48 Best Things We Saw at SXSW 2014
With countless bands playing countless showcases, countless restaurants and food trucks serving a countless amount of meals, and an estimated 300,000 people there to take it all in, South by Southwest is filled with superlatives. Here, we count out 48 of our own, a list that covers all the best things we saw, heard, ate and experienced — everything from daytime showcases to late-night afterparties, from over-stuffed donuts to a tour bus covered with New Age crystals that were originally intended for Michael Jackson.
By Steve Appleford, Gavin Edwards, Will Hermes, Christian Hoard, Nick Murray and Chad Swiatecki
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BEST HIGH-VOLUME MEMORIAL SERVICE: The Official SXSW Tribute to Lou Reed
Some tributes are all-star dog-and-pony-shows. And some are like this: a group of artists deeply connected to their subject, by aesthetic sensibility, friendship or both, gathered in a matter-of-fact labor of love. Curated by NYC indie-rock forebear Richard Barone and Austin punk-rock mayor Alejandro Escovedo, this four-plus hour evening went from fevered (Garland Jeffreys’ R&B-ish "I'm Waiting for the Man") to ferocious (the Black Lips' howling "Run Run Run") to surprising (Suzanne Vega's low-key but note-perfect "Walk on the Wild Side") to more surprising (Spandau Ballet's appropriately Bowie-esque "Satellite of Love") to dizzying (an all-guitarists-in-the-pool "Sister Ray") to almost painfully gorgeous (an aged Reed reciting the lyrics to "I'll Be Your Mirror" in a grizzled voice on video, accompanied by a lone cellist, followed by Barone’s sweetly-androgynous high tenor sung version). And with a songbook like Reed's, it could have gone on for another four hours. R.I.P.
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BEST REINVENTION, R&B DIVISION: Kelis
Ten years after her Neptunes-produced sugar-bomb "Milkshake" and four since her EDM diva turn on Flesh Tone, Kelis has morphed again — this time into an earth mother R&B priestess more about sustenance than confections. At the NPR Music showcase, fronting a big band — including a four piece brass/wind section and backing singers — in robes and gold-dust makeup, thick mane of hair to her waist, she segued non-stop through a set of new soul vamps with an Afro-Caribbean undertow and an overall sound recalling 1970s Stevie Wonder. If the songs fell short of that mark, she put them over with spunk and charm, which should keep bringing the boys to the yard.
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BEST BAND VEHICLE: HEARTSREVOLUTION’s Van
Before a gig, New York dance duo Heartsrevolution sold merch and popsicles from a repurposed ice cream van. What made that van extraordinary: every inch was covered with Swarovski crystals, which, according to singer Leyla Safai, took the band two-and-a-half years to affix. They would have run out, she explained, if not for the death of Michael Jackson: He had requisitioned a large number of crystals for his tour, and after he died, those crystals were passed on to them.
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BEST OVERHAUL OF STALE ROCK-SHOW CHOREOGRAPHY: St. Vincent
Annie Clark lived up to the buzz on her new album — a career high-water mark — when her current tour rolled into Austin for a single show (at the NPR Music showcase) that stunned even devoted fans. Along with the new material was a remarkable new theatricality, no doubt hot-wired in part by her recent collaborations with David Byrne. In a white dress splattered with blood-red appliqués, she climbed atop a stacked platform, collapsed in a heap, writhed on the ground, and moved through a series of kabuki marionette moves punctuated by explosions of abstract guitar shredding. Charming, sexy, and scary, it made every rock & roll hair-toss, pogo and loaf-pinch grimace over the rest of the weekend seem like an archaic language.
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MOST BLISSED-OUT PUNK LEGEND: Billy Zoom of X
On Wednesday night, legendary Los Angeles punk band X played an incredible set, full of passionate renditions of classics like "Your Phone's Off the Hook, But You’re Not." Singers (and one-time couple) Exene Cervenka and John Doe sweatily lurched around the stage, sounding ragged but right. In marked contrast was guitarist Billy Zoom: With a full head of hair, matinee good looks and a beatific grin, he looked as if he were waiting for his closeup in a John Ford western. He seemed almost completely unaware of what his hands were doing: Happily, they were playing one kickass guitar part after another.
