bizarre show of the week. Duchess Says hailed from Montreal. The music was pretty standard fare rock but the female lead was a complete headcase. Best bit was when she walked off stage and handed a person a big felt pen, instructing them to write anything they wanted on the back of her silver jacket. The person was myself. I was polite, I drew a spectacular face. She carried on through the crowd and when the jacket was completely covered in graffiti she moved on to her body being written on. More performance art than a music show but interesting for a while.

Duchess Says

Barracuda had a great line up so we escaped the street throngs and saw first Airwaves from England, this year’s Arctic Monkeys. Choppy pop.

Airwaves

Next up were one of my A-listers, Big Thief from New York. Brilliant. Yet another great band led by a spectacular female singer/songwriter this week. Her name is Adrianne Lenker, and she describes her music as painting in vivid tones “the process of harnessing pain, loss, and love, while simultaneously letting go, looking into your own eyes through someone else’s, and being okay with the inevitability of death.” Once more not the first words that come to my mind in trying to describe her brilliance, but I can live with that. Special.

Big Thief

If someone gave you the opportunity to go see Finland’s biggest and best indie band, would you? We did. Satellite Stories. Thirty minutes of undemanding catchy choruses. In Palm Door, where we would return later and have one of those SXSW moments.

Satellite Stories

Elliot got his disco shoes off and joined back up with us at the spectacular Esther’s Follies whose kitschy foyer defies description. We see A-Town Get Down, Austin’s own funk should revue band and then, perhaps the show of the week…...

Top of my list to see this week was Anna Meredith, described by DIY music site as “Vibrant and kaleidoscopic in a way few musicians could ever muster… a talent like no other”, Anna has a spectacular resume, including being Composer in Residence of the Scottish Philharmonic Orchestra, writing symphonies for nursery children, music for park benches in Hong Kong and sleep-pods in Singapore. But best of all she has her own spectacular sound. Probably the only show to feature Eno like synths and a Tuba player together this week, the show was also attended by Bob Boilen of NPR who described it as as one of the "most uplifting musical moments" he's seen in his lifetime. She was phenomenal. Go buy her album, Varmints.

Anna Meredith

Remember I told you that the earlier, sparsely attended shows were not the least attended of the week. Here is why. To wrap up Friday I convinced Eve and Elliot, and Al and Andy, my two fellow SXSW friends to go back to Palm Door on Sabine to see Big Jesus. I had heard a song or two of theirs and they sounded good but I should have been more alert to their own music description of dreamy and bludgeoning. Yes bludgeoning. Well anyway, in we walked at one minute to one am. Inside, counting us, newly arrived, there were eight people, and we were five of them. The band appeared to be waiting till we arrived and launched straight into their wall of noise set. After the first song two people left. After the second song the other person left. It was now a private show for us five and despite it being 1.15 am, and the loudest show of the week, we felt duty bound to watch till the end. Unfortunately they took this to mean we were huge fans and played their full set. They were not bad really but it was a long way to come, from Atlanta, to an empty room.

Big Jesus.

The fifth member of our own group took this photo. Just us and the band.

Day Six. Saturday

The Austin view from the hotel room. Started overcast but became a heatwave.

If Friday was a day of must see bands, Saturday was a day of the others, in fact in keeping with the last few years, the music choice was substantially less on the final day. So we took it easy.

Back to Barracuda to see a few bands in the afternoon. Starting with London’s Dream Wife again.

Dream Wife

Then we took a walk to Waterloo Records to see a bunch of bands but by the time we got there the sun was killing me. So, we walked back. and just chilled before heading into the Flatstock Poster convention and saw Chile’s Slowkiss, Great stage design which the music did not quite live up to.

Slowkiss

Off to Casino El Camino for the best burgers in Austin accompanied by the coolest Jukebox choices in the US of A.

Then as I had been telling everyone about Magic Giant, I heard that they were going to play an early evening show in a hotel nearby where we were. Andy, one of our friends, was very keen to see them too, so he joined the three of us and we headed to the Holiday Inn Express hotel. When we go there we were directed to the swimming pool. Imagine my embarrassment to see there were no musical instruments on the “stage” (a space between two pillars at one end of the pool) but just a keyboard computer thing again. I double checked with the hotel to be told that it was Magic Island who were playing not Magic Giant. An easy mistake to make but as Magic Island were a dream Pop one woman band from Germany whose songs are a kind of romantic lullabies, weaving together equal parts R&B and New Age, and gaining their power from their gentleness - her words not mind, I was a bit apprehensive about wasting thirty minutes here. However she was quite good, played most of the songs under the beating sun and put on a show even though there were kids splashing about in the pool. We rested on lounge chairs and enjoyed.

