After stumbling around the country for nigh a month pondering love, barking my shins and consuming everything that crossed my path from flirty glances to pop songs to the entire city of Portland, I have come home. Everything's exactly the same only not, like I time traveled three weeks into the future and am now just a little out of step with everyone here in Bizarro-Brooklyn. Each new venue, human, and sandwich shop that's appeared as if by magic adds a little to my sense of vertigo. Even my cat has grown unreasonably fluffy. On the bright side, flowers are blooming, and it's no longer cold as shit. I found lots to like at SXSW and beyond, and am now catching up on what I missed while embracing the mind numbing uniformity of the desert. Here's some of what I've found.

Cutting Le Rug

In all my travels, I have yet to encounter any event with the delicate balance of body heat, violence, awkward booty dancing and pure joy one inevitably finds at any decent Brooklyn house party. Since finding my inner Paula Abdul at a fête called Gay By Gay Gay, I've been dying to see how my moves have traveled. Brooklyn's Le Rug just entered my consciousness via a post on Impose and made me do a little shake right here in the cafe. Fronted by the moderately insane Ray Weiss, they make music that's messy, spazzy, and perfect for all of your house party needs, and with adorably depressing, topical lyrics like “deregulate deregulate the market / with those profit margins right on target.” Dudes have released 3 EPs in the last 6 months, all of which can be downloaded for free at tamurrecords.org

Starfucker/Guidance Counselor

Portland is a good place to get down, too. It's not Brooklyn, but it does score high in the three categories most important to me: vegan food, d.i.y. shows, and cute boys on bicycles. As it holds far more of these things than I could even begin to enjoy in just two days (try as I might), another visit is probably in my future. Contributing to the place's joie de vivre are Starfucker and Guidance Counselor, who share a drummer and both make crazy fun dance music, with the former spinning samples off vinyl and the latter keeping things interesting with some Foals-esque quasi math rock sequences. At the show I attended, kids were jumping around with such vigor I feared the flimsy house would collapse. They're currently touring the U.S. and Canada together, so check them out if you don't mind waking up with a sore wiggle muscle.

Cerebral Ballzy

If your idea of dancing is actually closer to hitting people and jumping off things, this is your steeze. Besides having the most awesomely bad name, this group of New York miscreants wins the prize for most punk rock performance I caught not only at Southby, but for quite some time before or since then. These kids pack an impressive amount of aggression into their skinny frames as they thrash all over the place and gnash out songs about getting wasted, throwing up, and riding the NYC subway. Tour dates are currently sparse but you can order their new EP Autistic Expression and a kick ass t-shirt that shows a skeleton flipping the bird on their MySpace page, which, I boast, quotes yours truly describing them as "Bad Brains on crystal meth."

These Are Powers

Anna Barie is one of my top five favorite frontpeople in rock. She's up there with Tim "no pants" Harrington, King Khan, and Jared and Cole from the Black Lips, if they melded into one chompy-grilled, mustachioed mega-rocker. Former Liar Pat Noecker slices the air with bright, grindy bass lines and Bill Salas makes all sorts of pounding, ass-moving percussion sounds, both electronic and live. Their new album, All Aboard Future, transports listeners to some sort of dystopic tribal robo-scenario in which we're all taking peyote and fucking on piles of shredded iPhones and worthless currency in the bombed out remains of luxury condominiums. Get psyched; it's happening sooner than you think.

They're playing select dates in the U.S. before heading off on a tour of China(!) so go have fun and tell them I sent you. Be prepared to bang on an instrument, because they usually pass a bunch out. It's just like your elementary school music class, only this time no one will stop you from fighting that bitch in front for the triangle.

Fucked Up

Following through on their promise to release something for each year of the Chinese astrological calendar, everyone's favorite Toronto experimental hardcore group has released the single "Year of the Rat," the third in the series. Unlike Cerebral Ballzy, who distill the elements of punk into a concentrated sock in the nuts, Fucked Up play around with them, adding elements of prog and noise to aid the song's rise and fall like a tidal wave that takes its sweet time breaking and engulfing you. At the song's end, the feedback shrouded voice of John McCain intones "the Secretary of State told me once that you had better be ready to pull the trigger," a chilling reminder of the dark course this past year might have taken. The b-side, "First Born," pulls from blues-based metal while retaining Pink Eyes' (a.k.a. Daniel Abraham's) superior hardcore vocals. An excellent next move for a band that built up momentum with an epic 12-hour marathon show in New York last year which included the WTF moment of that dude from Vampire Weekend singing on covers of Blitz and the Descendants.



I can has punk rock and Chinos?

OMG metal!

I know Clio just discussed them, so I'll be brief, but holy fucking shit. Mastodon's Crack the Skye is the noisiest most intricately brainmelting thing that has penetrated my earholes for quite some time. Get it if you have ever liked metal even a little bit at all, or even if you don't! It will make you a better person. Look how awesome:




Hunter is a Brooklyn-based writer currently contributing to Vice, The New York Press, Impose, and The L Magazine. If you email her at hunter.suicide AT gmail DOT com, chances are she'd love to add your publication to that list. Seriously, she's got some time on her hands.