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BEST TACO TRUCK: Veracruz All Natural at the East Side Fillin’ Station on East 6th Street
Run by a girl gang at this East Side oasis, this truck earned its never-ending line. The fish taco is a minimal masterpiece, hot off the grill with cabbage, mango pico, chipotle mayo and a tiny lime wedge; the veggie spinach-mushroom-avocado and chicken mole are close seconds, and the homemade hot sauces are tops. But it's the tortillas, cooked to order, that elevate this to bliss — especially the toothsome flour ones, so silken, chewy, warm and pillowy, they almost feel like a kiss.
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BEST SECRET SHOW: Parquet Courts at the Owl
We ended SXSW with a Parquet Courts gig at the Owl, a house-turned-venue a mile or so outside of downtown Austin. The performance space was more like your college buddy’s unfinished basement than a nightclub, if your buddy figured out a way to get the Eagulls to play. When Parquet Courts hit the stage after 1 a.m., they provoked barely controlled chaos: bodies thrashing around, audience members crowd-surfing and hanging onto the wooden beams of the unfinished ceiling, people desperately hanging onto the PA system so it wouldn't topple into the crowd. Parquet Courts themselves seemed totally unfazed, playing a confident, thrilling set heavy on pogo rhythms and slacker wordplay. Special shout out: the dude who tried to light a cigarette while he was crowd-surfing.
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BEST REINVENTION, COUNTRY DIVISION: Suzy Bogguss
Bogguss began her career as a mainstream country act in the 1990s. She's still playing mainstream country now, just circa the 1930s-1960s. Tonight she yodeled like Patsy Montana, who she covered expertly, and also covered Merle Haggard, source of every song on her new LP, Lucky. And she managed to get noisy crowd to sing along on a handsome version of Hag's "Silver Wings," though the drink ticket-clutching industry crowd seemed more attuned to her take on"Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down." Her steel-powered band sounded great too. She's as country as they come.
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BEST ART-ROCK RAPPER: EMA
With a band sounding like the Velvet Undergound if they'd been raised on hip-hop, Erika M. Anderson previewed material from her forthcoming second LP, which sounds more generous with melody and more far-ranging with styles. But "California" remains her most potent jam, as the fans who heartily sang it back at her testified. Wrapping the mic cord around her neck like a noose, and dropping the mic so the cord pulled taut at the song's end, it was nevertheless a strangely uplifting performance — suicidal ideation owned, vented, exorcised.
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BEST FROZEN BLISS: Jeni’s Ice Cream, Southbites Food Truck Lot
Jeni Britton Bauer's crew caravan-ed down from Columbus, Ohio, in their turquoise-and-orange vending truck, with a freezer truck backup and an SUV full of scoopers. And we're glad they did, because their rep as the country’s best artisanal ice cream — as good for breakfast as for midnight-hour vape pen cottonmouth — seems fully earned. The exquisite sweet corn/black raspberry sold out early, and the legendary sweet potato/toasted marshmallow was out of season. But the strawberry buttermilk slayed, and the salty caramel is the Platonic iteration of the otherwise over-exposed flavor; you almost want to chew it. Bonus points: Bauer shares her hometown with fellow creative badass Lydia Loveless. Something in the water, maybe.
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BEST SOUL REVIVALISTS: St. Paul and the Broken Bones
Paul Janeway is a pudgy dude from Birmingham, Alabama, who has clearly studied his Otis Redding and James Brown hard. At Stubb's on Tuesday, dressed in a sharp suit with a handkerchief in his breast pocket (natch), he and his Dap Kings-style outfit powered through one of a half-dozen festival sets here, sweating, hollering, blowing and basically looking like a bunch of junior high school band nerds who raided their grandpa's attic. We can't wait for the inevitable collaboration with their homeys Alabama Shakes for a cover version of Otis and Carla Thomas' King and Queen LP.
