On the third day, I played hooky from the schedule I'd made for myself and decided just to roll with it. At Pitchfork's day party, Wavves played a significantly more enthusiastic set than yesterday's. Next, King Khan spiced things up with his signature gold cape and energizer cheerleader. In the mix were some new songs, which sounded a lot like the old ones: theatrical, horn-laden and soulful.

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Delayed by badge issues (which were resolved by SXSW's excellent staff way quicker than I expected), I inhaled a taco while running over to see Shilpa Ray and her Happy Hookers at the official Brooklyn Vegan showcase at Club DeVille. I'd seen them play them before, but they really killed it last night. What was previously a joyously sloppy hodgepodge had coalesced into a super tight, efficiently noisy four piece. Shilpa was going especially hard at her songs with everything from a gentle croon to a dramatic, burlesque scream, and I thought: this girl wants it bad, deserves it, and will hopefully get it. "I'm really fucking proud that you all came out even though you're broke as shit," Shilpa said, to loud cheers from everyone. She then gave a shoutout to Brooklyn, making me feel right at home. An early promise: Brooklyn is going to own this festival.

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My second day in Austin brought a clusterfuck of great bands. I first headed over to Ms. Bea's for Todd P's ongoing unofficial party, where one could stay put all week and hear (almost) all the best acts of the entire festival. Brooklyn's Golden Error played an energetic set of pissed off party punk, with charismatic frontman Erick Hughes rolling around on the ground and spitting out hilarious lyrics, one of which rhymed "afternoon fellatio" with "love to sex ratio." The band's tight, loud new drummer, Ben Shapiro, is notable for his contributions to The New Yorker as well as the great O-face he makes when playing. 

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Brooklyn indie folksters Grizzly Bear recently teamed up with the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra to bring an evening of music surprisingly at home in BAM's grand Howard Gilman Opera House. An amusing assortment of cool old people and old young people, dressed in everything from flannel to finery, packed the house. After "openers" Final Fantasy and a short intermission, Ed Droste and company appeared on stage, familiar faces in an unfamiliar environment.

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Though it's a bitch for most scene kids to get to, 92Y's relatively new Tribeca branch has some solid bills of music. Friday night saw performances from Hearts of Darknesses, Bird Names and These Are Powers, as well as an art show in the adjacent galleries. First I checked out the art: trippy, whimsical stuff from Brian Willmont, Eric Shaw and Denise Kupferschmidt with Dan Deacon's green skull making a cameo in one painting. I'm no art critic, but I thought it was all pretty excellent to look at.

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Monday night, Swedish songstress Lykke Li filled Webster Hall with a large number of her admirers, especially impressive considering it was a weeknight and Ms. Li has had an album out in the U.S. for less than a year. Composed primarily of girls, gays, Asians and Europeans, the crowd cheered loudly at the singer's constant exhortations of "I can't hear you!" I'd say this came off a bit desperate, but I guess Euro-pop acts are allowed, even expected, to be cheesy like that.

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Jemina Pearl of the late, great Be Your Own Pet debuted her new solo project at the Music Hall of White People Saturday night to a scattered audience of non-dancers. In shiny black pants, DIY halter shirt, jean vest and red neckerchief, she looked like she’d just stepped out of the wardrobe department of SLC Punk, which is to say, a little too good.

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Last Saturday, MHoW (which I’ve decided stands for the Music Hall of White People) hosted the new country project of Exene Cervenka and John Doe, original members of the legendary L.A. punk band X. The first thing I noticed on arriving was that the hall’s main space, usually left open, was full of chairs. So many, in fact, that extras were propped up everywhere just in case. This was probably because everyone there was pretty old, at least by rock ‘n’ roll standards. The heat was cranked up like in a retirement home.

The opening act of decidedly non-“alt” country, Justin Townes Earle, was a harbinger of things to come. Cervanka and Doe took the stage looking good for their age; Doe wore a suit and Cervanka, in a modest, white-collared dress and sassy red boots, resembled a cross between early ’90s Courtney Love and a soccer mom. Sadly, the music skewed towards the latter demographic.

They sang many sweet duets, stories of waitresses and truck stops and love lost. Most songs were competent, even pretty, but missing that bite that makes modern alt-country acts compelling, not to mention X in its previous incarnations. Only one new song, the chorus of which was “on the surface of the sun,” really caught my ear—with power chords and a minor key harmony, it was punk minimalism applied to folk. A June Carter cover was nice, but also somewhat disturbing in that it was fairly indistinguishable from countrified versions of their own punk classics.
Some of the old bite returned when Doe started talking. He told a story about how, as a songwriter, you always hope someone’s going to call and offer you money. “You finally get a call and they say ‘you got your song in a movie,’” he said. “And you go who’s in it? Samuel L. Jackson? Fuckin a! And then you see the movie and it’s called…”

“Snakes on a Plane?” the audience asked.

“It’s called shit,” he said. “It’s got Christina Ricci running around in her underwear.”

“This is another old song,” he told us. “It’ll be on a classic rock station if they ever catch up.” Here’s hoping they do, because you’re not going to get your X fix straight from the source.

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Last Saturday, Bishop Allen filled the Music Hall of Williamsburg with signs of the times. Perhaps due to the band's inclusion on the soundtrack of mainstream indie Michael Cera cute-fest Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, the show attracted an unusually large share of regs for the neighborhood; turtlenecks and business casual attire were on full display and guys clutched their brittle girlfriends in anticipation of the passionate night of missionary sex they’d earned with dinner at Sea, followed by an “edgy” indie rock show in the hip, up-and-coming neighborhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I never thought I’d say this about anyone, but Bishop Allen makes Vampire Weekend look like N.W.A.

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Sometimes corporate events get it right. Though my more principled peers might object, when someone books two of my favorite bands and pours free liquor down my throat, I can’t help but look favorably upon their brand. I want you to go to a website called Shockhound.com and buy a lot of whatever they’re selling, because last Sunday, said site brought crowds of rock nerds to Santos’ Party House for (what else?) a party that tested the limits of how crappy one can feel on Monday morning and still make it into work.

First, one-man band Soft Circle did some drum and bass type stuff. I’m a sucker for live samples, and multi-instrumentalist Hisham Akira Bharoocha (formerly of Black Dice) made some nice bass, drum and vocal loops over which he performed some excellent live drumming. It was a tad repetitive and most of the songs lasted a long time without evolving much, but I guess that’s part of the point.

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