By Jake Feala
The beauty of South-by-Southwest is that you’re equally likely to see music in a dingy bar, a bohemian coffee shop, or a giant outdoor stage. Friday’s backyard barbeque, though, would have to be the most unique SXSW venue I’ve seen yet. Butterflies and charcoal smoke swirled in the air on an incredibly pleasant Austin afternoon. Only a short cab from downtown, the place was quite literally a backyard — two in fact — with an old, short wooden fence separating the hang-out/food yard from the music yard. Right in front of the stage (just a short platform in front of an old, decrepit shed), a swing hung by chains from a tree that also housed a little tree-fort platform offering a bird’s eye view of the bands. Everyone in the place agreed that this was one of the best events they had been to at SXSW, and most stuck around all day.
Daytrotter was around to record a fantastic lineup of bands. Juniper Tar started off the lineup with a quick taste of their old-school rock, offering sweet three-part harmonies to the birds in trees with “Birds In Trees.” Tim from Strand of Oaks came onstage to play “Sterling,” which the guys from Juniper Tar helped boil into a long, awesome Neil Young-Crazy Horse style jam.
Next up came Roadside Graves, and I write this today wearing their T-shirt in honor of the rocking set they gave us on that gorgeous afternoon. Their singer, a genuine, jolly dude with short red hair, colors his songs with a unique dance I like to call the “jumpy-stomp.” My friend Seth whispered in my ear that he was smiling “like he just pulled up a 42-inch sturgeon.” The band sounds like a bluegrass version of the E Street Band, but their secret weapon is the keyboardist, who slayed us song after song with a mix of organ and electric piano, his hands jumping across an array of keyboards, and a cigarette dangling from his mouth. Roadside Graves ended the set by wandering into the yard for the acoustic arm-waving revival, “Jail.”
The Lovely Feathers cut through the comfy folk haze of the early afternoon with their funky electropop, and the lo-fi vocals of The Love Language kept the party moving with some great, (dare I say) Strokesy tunes. Still Life Still played next, with rich layers and detailed percussion that reminded us a lot of Broken Social Scene. The similarities don’t stop there — they sound like they might use the same metallic distortion of the vocals as B.S.S., and they even hail from the same native Toronto.
SXSW is the best festival in the world for stumbling across great, emerging new bands, and for me the best finds of the day were both at the Muzzle Of Bees barbecue. The Loom was the first of those, and they drew me in with upbeat multi-instrumental arrangements including French horn, trumpet, and ukelele (or possibly a mandolin — it was hard to tell from my tree fort vantage). I heard a little of The National in their horn-backed crescendos, as well as shades of Sons and Daughters in a few of their stomping duets. Afterward I joined many people in making verbal notes-to-self to check out The Loom when they get home.
Odawas provided a sweet alt-country soundtrack for my jalapeno sausage break, the electric cello a nice transition for the more upbeat bands soon to come. These United States greeted the sunset and woke up the barbeque with a rocking set. The other band on my “check out” list, These United States came highly recommended by Ryan, who was blown away by their bar band blues at last year’s festival. The singer is a great frontman in an era of few good frontmen, and — please understand that this is actually a good thing — most of the time he sounds like he’s shouting his wild lyrics through a tin can.
This part — the part where I introduce the final band of the night, Rural Alberta Advantage — is the part where I have to force myself not to gush. I have nothing but glowing praise for RAA’s music, a sparse three-piece with fast, complex percussion and powerful vocals almost indistinguishable from Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel. Even so, it’s uncouth to fawn over a band, even though their album Hometowns
has been on such heavy rotation for me that it recently cracked my top 20 artists on LastFM and for months has been my go-to album for long, excited car rides whenever the destination is worthy enough for their yodeling sing-along melodies. As a nice bonus, the members are also genuinely nice people, as Canadians generally are, and deserve high praise just for karma’s sake, but I’ll just stop there and just implore you to check them out if you haven’t yet. Anyway, as you can imagine, their set was my most anticipated of the weekend and R.A.A didn’t disappoint, pulling the lounging, blissed-out crowd out of their lawn chairs and up to the stage to dance and holler along to the music just like you’re supposed to do at a backyard barbeque.
Coming home buzzed and sleepy from all day out in the yard, it occurred to me that this one lineup, on this one afternoon, might have been worth the plane ticket to Austin all by itself. Speaking as a fan of the bands and as someone who had absolutely no part in its organization and clean-up, I’d say it would be a shame if we didn’t do it all again next year.
