SXSW Day 2: More Swedes and some secret (and not so secret) Canadians
Ah, the Swedes. Like my NY Press cohort in Austin, Greg Burgett, I spent part of Thursday savoring the sweet indie pop that seems to pour out of Scandinavia. In the late afternoon sun on the patio of the Flamingo Cantina, the Shout Out Louds, a quintet from Stockholm, wooed the enthusiastic audience, which danced along to their ebullient confections. Later, at the Secretly Canadian/Jagjaguwar/Dead Oceans showcase on the Mohawk Patio, I saw Jens Lekman, but first, a slew of Americans in the warm evening.
Though official SXSW showcases (typically organized by a label or promotions company) can be wildly uneven in quality, this one was, simply put (as a friend of mine said), the kind of showcase where you want to go buy the records of every single band. Early on, Bodies of Water, an angular art-pop group from California that can swell in size to 10 or more members, performed as a party of five, but their theatrical delivery and soaring vocals created an expansiveness that was greater than the sum of the parts. The ever-excitable and endlessly energetic Norman, Okla. band Evangelicals followed with a flashy show that included strobe lights and dry ice, which only increased the fervor of the foursomes psychedelic freak-outs. To add to the drama, lead singer Josh Jones asked the audience members how they felt about crowd surfing, and though the response seemed a little ambiguous, he apparently had faith that no one would let him crash to the ground. Towards the end of the set, he leaped out onto the sea of waiting hands, which carried him along and then safely deposited him back on the stage to finish the dazzling set.
By the time Bon Iver took the stage, the patio was filled elbow to elbow. Though it was impossible for most of the crowd (including me) to see lead singer Justin Vernon, whose incredible falsetto pierced the night air, the beauty of the Wisconsinites sumptuous folk ballads captivated fans, who strained to see the source of the echoing vocals. Next, with a full band of a violinist, a cellist, bassist, percussionist, and all-around electronics wizard backing him, the always charming crooner Jens Lekman was greeted with wild cheers, and he rewarded the audience with a bouncy, sometimes disco-inspired show. And finally, the heaviest group in the showcase, both in terms of its sound and the extent of its following, Vancouvers Black Mountain, closed the night with spine-tingling excursions in distortion of such volume it seemed possible they could drown out all the other noise in downtown Austin that night.
Photo of Black Mountain courtesy of [Nathan Malone on Flickr]