Daigle’s Friday, March 20 Day Shows of SXSW 2009

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(Photo credit BVaz; band is No Age)

To begin, BVaz has already written up his take on SXSW 2009.  He was there for about a day and a half longer than me, and his entries are much more in-depth, so be sure to check them all out.  Also, find his excellent writeup of this same afternoon here.  He suggested I posted all four of my installments as I had already written them all for my website, The Daily Daigle.  So, here you go, with the other three to be posted this week!

Ben, Jill and I went to SXSW this year, and it was awesome. After experiencing a large outdoor summer festival (Lollapalooza 2008), SXSW is about 300 times more comfortable and much more enjoyable, in my opinion. In short, you aren’t standing in a huddled mass of sweaty people and mandated to be outside in the sun all dang day. A lot of the venues are inside, and all of them are pretty small; it’s not an enormous pain to get a drink, go to the bathroom, get out of the sun, etc. etc. Plus, you’re seeing many bands that a large summer festival wouldn’t even blink at, and the larger bands are extremely accessable simply due to the small venues. So. First of all, I’m going to break this down using one photo per band I saw, with one entry for the day shows and one for the night shows, which will total four entries. Good? Good.

First one I went to after rolling into town after a half day of work that Friday was the Pitchfork Showcase at Emo’s, and the first band I saw was Wavves:

I only got to catch about 3 and 1/2 songs, but I really liked what I heard. It took me a minute to realize I was hearing Wavves, which had been getting a lot of buzz just prior to me heading out there. At any rate, they were good and had a full sound with only one guitar and one drummer. Find a link to a video of one of their other SXSW performances here. I missed all of the Dirty Projectors, who were inside (and impossible to access), but After Wavves, the next band due up on the Emo’s outdoor stage was King Khan and His Shrines:

King Khan is one of the new soul groups a la Black Joe Lewis, and to some extent, Bedouin Soundclash. I find new soul to be awfully boring because as Ben put it: “The perfect soul song was written 50 years ago and it’s never going to get any better.” So, so true. While amusing and good for a party, I wasn’t really into hearing neo soul at a music festival built on discovering new and interesting music. Meh. Next was the greatness of Department of Eagles:

You know how sometimes you can be enjoying an album just fine, but once you see them live it’s like everything comes together and you appreciate everything a whole lot more? Department of Eagles are one of those bands for me. I enjoyed their album, In Ear Park from last year, but had overlooked it to an extent, but since SXSW I have been listening to all Department of Eagles, all the time. Also, here is a video of Dept. of Eagles playing a new song, You’ll Never Know at Waterloo Records at SXSW, which they also played at this Emo’s set. Great stuff. As a bonus, during the set, Daniel Rossen introduced a guest, Victoria, who came up to the stage where they covered Fire on the Mountain by the Grateful Dead:

It was only after I saw Beach House later that night that I realized that this was Victoria from Beach House. Not surprisingly, I had seen none of the SXSW bands before, so recognizing what they looked like in person was not something I was capable of, even if Beach House’s Devotion was one of my favorite albums of 2008. That’s it for the day shows that I caught Friday. They cut them off strictly at 5:00, and since I had to work that morning, I wasn’t able to catch a whole whole lot, but what I saw was pretty good. Next up, the Friday night set, including more Beach House, Grizzly Bear, Bedouin Soundclash, Peter Bjorn & John, Dinosaur Jr. and Kevin Drew. Great stuff!