By Day 4, everyone at SXSW is tired and their feet hurt, and tend to blog about it, which is a good reason to not belabor the point. (Sorry.) If you keep your eyes open, you can see some weird things, like several hundred anti-war protesters marching down the main festival drag (6th Street) chanting and singing folk songs while being drowned out by bands playing in nearby tents, the unamplified lambs meekly going to their sonic slaughter. Fitting, really.

But in such bacchanalian surroundings, with all the free drinks, clandestine drug-doing, groupie-courting and corporate-sponsored parties (and there are few events in the world that can rival SXSW for sheer volume of branding — it’s practically a symposium on marketing by default), it was grounding to see a bunch of ordinary folk trying to grab the world’s attention while the media’s lenses were trained on them.

 

Not that they stopped the party.

High Places (Volume, 1pm) This Brooklynite male-female duo have a pleasant and sunny enough sound, thanks in large part to Mary Pearson’s honey-dripping voice, that their lack of performance skills are forgivable — Robert Barber bangs on his drum-like sampling device so vigorously you’d think he was auditioning for a marching band, but it’s not what you’d call a show.  They probably sounds better on record — most electronic acts do — but there’s certainly potential in their frenzied sampledelia.

Blitzen Trapper (Volume, 2pm) Do not be fooled by Blitzen Trapper’s acclaimed Nuggets-meet-The Fall album Wild Mountain Nation, excellent as it is: these six guys from Portland deal in country-fried hard rock, and if Trapper-in-chief Eric Earley, Erik Menteer and Marty Marquis’ three blazing guitars don’t knock you to the back wall, Brian Adrian Koch’s eight-armed drumming will.

No Age (Volume, 3pm) Having just sent their new full-length Nouns out to the press, anticipation for Los Angelenos Randy Randall (pictured) and Dean Spunt’s set was exceptionally high. Punky new songs like “Eraser” fit in perfectly with punky old songs such as “Everybody’s Down”, and from the crowds they attracted at several of their shows through the fest, 2008 is set up to be The Year No Age Broke.

Atlas Sound (Mess With Texas, 4:35pm) Deerhunter singer Bradford Cox’s solo project was the perfect soundtrack to the warm afternoon and its clear skies — all shimmering guitars and throbbing drums that came together in clouds of melodic haze. And then there was Cox’s unforgettable banter: “Did you hear about the tornadoes in Atlanta? Half the city is flattened. I’m really looking forward to leaving this 72-degree heat and going back to my ravaged hometown. In other news, I almost saw a guy get killed last night when he got hit by a car. … So, is everybody having a good time?”

Black Mountain (Mess With Texas, 6pm) Having mostly decided to cover bands we hadn’t written much about before, I decided to indulge myself and go see Black Mountain, and probably not write about them. The reason you’re reading this now is that at this outdoor festival outside the 6th Street hub, where a few thousand kids came to see punk bands like Jay Reatard and NOFX spread across three stages, these BC merchants of doomy, 70s-laden metal managed to attract and keep a crowd of what I would estimate was 5000 people. Not the biggest show they’ve ever played (they’ve opened for Coldplay) but it still felt like a milestone. And of course, they killed, busting out favourites like “Stormy High” with the lumbering heft of a medieval monster.

Duffy (Stubb’s, 8pm) Everyone wants Welsh singer Duffy (and Adele and so on and so on) to be the next Amy Winehouse. She isn’t, which is our loss, but also more importantly hers, because you get the feeling watching the admittedly-talented vocalist that had Winehouse never existed, she could have carved out a tidy career as the kind of conservatively soulful singer Brits over 40 go ga ga for. Oh well, the boomers will love her anyway, even if the critics don’t.

Okkervil River (Stubb’s, 9pm) On record, he’s a wry, looming presence, but on stage, Will Sheff might be the US’ belated answer to Jarvis Cocker, spouting erudite witticisms while putting on a hell of a live show. Sheff bounds around like a teenager, his fringe falling in his eyes as he and the band blast out raucous takes on the likes of “Our Life Is Not A Movie Or Maybe” with far more vitality than they do on disc. If you too found The Stage Names beguiling and even a bit precious, see them live before passing judgment.

Roky Erickson (Stubb’s, 10pm) Having decamped to the DFA showcase only to find that it was a string of DJs spinning disco rather than live performances (oops), I returned to Stubb’s to find the 13th Floor Elevators veteran determinedly knocking out fairly conventional post-Stevie Ray Vaughan blues-rock. He did do “You’re Gonna Miss Me” though, so check that one off the bucket list.

Creature (Stubb’s inside, 10:30pm) In the small stage underneath the restaurant I stumbled unexpectedly across Montreal’s Creature, performing to a fairly appreciative crowd. Except for me, because five years after The Rapture’s Echoes, hearing a sub-!!! dance-rock set, cowbell and all, rock out is the equivalent of being trapped inside a sauna in a fur-lined straightjacket. Extra points for the female singer, who put her fingers to her temples and mined blowing her brains out during “Kandahar” (whose sole political message, near as I could tell, is the phrase “ticket gotta ticket gotta ticket to Kandahar”). Is this what passes for supporting our troops these days?

B.O.B. (Stubb’s, 11pm) The mainstream hip-hop industry doesn’t really know what to do with South By Southwest, but after having been tipped as one of Spin’s “Eight To Watch In ‘08”, somebody must have decided it was a good idea to sell B.O.B. to the rock kids. Putting him on after Roky Erickson’s crowd cleared out, however, may have been a mistake, as there were maybe thirty people on hand to see him run through his three songs. Still, that “Haters Everywhere” song is remarkably catchy, and the guy has charisma. Just not a full set yet.

The Slits (Bourbon Rocks Patio, 12:10pm) Slits co-leaders Ari Up and Tessa Pollitt have a curious dynamic. Up shouts, dances, rambles to the crowd about how back in their punk rock heyday, people thought The Slits were witches and some people would have happily burned them at the stake, and pulls random friends on stage (“let’s get the sexy Hawiians up here!”). Pollitt grimaces slightly and gets on with it. Still, Up sounds just as vital as she did at 17, and classics such as “Earthbeat,” “Love Und Romance” and a funked-up version of “Shoplifting” drew in even some of the uninitiated from the bar’s other side.

GZA (Stubb’s, 1pm) With so many resurging and/or reunited veteran acts, the week’s biggest dilemma was always whether to see youngsters vs the tried and tested. For the last slot of the festival, I succumbed to nostalgia and threw my Ws up with the rest. GZA was exceptionally stoic, barely moving or gesturing as he ran quickly through an abbreviated Liquid Swords set, but he probably could have been replaced by an animatronic robot and his Wu-Stans would have gone nuts anyway just to hear that chest-cavity-rattling bass and those bone-cracking snares played on a big sound system. He closed with “Triumph”, and rather than risk sullying such a platonically perfect ending to a near-perfect week with the highs and lows of the afterparty circuit, I signed off too. The ever-hyped present is great, but there's something to be said for the past — if not living in it, at least taking a field trip there once in a while.

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