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BEST ALTER EGO: Foxboro Hot Tubs
"We're Foxboro Hot Tubs from Austin, Texas!" Billie Joe Armstrong lied to a packed indoor theater at Stubb's BBQ on Saturday for Rachael Ray's Feedback party. The Hot Tubs — a long-running Green Day side project — rocked with pure abandon, as if Armstrong had become a new man when freed of his trio's brand name. They ripped up a mix of Foxboro originals, covers, and Green Day tunes (though no famous Green Day tunes), in front of a delirious fist-pumping crowd. Wearing a Mötley Crüe T-shirt beneath a skull-and-crossbones jacket, Armstrong also took the award for best use of party favors, frantically spraying the crowd with Silly String, beer, water and confetti streamers during explosive takes on "Supermodel Robots" and "She's a Saint, Not a Celebrity." Tre Cool looked a little Devo behind the drum kit in his specs and slick short hair, while bassist Mike Dirnt hopped and thrashed in zebra-print and shades, as Armstrong tumbled backward into the crowd and welcomed fans into his old-school punk rock paradise.
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BEST REINVENTION, ROCK DIVISION: Charli XCX
Gone was the dude with the synth rack that had been this U.K. pop savant's sound machine. In his place was a scrappy three-piece band of women that kicked out wiry, noisy post punk. Old songs like "Wrap You Up Inside My Heart" got overhauled, new ones (including an exuberant jam about the joys of breaking up) showed teeth. And the cover of "I Want Candy" was telling. A Sixties confection remade beautifully in the Eighties by Bow Wow Wow, a band sometimes dismissed as pawns of punk-pop hustler Malcolm McLaren, it was here a gimme-mine declaration of a young woman who seems no ones pawn. She danced like a spazzing dervish in a black leather motorcycle jacket, schoolgirl blouse and trademark stacked heels. And when some big dude jumped onstage to rock out with her, she pushed his ass right off.
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BEST PERFORMANCE UNDER DURESS: Damon Albarn
At Stubb's NPR Music Showcase, St. Vincent ran late, the temperature freakishly dipped into the 30s, the sound system was burping blasts of white noise and although most inside the venue were still unaware of it, a drunk driver had just plowed into a crowd a block away, leaving two dead and more than 20 injured. But with apologies for his truncated set, the multi-platform Blur frontman stoically previewed a handful of introspective songs from his forthcoming solo debut, Everyday Robots, for a clutch of shivering early-AM diehards. His new band, abetted by string quartet and a local choir, were sharp and funky, and on an impressively pissy version of Blur's "All Your Life," they vented a collective frustration, making the best of what turned out to be a tremendously fucked-up night.
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BEST BAND WE SAW JUST BECAUSE THE SINGER WAS A NICE GUY: The Outernational
People are friendly at SXSW, but you still don’t expect a stranger with a prime spot on a club’s balcony to move furniture around unasked so you can have a better view of the stage. But Miles Solay did just that for us, and when asked, explained how his band had been produced by Tom Morello and how (despite being from New York) were now doing better in South America than North America. That was enough to convince us to chek out their 2 p.m. show the next day. In a tiny bar with a low ceiling, the Outernational crushed it: a five-piece band that likes to double melody lines on guitar and trumpet, sing political lyrics in Spanglish, and dial up the aggression on their funk as high as it will go.
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BEST EXTREME BICYCLE: Austin Bike Zoo’s Rattlesnake, Various Times and Locations
Austin is a serious biking city, as anyone trying to dodge drunk cyclists on a Saturday night knows. But the scariest bike we saw during SXSW is the Rattlesnake, an 80-foot, 34-wheel contraption that seats six riders in its belly and looks kinda like a Chinese New Year's dragon might if you chewed on one mushroom too many. It's one of the fantasies made by the Austin Bike Zoo, a crew of puppeteers, bike builders and theater types whose intent is mainly to blow minds, which in fact they do quite well.
