Well before I personally reached this point of desperation, quite a few awesome things happened to me, and quite possibly a few others as well, as I tried to reclaim my youth this SXSW. For the most part I failed in my lame and pathetic attempt of regeneration but before I realized that I'm just a younger version of Walter Matthau (Grumpy Old Men) I was able to take a few notes along the way on what I considered to be the highlights of this year's festival.
Hip hop was on center stage this year and I have to say that for the most part all of the artists delivered. For one, they all showed up where they were supposed to and were all relatively on time; this is a modern day miracle for Black people and it should definitely not go unnoticed.
Vic Mensa out of Chicago was a clear stand out as the one show he had early on in the festival set the tone and the bar for what was to come later on in the week. Every SXSW has that one moment where you can simply look at the performance and instantly know that that person on stage will be a bona fide star. This moment happened last year when I saw Sam Smith (admittedly I didn't quite understand why at the time but I noticed everyone else's reaction to him around me) and it happened a few years earlier when I saw Young the Giant. Well Mensa came on stage and immediately grabbed the attention of the capacity crowd as he ran through grimy hits like Feel That and Wimme Nah. And this is something that's considerably hard to do at one in the morning when after a full day's worth of drinking, most people's thoughts are on late night food and/or sex. But by the time he got to Orange Soda and Down on My Luck, even the hardest G in the crowd found himself letting go of his cool demeanor and was caught jumping alongside of me like a 12 year old schoolboy. Be sure you catch Mensa while you can before he's playing to large arenas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jUGAVUwhRU
Next up was Run the Jewels, a hip hop duo that's taken over the genre right now and consists of El-P out of New York City and Killer Mike from Atlanta, Georgia. EL-P is able to perfectly blend his progressive mix of old school hip hop and semi electronic beats with the deep and angry rhymes of Killer Mike and the results have crowds loosing their minds for 45 minutes straight. The raw energy these two bring on stage is palpable and maybe too much so as one hefty fan walked on stage and tried to attack El-P during one of their performances. I guess he forgot the fact that Killer Mike weighs like 300 pounds and looks like he eats small children for snacks.
After this incident, the Austin Police Department was on high alert as they brought in Robocops to monitor the festival. I seriously had a robot yell at me the following "Sir with the red bike, please get closer to the curb so that you are not impending traffic!" No one around me could figure out where this voice was coming from and it took all I had in me not to randomly flip off the voice in hopes that a giant robot man would fly down from a rooftop with a semi automatic weapon to attack me. This incident alone was cooler than the stupid reboot of that movie that came out last year. Check out Run the Jewels as they are FRESH!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-S9mtYowPY
I am going to combine the next two as they played the same showcase and each had their sets cut short due to time. But the artists I'm talking about are Rae Sremmurd out of Mississippi and Kaytranada out of Montreal. Rae surprised me as I had previously heard their music and thought that it was both fun and funny but nothing more. But I had no idea that these two country boys knew how to command a crowd. I found myself booty shaking to songs about dropping money in strip clubs and only liking bad bitches like every other social degenerate out there. For better or worse these two will definitely blow up this year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzMrK-aGCug
I've raved about Kaytranada for almost a year now and after seeing this DJ perform live, I like him and his versatility even more. He can do anything from hip hop to house music and can do so at a high level. When he brought out a few hip hop artists that he's worked with over the past year, you could immediately tell that his beats took their game up to another level. While they were ok performers, everyone in the venue knew the real talent lied with the beat dropper, and that you can expect everyone in the game to reach out to him soon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rppKW9eIvE
So since I found myself cursing more than I ever have in my life and also caught myself randomly dropping the N word, which is something that I NEVER do, I felt it was high time to mix it up a bit by seeking out the soothing sounds of distorted guitars. This way I could at least mosh the aggression out of my system.
Speaking of, why do people wear expensive shoes to these festivals? All they're doing is making a conscious decision to waste the hard labor of a 12 year boy in China! I saw $200 pairs of Jordans getting covered in beer, mud, and self loathing; why else would people do this to themselves?
So as I was ruining my four year old pair of $60 Puma's from dancing and freaking out to the crushing guitars of the Canadian rockers Metz, I noticed that they were just as hung over and tired as my friends and I were. "You'll have to forgive us as we've been here since Sunday and we no longer have the energy to play songs back to back. We need a little break." He of course followed that up with a giant swig of Hamm's Original to help get his mind right. And as the beer began to flow in their system and they felt last night's buzz returning, they slowly turned into the amazing live act they've become known for. They shredded through crowd favorites like Wasted and Wet Blanket before introducing songs off their new album which sound just as good as their debut album. Their sound doesn't make them the most accessible band but if you want to rock your socks off, feel free to give these guys a listen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6qGeNVwwfw
Cloud Nothings is a three piece power punk band that started in the lead singer's bedroom and now they are gracing the stages of one of the world's biggest festivals in SXSW. Their lyrics of "I thought I would be more than this" in Wasted Days or "I need time to stop moving, I need time to stay useless" had young kids crowd surfing and old men tearing ligaments in the mosh pit. If you ever want to feel 16 again, give these guys a listen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxeNn_O5u5E
I just recently allowed myself to once again like Twin Shadow as the first time I saw him, it was unbelievably hot outside, I over served myself at my pre party, and his show was packed to the gills making it nearly impossible to enjoy it. Plus I didn't like the fact that he looked like the kind of guy who'd have quick sex with my girlfriend in the artist lounge while I went to buy him a beer.
But he has improved his act tremendously since the last time I saw him perform live as he no longer relies on lasers and smoke machines to bring his recorded music to life. Instead he now has a real band to play every instrument in his songs and you can see how that energizes him on stage. Messing around with nothing but a keytar and a beat machine on stage can't help but make you feel like an uptight German with a mock turtleneck. Check out Shadow but just keep an eye on your girl at all times.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wg4IhOpndrQ
The last act to check out is the electronic group Odesza. I was only able to see a song and a half of theirs but what I saw was pretty damn good. This Seattle duo has vocalists on quite a few of their tracks but none of them were able to come down and perform live with them but that certainly didn't take away from what they were able to deliver live. If you want something to groove to before you head out at night, definitely give these guys a listen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdzI-191xhU
Well that's it for me, I'm going to fly to London and marry the cute girl I met at the Bomb Tacos stand.
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