I spent my last few days of South by Southwest both seeing as much music as possible and trying to fight some nasty allergies that were trying to damper my experience. Saturday night I caught the local Austin band I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness http://www.chosendarkness.com/news.htm, who have apparently been getting good reviews from the Austin Chronicle. From name judgments, I thought I was going to see a much … um … heavier band. I would classify this rock-pop group as “soft rock that won’t put you to sleep,” and their use of minor chords was delightfully different.
From there, it was off to the other Downtown party area–the warehouse district. The amount of night spots in Austin is mind boggling. We headed over to a club called Momo’s to catch a Canadian band called Shout Out Out Out Out http://www.myspace.com/shoutoutoutoutout. It was a gamble, we’d never heard of this band before at all, but sometimes one’s just got to go by gut instinct.
Before Shout, we caught the last few songs by Holy Fuck http://www.myspace.com/holyfuck. The name is fitting … these guys were amazing. If you are even a bit into dance, electronica, electroclash or experimental, you must check them out. I still haven’t heard any recorded stuff, but if their live performance is any indication, it should be slammin’. These Toronto boy’s also produced the most organic rock moment I saw during SXSW when the, um, lead synthesizer jumped off stage for some crowd surfing and kicked down all of his equipment trying to get back on. It’s one thing when punkers break stuff just to be rebellious, it’s another when it happens on accident and you just roll with it.
Shout Out Out Out Out’s set was equally as fun and energetic. With two drummers, four bass players, two samplers, five synthesizers and one vocoder how could it not be? It was the perfect end to SXSW. A dance party.
The night ended at Kerby Lane http://www.kerbeylanecafe.com/ for some ginger bread pancakes. Yeah pancakes! (That one’s for you, Steve.) The sign in the picture says it all.