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BEST REASON TO STAY OUT PAST 3 A.M.: Perfect Pussy on the South Lamar Pedestrian Bridge
For a 100 or so indie rock fans, the search for The True Meaning of SXSW ended in the wee hours of Friday morning, on a bridge over the Colorado River, where a gas generator powered short sets by Perfect Pussy, Nothing and Ex-Cults. Here there was no line, bouncer or sponsors — and, thanks to a slight bend in the bridge that kept the crowd mostly out of view, no cops, either. Perfect Pussy unleashed a burst of vocals and guitar noise that climaxed when Greg Ambler put a novel spin on rock’s time-honored tradition of set-closing instrument destruction by tossing his bass — and its case — straight into the river.
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BEST NEW COUNTRY BADASS: Sturgill Simpson at St. David’s Sanctuary
You gotta love a dude who gets up on a church altar with a bunch of straight-faced honky-tonkers and begins a song, "I been spendin' all my money on weed and pills/Tryin' to write a song that'll pay the bills/But it ain't came yet so I might have to rob a bank." This, however, is no genre joke — Sturgill plays serious hard-boiled country in the Bakersfield vein of Haggard and Owens, with a double shot of bluegrass-style hot-shit picking and a 21st century attitude. After a 14-hour drive to town, his band killed, seemingly without breaking a sweat. He and his roots-minded crew seemed right at home in Austin, though they're based near Nashville. "We try not to go there too much," he deadpanned between songs, referring to ground zero of the country music industrial complex. "And we never play there."
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BEST SNACK FOR PEOPLE WHO THINK PULLED PORK IS TOO HEALTHY: Donuts from Gourdough’s
We tried three of these Texas-sized desserts: First, the Fat Elvis, which topped the traditional, delicious-in-itself donut with bacon, banana, peanut butter frosting and maple syrup; then the Baby Rattler, an Oreo-on-chocolate sugar rush that added a few gummy worms for good measure; and finally the Miss Shortcake, the cream cheese–frosted donut whose chopped strawberries made it the healthy option. Gourdough’s is a bit of a hike from SXSW central, but after eating even one of these Frankensteins, a hike is exactly what you need.
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BEST THRONE-WATCHING: Jay Z and Kanye West
Rarely do you get a chance to see Jay Z and Kanye West perform together in anything smaller than an arena, but that's exactly what fans got when the pair played the 3,000-capacity Austin Music Hall. The stage for the Samsung-sponsored concert featured a 12-foot-tall video cube and a similarly sized setup toward the middle of the concert hall, with the two MCs rising from the interiors of each station. Seeing both solo and in tandem – they were off the platforms and on a traditional stage for most of the night – offered a sort of living Venn Diagram of each man's talents and lyrical strong points, with Jay confidently displaying his up-from-the-bootstraps-and-into-the-penthouse persona and West charismatically airing a miles-long list of perceived slights. And that was before they each dusted off classics like Jay's "Big Pimpin'," and "Dirt Off Your Shoulder" and West's "Stronger" and "Gold Digger." After another trip up on the video cubes for some solo cuts, the pair ended with three consecutive spins through the volcanic hit "Niggas in Paris." It was a move caked in excess, but one that seemed right for a night designed to deliver complete sensory overload.
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BEST DAY/NIGHT TRANSITION: Kelela
Playing a day party at Mohawk, rising singer-songwriter Kelela Mizanekristos was bright and joyous, hopping across the Mohawk stage and joking with the audience, asking if anybody had ever accidentally prolonged a cold by smoking weed just before they were fully healed. (Based on the smell, the answer was yes.) That night, however, Kelela’s show was completely transformed: Backlit on a smoky stage, she was visible only as silhouette, DJ Total Freedom unfolding stuttering, dynamic, low-end beats while the singer threw her braids over her head and into the dark.
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BEST CARNIVAL HOLDOVER: Bunji Garlin
Carnival — the pre-Lenten blowout held around the world — came to an end nearly two weeks ago, but crossover star Bunji Garlin used his two SXSW appearances to bring the music and energy of Trinidad up to Austin, twice leading fans old and new through a shout-alongs of his triumphant 2013 hit "Differentology." "I'm honored to be one of the first two Soca artists to perform at this festival," he told the crowd at Rice and Peas' Wednesday day party. The other? His wife, Fay-Ann Lyons, who followed Bunji's performance with a few songs of her own, whipping the small crowd into such a frenzy that the speakers began to wobble and the stability of the Empire Auto back patio seemed in question.
