Of Sins & Swedehearts: SXSW Thursday

I frequently made a point to anyone who would listen yesterday about the sheer illogic of coming all the way to Austin to see New York bands play, but I had cast that notion into O Death's (pictured above) lyrically-offered fatal sea from first song our Brooklyn country-punk five piece graced the stage (well, the back porch) with. Drumming on paint cans, strummin' and fiddlin', shouting in unison about backwoods burials--bleeding to death in a barn surely never sounded so good.

Oakland's Port O' Brien played the same event (La Luz, a vintage retailer of fashions and furniture, was hosting—SXSW turns everyplace Austin's got into an afternoon rock concert), and the quintet tread similar musical ground with more reserve. They opened with a song seemingly about romantic non-commitment--"I'm not ready to settle down" their frontman raggedly repeated--but the high-point may have been the banter: "Should I buy this poncho?" the bass player asked of the multi-colored garment draped from him and picked from the store. The audience, free beers in hand, chimed back "Yeah!" in unison, but this correspondent didn't know the poncho's final fate at press time.

After the sun went down I reported to Emo's at 8 pm sharp. My punctuality was well-rewarded as charismatic Swedeheart Jens Lekman played thirty-five minutes of his sugar-coated, witty pop in a just Lekman with an undistorted electric guitar. There was often a comically sour center, however, as on "The Opposite Of Hallelujah," a whistling-included plea for the addressee to cheer up, Jens acknowledging his own depression along the way. Bringing sincerity back like it was '55, before he played a note he gently told the audience he had a request: "Can you not film this and put it on the internet?"

Philadelphia's white-clad, face-painted Man Man, despite immensely poor sightlines at the outside Courtyard they performed in, brought their brother-loving ruckus to Texas. Your Press correspondent took no photos, and infrequently saw the men men in the band band (though glimpses revealed they weren't sitting in their usual clustered a facing each other stage configuration), but the clanging electric piano centered a percussive circus, and I gamely imagined a pile of zealous, whiskey-fueled Tom Waits clones blowing smoke in each other's faces.

Retribution Gospel Choir (pictured, left), Alan Sparhawk of Low's amped-up three-piece side project, brought their guitar/bass/drum craft to Central Presbyterian Church half an hour before midnight. The setting was hushed (though the band was frenzied as often as they were muted), and Sparhawk had the usual tinge of evil in his voice, singing of his hands killing, of blood spilling, and other aptly Christian and rapturously violent things. Early in the set, having set the tone lyrically with the line "I am the destroyer," one could feel similar sentiments even as the final songs lyrics, often just harmonized "la la la la"s crept over the pews.

Los Angeles' No Age, starting their outside tent set after 1 a.m., pulled the real indie kids from the fringes for what may have been, for them, a rare trip into Austin's downtown perimeter to offer understandings that well, yeah-it's-an-official-showcase-but-like-whatever-dudes-it's-NO-AGE (even Todd P made it out) explanations, but it was surely a worthy justification. The vox weren't loud enough to be discerned, but I understood all I needed to from the ebb/flow/ebb/flow cascading waves they conjured with percussive dexterity and surprisingly studious pedal tweaking. When the set seemed to be ending with some lullingly pretty, effects-rendered fade-out, they came on full force, concluding when the guitar was laid atop the drum kit, suddenly being drilled upon with both sticks, with even more pedalriffic weirdo-ripping the ensuing signals/noises from the ether.