Magic Island

Not Magic Giant.

After that faux pas, we needed high energy. Back to Esther’s Follies to see the Greenland crowd, Small Time Giants, for the second time this week.

Small Time Giants.

Up to the 18th Floor Hilton Garden Inn for Young Mister. Pleasant eighties soft rock, I thought, the twenty somethings were bored.

Back to Barracuda again , who probably had the most consistently interesting showcases of the week. And. We walk in to a band none of us had heard of, on no-ones’s list and they were spectacular. Half Waif was their name. Yet another band led by a brilliant female front person. Nandi Rose Plunkett writes, records and performs under this name Half Waif. Nandi was the daughter of an Indian refugee mother and an American father of Irish/Swiss descent. Another brilliant immigrant of mixed nationality. A great voice and some of the best electronic pop music I have heard for some time.

Half Waif.

Then we popped inside (Barracuda has an outdoor and indoor stage and there was a choice of bands all night) to see Skott, who no matter how I try, I have no memory at all of the band. Even when I searched them on the internet thing I still could not recognize them, so probably not a good sign. Next we see Alexandra Savior. She had a big floral dress and sort of spoke sang her way through quiet ambient sounds. this time I was a bit bored but Elliot thought she was great. Turns out she has been writing songs with Alex Turner of Arctic Monkeys and guesting on a song by Cam Avery of Tame Impala and Pond fame. So she has something worth exploring.

Alexandra Savior

Now to one of the leading contenders of worst act seen during the week. So bad that I had to leave where they were playing and go to the inside stage where no one was playing before I felt capable of taking a photo capturing them in none of their glory. This is them through the appropriately dirty perspex glass. They were called Sports.

An adjoining door with Sports doing their stuff.

Worth hanging around though to see Gold Connections, a pretty apt name for a band formed by a close friend of Will Toledo, of Car Seat Headrest. In fact the main guy of Gold Connections, also call Will, Will Marsh, played in early incarnations of Car Seat Headrest and Will Toledo played in early Gold Connections stuff. All round good stuff, jangly guitar southern rock.

Gold Connections

night, and SXSW, were drawing to a close. Remember Elliot had no badge so we had to pick our venues where one, they were letting cash paying folk in, and two the queues would be small enough that he could get in. So we went for the two old favorite venues again, first Esther’s Follies, to War Party, who apparently are a Post Punk band from Fort Worth Texas. I would more accurately describe them as an absolutely typical SXSW band. Some great songs, great musicianship, enjoyable show, but likely never to hear then again. Check out a song called Pure Destroyer to see what I mean.

War Party

OK, it is 1am. Last show of SXSW 2017. To the peace of the 18th Floor Hilton Garden Inn to see another band from Nashville. The Outer Vibe were a dance/funk/surf guitar combo. I could sense this was not going to be a typical gig as we headed up to it in the lift. There was a family having a domestic squabble about their daughter’s boyfriend and an exceedingly drunk, long haired, middle aged biker sitting at the front shouting at the sound engineer . “ Everything in moderation, for Fuck sake” . The band started up, bemused, and were only one song into the set when the father of the by now crying and arguing family got up and made a song request to the lead singer. Despite all this, the band played a good show, they would have been great and better suited to the 18th floor of a slick Vegas night club, but they tried hard. After a few songs we left, like leaving a movie half way through, but it felt right.

The Outer Vibe

And with that SXSW 2017 was over. Elliot headed back to Boston the next day, Eve to Edinburgh and myself to Portland. I had seen 99 bands over the six days and as this was as good as it could get, watching great music up close and personal in the company of two of our kids, with the likelihood that our third would never visit SXSW, unless he was on the stage, I decided that this was it. Eleven years of attending SXSW. Time to go out on a high. So this was my last one. Here is my favorite photo of the week taken on the final day, the three of us together!!

The music highs of 2017 were many. I saw 99 bands from around twenty different countries in about 50 different venues. The most represented American music scene of the bands I saw was easily Los Angeles, then New York followed by Nashville. Internationally it was London, Scotland, Australia and Germany.

My favorite acts were:

Michigan Rattlers
Weaves
Rainbrother
PWR BTTM
NeHi
Sundara Karma
Half Waif
Baskery
Beach Slang
Kevin Morby
Sam Cohen & The Resistance Radio Revue
Summer Cannibals
Jean Michel Blais & CNCF
Girlpool
Die Heiterkeit
The Spook School
Foxtrax
Big Thief
Vagabon
Anna Meredith

And that is it. Farewell SXSW for good. Next year I will take in a different musical festival of a similar ilk in some other part of the world.

Cheers

Ronnie