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BEST MAKESHIFT VENUE (HOUSE OF GOD EDITION): Wanda Jackson at St. David’s Episcopal Church
The SXSW festival puts on music just about anyplace in Austin that has four walls and a roof (and many places that don’t — part of the reason it’s hard to find parking is that so many parking lots have been repurposed into temporary venues). But rockabilly pioneer Wanda Jackson was visibly surprised to be playing a set in the sanctuary of St. David’s, an active Episcopal church. As she told the crowd, "Not too many towns in Texas let you rock & roll in your church."
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BEST MAKESHIFT VENUE (WHISKEY RIVER EDITION): The Heartbreaker Banquet at Willie Nelson’s Ranch
In the mid-Eighties, a fake old-West town went up on Willie Nelson’s ranch outside Austin, to be used as the set for the film Red Headed Stranger. The town was called Luck, Texas, and it came complete with a jailhouse, chapel, bank, dance hall, a water tower and saloon. The film crew moved on, but Willie kept Luck, Texas standing. (He likes to plays poker at Luck World Headquarters.) Starting two years ago, it became the site of the Heartbreaker Banquet, a day-long festival. This year’s Banquet featured free moonshine cocktails, two stages (one inside the chapel), several food trucks, and sets from bands like the Felice Brothers, J. Roddy Walston and the Business, Shovels & Rope, Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real, and Brooklyn indie-pop band Lucius, who didn’t fit the rootsy vibe but killed anyway. And, making the least surprising "surprise" appearance of SXSW, Willie came out from his house to romp through "Whiskey River," "Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die," "Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys" and other assorted classics. The vibe was so down-home friendly we practically expected Willie to end his set with a "Y’all come back now, ya hear?"
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BEST REASON TO SUFFER THE CROWDS ON 6TH STREET: Carpark Records Showcase
It was a rough scene outside the Parish Underground on Thursday night, thanks to the crowds – by midnight, some of the drunkest of the festival – as well as the toughest bouncer downtown, a six-foot-five Texan who went as far as to snap iPhone photos of anyone he thought was attempting to sneak in. You couldn’t blame people for trying, though: The seven bands playing the D.C record label’s showcase spent the evening attempting to make the venue feel like a suburban basement. Cloud Nothings, loud as ever, closed the show, and so around 1:30 a handful of kids up front, perhaps unsatisfied returning to the Airbnb with only ear damage, threw themselves into a genuine mosh pit. Against all odds, it had turned more chaotic inside than out.
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BEST AFRICAN GROOVES: Tinariwen and Imarhan Timbuktu
Two five-piece bands originating from the Sahara desert in Mali provided the festival's best one-two guitar punch on Friday night, stretching blues licks into rolling grooves that never seemed to end, just to sometimes reach new heights in flourishes of drumming or ululation. Where an American band would ask the crowd, "Are you having a good time?" their custom was to inquire, "Are you happy?" Yes, we were very happy.
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BEST WAY TO OBLITERATE POST-LUNCH DROWSINESS: Against Me!
"Hello Austin! Let’s fuck shit up!" shouted Laura Jane Grace as Against Me! kicked off their set on Friday afternoon. Bashing through songs from their new, seriously great Transgender Dysphoria Blues (which deals with Grace's coming out as a transgender woman) the punk crew slayed – 10 tracks in just under a half-hour, no fat, no letup.
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MOST EXCITING RAP SET: Le1f
Coming off a terrific Letterman appearance, buzzed-over rapper Le1f provided an unmatched combination of beats, energy, dancing and technical ability that quickly transformed his SXSW crowd from intrigued to enraptured. By the time he finished with "Wut," a saxophone-anchored track, most of said crowd was singing along.
