THURSDAY, 13 MARCH
 Today is the day it becomes clear what’s so special – and indeed so refreshing – about SXSW. For in the space of but a few hours and in three entirely different locations, I get to see a heart-warming show by a national treasure, a great one, and a show that, quite unexpectedly, is utterly stunning.
I also properly begin to appreciate the simple pleasure of wandering down a long thoroughfare and, every few yards, popping at will into a random club, bar, dive, diner or some such to watch a band or musician performing. And doing so for several hours. There you go, into one place after another, adjusting to the darkness (and the process does invariably involve plunging into a horror film gloom), and emerging at a variable distant of time, blinking into the sunlight, to do it all again.
There are, it must be said, a surfeit of bands playing interchangeable versions of US punk/hardcore circa the 1980s, all of whom sport big shorts, wallet chains and many tattoos. Speaking as someone who has done time at the Kerrang! coal face, it is like being whisked back two decades and left there, suspended in a shouty rock purgatory.
In a couple of hours today there are also run of the mill garage rockers (White Light Riot), an American band playing an afternoon bill dedicated to Irish music seemingly on the basis they have appropriated the sound of early U2 so accurately (The Bleedin’ Bleedin’s – and how terrible a name is that?), and a more than decent alt-country turn from Chicago (Cameron McGill and his band). The latter show takes place is a seedy bar straight out of central locations for a David Lynch movie, which rather adds to the mood of it all.
Eventually it is possible to tire of such wilfulness, so come mid-afternoon I opt for something entirely more reliable – Billy Bragg. The evergreen Sir William is on at the SXSW Conference Centre’s café, but of course. When I arrive he is being preceded by Cadence Weapon, a hip-hop duo from Canada featuring an impressive mixmaster, an enthusiastic rap and little else to speak of. Bragg is, of course, something else altogether.
He tells a by now packed room that last time he was at SWSW, two years ago, he played all his first album, 1984’s Brewing Up With Billy Bragg, in its original running order; a process that “took 17 minutes”. This afternoon he spends the same amount of time on his new album, Mr Love And Justice. Three decades on from that debut, his songwriting is more refined and has added a dimension to it, and his voice too is a subtler instrument, but his passion, and the manner with which he articulates it, still burns.
In Sing Their Souls Back Home and I Keep The Faith, Bragg has written properly durable folk songs, while his closing …An Old Clash Fan sounds exactly as its title suggests it should. It’s a brief appearance, but one to warm the heart and soul – which is Billy Bragg’s stock and trade, after all.
After a brief respite, I take a cab down to the Auditorium Shores venue, where local heroes Spoon are hosting a free outdoor evening show for several thousand folk. It’s a beautiful location: set on a verdant hillside rising up from the lake that parts the centre, and set against a backdrop of the downtown skyline. Cranes fly overhead and the evening sun falls behind the trees that ring the perimeter of the venue.
Spoon’s set enhances the sense of occasion. In a way that echoes R.E.M’s alt-rock trajectory, they emerged from Austin in 1994 with much indie cred and, in Britt Daniel, had an enigmatic frontman, distinctive guitarist and highly capable songwriter wrapped up in one. Through six increasingly fine albums Daniel and his second lieutenant, drummer Jim Eno, have built a growing cult following, to the point where last year’s excellent Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga was their best and best received record yet. Their Document, if you will, and now Spoon stand on the cusp of a bigger breakthrough.
Tonight’s show certainly carries that triumphal air, building as it does from celebratory opening trot to charging conclusion. Like Tom Petty and his Heartbreakers of mid-‘70s/early-‘80s vintage, Daniel and his band have taken a basic format (pop-rock), and breathed fresh life to it by bringing their own twists and turns to the blueprint. They are likewise a deceptively great band: as Daniel leads his troops through the likes of Fitted Shirt and I Turn My Camera On, he and they make it all seem so effortless, as if he will only have to wake up tomorrow and another perfectly formed song will be at his disposal.
Tellingly, it’s the last two Spoon albums to which the set leans. The material from Gimme Fiction brought squalling guitars, a darker edge and shifting arrangements to the Spoon operation. Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga added soul splashes and an even more refined songwriting skill to Daniel’s palette. Here it’s material is augmented by a four-piece horn section, and as Daniels fronts the expanded You Got Yr Cherry Bomb and Don’t Make Me A Target, he does so with the confidence of a man who knows his time is surely coming.
The day ends at Austin’s Music Hall. For me, the name conjured up images of a Grand Old Opry style venue, steeped in history and tradition. In reality, it’s a glass-fronted, concrete box of entirely modern design. It’s here that My Morning Jacket play an 11pm show.
Now, I’d seen the Kentucky-based foursome a few years back at the tiny Camden Monarch in London, and whilst it’d had its moments and subsequent albums, especially 2005’s Z, had suggested they were developing nicely, there had been nothing to suggest the manner with which this gig would unfold. Funnily enough, I’d been discussing with someone the previous night when the last time we’d been truly blown away by a band; shook up, transported to another place and left breathless and exhilarated by the experience. For both of us it had been years. My Morning Jacket ended that run.
Over the course of two hours, they meld together all of Neil Young’s career paths: the seismic roar of Crazy Horse, the celestial harmonies of Crosby, Stills, Nash And Young, the pastoral delights of Harvest... They also add prog rock, blue-eyed pop, hard rock and much more besides to the mix. Then deliver it all with the force of a hurricane, and in doing so take their classic rock template and turn into something newly emerged. It’s extraordinary stuff, and in the shape of guitarist/vocalist/band leader Jim James, there is a proper star at its centre.
When James conducts the band to lift off from whatever song they’re playing and head off into the clouds, it’s like being pulled along in the slipstream of a jet engine. And the clutch of new material aired from their forthcoming new album, due in June, suggests more of the same is on the way.
When they’re gone, in a whirl of melody and feedback, you’re left giddy and intoxicated. Because in a world where everything is increasingly homogenised, where music is packaged, sold and consumed like fast food, it means something that a band can still blow your mind and take your breath away.
Roll on tomorrow.
Paul Rees, Editor, Q |
