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As the preeminent music-biz schmoozefest, South By Southwest in Austin, Texas, is a profusion of flapping laminates, expense-account cocktails and bleeping flip-phones; thankfully, the record-guy ponytail appears to have died its well-deserved death at long last. This year - in addition to the obligatory score of indie rock bands yelping for label deals like three-legged mutts in pet-shop windows - SXSW is also awash with fledgling music-oriented Web companies angling for subscribers, content partners and advertising bucks.
Meanwhile, industry panels featuring amiable badinage on such riveting topics as "Legal Issues in The Emerging Digital-Music Economy" are soaked up by rapt would-be moguls who often just want someone from the majors to give their home-recorded blues CD the recognition it deserves.
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6th Street, the festival's main music drag, resembles a kind of bar-band Mardi Gras, as musicians, fans and biz-types alike trudge down the blockaded thoroughfare and a mash of roaring, thudding, plodding sound emanates from every passageway on either side. A cursory listen in a few doorways, however, is enough to discourage all but the least discriminating. There's a reason record folk don't see many bands during South By Southwest. Well, the reason is actually that they want to play golf and get drunk. But even so, a great majority of the bands just ain't worth writing home about.
Happily, I've seen some incredible music this week, but it hasn't been from unknown or undiscovered artists. In fact, the few independent bands I've seen have ranged from dreadful to aggressively mediocre, confirming the suspicions aroused by the 50 or so sound samples I checked out on the SXSW web site prior to my departure.
No, the magic came from artists already signed to - or at least well known in - the big leagues. There were lively, memorable sets from popsters Guided By Voices and incendiary hard-rockers Nashville Pussy at the Revolver magazine party, and alt-country masters Whiskeytown laid it down authoritatively at the Austin Music Hall. I was unable to attend sets by Elliott Smith, Cypress Hill and Gomez, but heard they were tremendous.
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These shows were packed, but some events on the city's outskirts were witnessed only by a privileged few. Austin native Davíd Garza is working on his second album for Lava/Atlantic, but he treated a small group of industry devotees to a remarkable performance in his tiny rented space near a children's museum. While his audience sat on pillows on the floor, Garza - flanked by ingeniously coordinated video monitors, gauzy curtains and candles - accompanied his own prerecorded drum loops and backing vocals with expressive guitar and his incomparably sensual vocals. The songs carry on the devotional rock he introduced so compellingly on his independently released 4-Track Manifesto and the Lava/Atlantic full-length This Euphoria a few years back.
As an experience - unmarred by record-weasel chatter, flashing pagers or overwrought indie-rock posturing - it was about as un-SXSW an experience as anyone could desire during festival week.
Melding
Jeff Buckley's incantatory intimacy, Led Zeppelin's explosive grandeur
and the home-brewed, cut-and-paste methodology of early Brian Eno with
a newfound rhythmic intensity suggesting an immersion in experimental
hip-hop, Garza fashions music that's sexy, heartfelt and spiritual. Thematically,
the songs are a twilit fever dream of Mexican church rituals, headphone
epiphanies and sparks of the flesh. Standouts among the new tunes include
the groove-heavy talking blues "Drone," a beautiful midtempo number that
appeared to be called "Suckers" and the slamming "God's Hands."
Though Garza's next big-budget album won't be available until next year, the curious can order another homemade record, "Kingdom Come and Go," from davidgarza.com. And anyone with a fondness for intense and deeply emotional pop is encouraged to track down the brilliant and criminally neglected "This Euphoria."
While Davíd Garza has yet to achieve the popularity he deserves, roots chanteuse Shelby Lynne has already earned enough buzz to qualify as a phenom, based on her stunningly assured solo debut, I Am Shelby Lynne (Island Def Jam).
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Critics have been comparing the disc to the late UK diva Dusty Springfield's 1969 Southern soul-pop masterpiece, Dusty in Memphis, and that's saying something - that record is something of a talisman for fans of both rural grit and breathless, starry-eyed pop. Lynne seems to be nodding explicitly in this direction on the album's opener, "Your Lies," which borrows liberally from the sparkly production approach of that era. Like Springfield, Lynne conjures up both yearning and determination with her powerful pipes, yet her instrument couldn't be further removed from Dusty's smoke-and-perfume vulnerability. There's a steeliness and confidence there that propels the material along.
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And what material. Co-written with the great multi-instrumentalist and producer Bill Bottrell (who worked a similar magic with Sheryl Crow), the tunes on I Am span country, R&B, blues, rock and classic pop with nary a misstep. "Leavin'" is draped with sorrow and regret, and Lynne aches and smolders in equal measure; the edgy, dobro-driven "Life Is Bad" shows off her badass country swagger; the silky "Thought It Would Be Easier," reminiscent of Al Green's early-'70s hits, shows her equally at home with a supple soul melody; the Alabama reverie "Where I'm From" has the calm warmth of a lullaby. Is there anything she can't do?
At her highly anticipated SXSW performance - her Texas debut, she said - Lynne merely begged that last question. Though she made the array of styles enumerated above look effortless, she threw herself into the performance, even tossing in a few Elvis-like moves toward the end of the set as the ecstatic crowd took down whatever of her inhibitions might have remained. She closed, fittingly enough, with "Wichita Lineman," Jimmy Webb's immortal anthem to the desire for connection. She sang the hell out of a tune that's already a roots-music standard, finding unexpected nuances in a melody made famous decades earlier by Glen Campbell and covered by numerous other artists. When she left the stage, she'd made the transition, at least as far as the Austin Music Hall crowd was concerned, from buzz artist to full-fledged star. It was a privilege to witness it.
I wanted to call someone on my cell phone to talk about the show, but I'd left it at the hotel.
--Simon Glickman