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BEST BBQ-THEMED SET: Lady Gaga
Lady Gaga went for the full barbecue in her excessive-but-entertaining showcase: She entered trussed to a horizontal pole like a pig roasting on a spit. She spun the microphone around her head while sticking a sausage in her mouth. She had a neon sign reading "Lady Gaga's Haus of Swine BBQ." And the mechanical bull onstage proved to be a mechanical pig: pulled pork, anyone? Of course, what most people remembered about her show was Millie Brown vomiting all over Gaga (an effective, if gross, piece of performance art) — not a strong endorsement for the Haus of Swine.
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BEST SYNTH-POP O.G.: Gary Numan
At Elysium on Saturday night, Numan embraced the industrial world he helped inspire more than three decades ago. In his second SXSW performance of the evening, the U.K. singer behind the still-totally-genius hit "Cars" leaned hard against his mic stand as he delivered futuristic songs from the Seventies and Eighties plus brooding tracks from last year's Splinter (Songs From a Broken Mind), his first album of new material in seven years. At Elysium (where the pool tables were turned into a display of the latest Moog gear), he was overcome with gloom and intense emotion, feeling every throb of his synths. The inevitable message: Love will tear us apart. It was terrifically dark and intense, but at the end Numan finally stepped into the white light to wave his goodbyes at wildly cheering fans.
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BEST PLAYING TO THE CROWD: Future
Future has become pop’s reigning hookmaster over the past few years, robo-crooning for everyone from Miley to Bieber. His exuberant Saturday afternoon set suggested that he’d be fun to watch even if he was singing show tunes. Future was determined to do something special for the SXSW crowd, pulling out "Good Morning," a track that didn’t make the cut for his upcoming LP ("I'll probably never perform that song again," he said), driving the audience into a frenzy by performing just the hook to "Bugatti," and bringing out Texas rap hero Bun B for a cameo. (B.O.B. also made a guest appearance.) And that little dance he did, where put his arms out and shimmied backwards like a robot in reverse? That was just showing off.
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BEST SECOND ACT: Jojo
Once a 14-year-old pop star who toured malls and scored a Number One hit with "Leave (Get Out)," Jojo is nowadays working toward a career reinvention à la Robyn or Miley. The singer, now 23, opened her SXSW set with "Leave," transitioned into a song sampling the hook of Toto’s "Africa" and later went as far to cover Phil Collins. If the set wasn't a commentary on how one generation’s kitsch becomes the next's cool, it was the rare chance to see the process happen right before your eyes.
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BEST REPLACEMENTS FOR A CANCELED ACT: Erykah Badu and Bun B
For a moment, the mood at Saturday’s Fader Fort was grim: The line for the bathroom lasted 15 minutes, the line to get a burger lasted over an hour, the line outside lasted two or three and Migos’s 5:15 set had just been canceled. The show went on, however, with the staff quickly announcing Erykah Badu’s performance but keeping Bun B’s under wraps until the Texas legend arrive onstage, opening with "Get Throwed," leading the crowd through his and Pimp C’s verses on Jay Z’s "Big Pimpin'" before concluding with "Int’l Players Anthem." Badu, meanwhile, led her band through a short jam, playing favorites like "The Healer," "Danger" and "Didn’t Cha Know" in a 20-minute set that felt like it could have continued for another hour-and-a-half.
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BEST WAY TO LOSE WHAT’S LEFT OF YOUR HEARING: Skrillex/OWSLA Showcase
Opener Kill the Noise may have been more punishing, pushing through a set of heavy dubstep and trap that gestured toward camp ("Who Let the Dogs Out?") and club (KW Griff’s recently re-released "Bring in the Katz") without ever slowing down. But the crowd at Saturday night's OWSLA label showcase had come for Skrillex, and Skrillex, as usual, didn’t disappoint. Mostly playing his own tracks, the DJ found his lane and stayed in it, concluding the festival with a set that was less about pushing his fans in a new direction than rewarding them for making it through the week. After an hour and ten minutes of ear-damaging bass, the final reward turned out to be, oddly, Toto’s "Africa," an un-remixed sing-along before the bar closed and the crowd went home.
