SXSW Day 4: Folk Interpreters and Spectacular Noise

My final SXSW day took me to extremes, with multifarious folk interpreters dominating the earlier half and then the late night turning spectacularly noisy. I hunkered down at The Mohawk for much of Saturday, beginning with the Hot Freaks! (a music blogger collaborative) party. There I stumbled on The Acorn, a Canadian folk-pop troop I had never heard of whose intricate polyrhythms and instrumentation absorbed me immediately and completely. Later in the afternoon the raspy-voiced singer-songwriter David Bazan (pictured), armed with only an electric guitar, drew a legion of fresh-faced and eager young fans who sang along for most of his performance (which they interspersed with shouts of “We love you, David”). The crowd especially appreciated the Pedro the Lion (the slowcore band he fronted for more than a decade that often explored Christian themes) he added to the mix of his mostly post-Pedro solo work. My evening at The Mohawk Patio opened with Deer Tick, a country-tinged folk-rock trio fronted by the hilarious and charming John McCauley. When his amp failed mid-set, he sang a cappella while he hooked up new equipment, and then smoothly resumed the show, ending with a seriously spirited cover of “La Bamba.”

Although I tried to avoid spending any SXSW time on NYC bands, I couldn’t help myself when I saw the lineup for the Todd P/Free Agency/Silent Barn. I’d never before seen Brooklynites These Are Powers and Matt and Kim, and their ecstatic performances turned out to be two of my favorites at SXSW. These Are Powers’ frantic wave of unbridled energy spread through the packed room at The Mohawk after midnight as primary vocalist and guitarist Anna Barie channeled her spastic energy into echoing shrieks and all manner of bodily contortions and high kicks. Her compatriots, bassist Pat Noecker and percussionist Bill Salas (who also wielded a vast array of electronic effects), shared her fervor, the three of them a nonstop blast of reverberating distortion and entrancing beats. Afterwards, outside, dance punks Matt (Johnson) and Kim (Schifino) turned The Mohawk’s patio into a sea of flailing bodies, with a steady stream of stage-divers surfing the crowd at the infectious electro bash. And Johnson kept reminding all of us that this might be the last SXSW show we’d see, which just ratcheted up the intensity until the very last, a fitting end to the festival mayhem.

Photo by Greg Burgett