Yeah, Day 2. I ran around from show to show – no, not really. I sat at my desk all day, and then I came home and watched “The Rur Jur” (didn’t really understand the title). Turns out my friend Kevin Grisham wrote it.
Shout Out Out Out Out Out Out – Bad Choices
Well, besides the fact that they got distracted on the way to being Loud, and ended up adding a bunch of extra Outs (I might have added a few myself) this song was pretty fun. Good dark electronica. Nice rhythm. A grinding bass line. A poppy melody, with a hooky chorus. Fun.
The Moog – You Raised a Vampire
This band is named after a legendary brand of keyboard. A brand that showed up in everything from Donna Summers to Kraftwerk. This band, from Hungary, shows considerable cojones to name themselves after the band. Might as well name yourself Fender. Or Crate. Or Sears Brand Guitar. No, seriously, the band’s pretty good, in the satisfactory Interpol clone but more coked up but still gothy sort of way.
The Plastic Waves – Lost Waves of an Old Empire
I’m pretty sure I only marked 4 stars on this song because the band’s members are from Iran (the Islamic Republic of). That could be why the band’s no longer listed on the SXSW website – maybe some visa snafu halted them at the border, and they were turned back, guitars and synths in hand, to be chastised by authorities in their home country for trying to make a difference. Then again, maybe all I did was listen to the song, a scratchy recording of said guitars and synths, like they were 3rd generation copies from the original basement recording. And maybe I thought about the adventurousness of recording a vaguely Portishead-like song and releasing it for the masses thronging toward Central Texas. Or I just really liked the song’s ending, an uplifting melody evoking warmth and happiness and hope. Or cacti and desert. Who can tell these days, really?
As an addendum, I should write more of these after 3 glasses of wine. They might not make much sense to you, but they’re much easier for me…
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