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BEST NINETIES REVIVAL: Soundgarden
Things got super-heavy on night three of the inaugural iTunes Festival at SXSW in Austin, as Soundgarden dove back into the thundering grooves of 1994's Superunknown, performing the career-defining album in full for the first time. It was a lesson in grunge at its prime, delivered with swagger and Chris Cornell's perfectly unhinged wail, still as piercing and musical as ever. There weren't a lot of onstage acrobatics from band members, choosing heaviosity over flash, from a rumbling "Spoonman" frayed at the edges to the oppressive grind of "4th of July." The band's punk roots came forth on "Kickstand," Cornell and Thayil slashing on guitars, Cameron and Shepherd pushing the rhythm ever faster, quick and to the pointless. The only thing missing was a Cornell stage dive as an exclamation point.
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BEST PLACE TO DANCE: Empire Control Room and Garage
No matter what you wanted to dance to, the Empire was the place to do it. In our handful of trips to the Garage, we moved to everything from Lunice’s hip-hop–inflected beats to Nicky Da B relentless New Orleans bounce and even Cajmere's "Brighter Days," a Chicago house classic that predates many of the people who were dancing to it. When that got stale – or more likely, when it got too crowded – the Control Room, a connected venue, made for a nice reprieve, and there we saw everything from Nadastrom's dancehall and Latin-influenced techno to DJ Spinn and Rashad's breakneck Chicago footwork during the three days of IHeartComix, Biz 3, Heard and Embrace-curated shows.
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BEST USE OF LIMITED SPACE: Schoolboy Q
The second stage at Stubb's on Friday afternoon may have been big enough to fit Temples earlier and Against Me! later on, but with Schoolboy Q’s DJ occupying the main part of it, the L.A. rapper was pushed to a small catwalk near the crowd, eventually requiring his bodyguard to stand below him in case he slipped. The crowd never left the palm of his hand, even if Schoolboy was at times unsatisfied with their performance. "Why am I the only one sweating?" he at one point asked, bringing everyone in close for a rowdy performance of "Hands on the Wheel" that undoubtedly made the question unnecessary to repeat.
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BEST LET’S SHOW THE YOUNG PUNKS HOW IT’S DONE: Off!
Led with snarls and streetwise humor by SoCal punk originator Keith Morris (Circle Jerks, Black Flag, Flag), Off! delivered 40 minutes of hardcore punk at Frank, an airy hot dog and beer bar in downtown Austin. With guitarist Dimitri Coats' crushing riffs pushing against the rhythms of drummer Mario Rubalcaba and bassist Steven McDonald, the band raged in short, sharp bursts through crowd faves "Wiped Out" and "Jeffrey Lee Pierce," plus songs from the band's upcoming album Wasted Years. Never mind that this was a daytime set bathed in window light — things were rolling at peak intensity, as band and screaming fans both looked ready to smash up the place (but didn’t).
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BEST ATMOSPHERE: 3BallMTY
On Friday night, the courtyard at the Mexican-American Cultural Center felt more like a block party than a music festival, featuring a crowd – toddlers on their dads' shoulders, grannies on benches, and everyone in between up front dancing – that suggested a much fuller meaning of the phrase "all ages." With support from two female singers and four male dancers who entered in light-up Día de los Muertos costumes, Latino pop DJ trio 3BallMTY played the perfect set for the occasion, mixing their youth-oriented EDM with cumbia rhythms and an occasional throwback touch – a sped up Willie Colón horn sample here, the hook from Elvis Crespo's "Suavemente" there – to keep the older participants involved.
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BEST FAKE BREAK-OUT BAND: DJ Heavy Flow
While temporarily relocating his show to Austin during SXSW, Jimmy Kimmel reprised a bit he debuted at Coachella: Asking hipsters to comment on a series of fictional bands. One woman claimed familiarity with Heavy Flow’s work, though she’d "only heard a couple songs" from The Toxic Shock Experience.
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BEST DISPLAY OF FANDOM: Tyler, the Creator Watching Pusha T
By the time Pusha T began his set at House of Vans at Mohawk on Wednesday, the line was so long and the venue was so full that a couple kids gave up waiting and attempted to climb the tree that overlooks the venue. The Odd Future crew (whose set at the same venue would be canceled due to a tragic car accident outside) found an easier solution, entering the top level of the venue, making themselves as visible as possible, and rapping every word to Push’s verse on Clipse's "Grindin’." The elder rapper, it seemed, appreciated the gesture, looking up at Tyler – the most visible of all, naturally – and performing with more energy than at any other point in his already lively set.
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BEST REDNECK-BAITING BEVERAGE CONTAINER: The Yellow Plastic Cup, Various Locations
We couldn't help but read this hilarious bit of shwag sloganeering in part as an answer to Toby Keith's annoyingly undeniable bro-country hit "Red Solo Cup" — the kind of Southern mainstream culture that SXSW and Austin proudly position themselves to the left of. Bring it to your next kegger and watch shit pop off.
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BEST HARMONIES: The Haden Triplets
Petra Haden has made a specialty out of excellent albums that are built around multitracking her own a cappella vocals, covering classic movie themes or the Who. But the greatest harmonizers are almost always blood relations who have been doing it since childhood, like the Everly Brothers. So Petra showed up with her sisters Tanya and Rachel (the triplets are daughters of jazz bassist Charlie Haden) and delivered a gorgeous set, finishing with a cover of the Everlys' "So Sad (To Watch Good Love Go Bad)."
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BEST NEW COUNTRY-ROCKER (PUNK DIVISION): Lydia Loveless
Shots were already being downed when Loveless and her Columbus, Ohio crew hit the stage for this early-afternoon show — and the crowd was drinking, too. In a black and gold brocade-print dress, leather jacket and bowler hat (which soon flew off), the 23-year-old tore through a handful of songs from her new Bloodshot LP Something Else, a name-making country-rock set with more snarl than twang. "I wanna love you like a father loves a son," she sang on "Verlaine Shot Rimbaud," the album’s riff on the homicidal love affair between the fabled French poets, with her eyes closed, her guitars-and-pedal-steel band howling, and her pale face tilted up to the fierce Texas sun. It ends, and she flashes a Mona Lisa smirk, rewarding herself with a gulp of tequila and a suck of lime.
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BEST RAPPER EN ESPANOL: Ana Tijoux
Rapping in Spanish with precise enunciation, unerring rhythm, and tremendous flow, with a melodic sense that connects her rapping to her singing, the French/Chilean MC Ana Tijoux is nothing less than a Latin American Lauryn Hill. She got Anglo attention when her “1977” was used in an episode of Breaking Bad, and she even got a shout out from Thom Yorke. But tonight she rocked a packed house without any English-speaking concessions, and most of the crowd seemed to have no problem grasping her between-song banter. And when her band kicked in, pumping out latin dub, electro cumbias and low-rider disco-funk under her syllables, the language was universal.
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BEST FREE GIG: Jon Langford at Yard Dog
Anyone wandering along South Congress Avenue on Saturday could have popped in to the Yard Dog Art Space and caught Langford’s set — no badge, wristband or guest-list required. A pretty good deal considering that Langford — a founding member of punk-rock O.G.'s the Mekons — is a master at mixing up raw drive, rootsy tunefulness and wry lyrics. Special shout-out to the middle-aged hippie-ish woman clearly having more fun than 99 percent of all SXSW fans, as she danced with her man and, later, spun around with middle fingers flying when Langford sang about the surveillance state in "Drone Operator."
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BEST COUNTER-PROTEST: The Topless Anti-Gun Lady
During a march of open-carry gun-rights advocates through downtown Austin on Wednesday, one woman stood alone, baring her breasts while holding a MORE BOOBS LESS GUNS sign. That it was an awfully chilly afternoon only added to her bravery.
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BEST SECRET BOWLING ALLEY: The Speakeasy
The Speakeasy has two separate venues in the same building. If you want to make the transition from French-Algerian blues on the big stage to Finnish sisters playing synth-pop in the lounge, your best route is through the upstairs bar, which has Austin’s most surprising nightclub amenity: a two-lane bowling alley, in full use while the music plays.