Last Saturday, I attended a massive all-day concert down by Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal. With a dry heat hovering around 75 degrees, the weather was freakishly perfect for New York, and the wind blew in just the right direction so the gonorrhea-ridden inlet rippled with shiny waves, emitting barely any of its usual stench. It got me thinking about the almighty summer mixtape, and I began plotting what songs to burn on CDs to take on vacation with me later this month. The experimental metal scene I profiled last month is full of innovation, but even dark, tortured souls like myself have moms who invite them to the beach once in a while. In these situations, a soundtrack of irregular crashes won’t do, but that doesn’t mean you have have to listen to shitty radio. The following tracks are summery without being stupid, hence they are going in my mix. What's going in yours?

High Places-“New Grace”

All tropical tinkling, sweet vocals, and muffled, pitch-shifted steel pan drums, this song will make you feel like you’re dancing the congo deep at the bottom of a haunted lake on the mythical Caribbean island in The Tempest. The lyrics, which tumble like pretty pebbles from singer Mary Pearson’s mouth, are just evocative enough to spark your imagination without dictating exactly what to picture:

Instead of dank dark night it's all light and warm hues/
The nighttime puts on diff'rent clothes and she takes off her shoes/
She looks so much nicer familiar and softer in December greens and blues/
I can't imagine how we made it through those months of crushing gloom.

That last line resonates on days when the slushy, miserable two thirds of the year seem as far away as can be. Turn up the bass, or better yet, see them live, and you’ll find the sunny highs balanced out by thumping drum hits that will make you want to do a happy booty shake.

CSS-“Left Behind”



By the time the sun sets on the all-day party, you will most likely have had a few. Let’s say hypothetically you see your ex and start dwelling on how much you hate his stupid pretty face, pretentious tone of voice, and the fact that he found a new lover before you, without even trying. When this happens, you must immediately find a club that has angsty '80’s dance tunes, strong drinks, and equal parts girls, gays, and guys you can make out with. With drum machines, synthesizers, and a deadpan reference to “a suitcase in Helsinki full of things I wanna set on fire,” this song is both a campy portrayal of, and suitable soundtrack for, just such a scenario:

I’m gonna jump onto the table and dance my ass off til I die/
And then I’ll hopefully forget you, and quit those nightmares I’ve been having every night…

Some think the Brazilian dance rockers are veering more towards '90s alt-rock than new wave, and that would be ok with me, but this song is pure '80s throwback in the vein of Pat Benatar, so I guess I’ll have to wait for their forthcoming album, Donkey, to see whether this holds true for the other songs.

Vivian Girls-“Tell the World”

This track is a perfect mixture of ‘60s pop, surf, garage, and shoegaze-y reverb. The three female voices harmonize to create an effect similar to The Mamas and the Papas’ "California Dreamin’", proving once again that not all New York bands play ear splitting noise or radio-ready dance rock (not that there’s anything wrong with those). The peppy bass and drum lines are loud in the mix, adding punk energy in much the same way as the Black Lips; neither band is overtly punk, but can get a crowd raging nonetheless. You can sway along to this one without messing up your hair, though if you see them live, be advised that they’re playing faster and louder these days and you might sweat a little. I’d play this constantly by my pool, if I had a pool, and do that dance where it looks like you're swimming in my yellow polka dot bikini. (Does that dance have a name?)


The Death Set-“Negative Thinking”

Remember how much shit I talked about “paper-thin party songs” last month? Perhaps I was too harsh in my judgments. I spent some time at a recent Death Set show sweating balls and jumping around like a crazy chick, and if anyone there read my column, they totes would have called me out. With a beat that grows in volume but not complexity, constantly intensifying distorted guitar lines, bouncy synths taken straight from A-ha and a singalong refrain, "Negative Thinking" makes you want to rock out harder with each second that passes.

Ninjasonik-The Mix #3

This downloads as one track, but is actually composed of many. The hip hop "mixtape," for the uninitiated, was conceived as a way for artists to circulate their constantly evolving jams quickly through the underground. These mixes are still viewed as bootlegs by the RIAA, as they often contain unauthorized samples, but fuck that noise. Mixtapes are about deconstructing and rapping over hot shit as soon as it drops, and I’m pretty sure of the samples Ninjasonik used are from consenting parties; tour buddies Team Robespierre and the Death Set appear remixed frequently. The whole thing is over an hour long, basically an album unto itself, but here are some highlights:

It’s a picture party and I’m ready to leave it

In which Jah Jah, a.k.a. the Reverend McFly, calls out lame Manhattan parties like the late Misshapes for being full of “hipsters lookin’ way too stiff” and girls who wear "slutty clothes they bought with their parents' money," but who are not actually down to fuck, and who pose for pictures before "bumping coke up their noses," which they also bought with their parents’ money (the coke, but maybe the noses too).

I love art school girls

In which Jah travels back to Brooklyn from the island to express his love of girls who make ‘zines and paint pictures:

You’re very abstract…We should collaborate…Do you stretch your own canvas? Maybe you could teach me sometime...And then get a coffee, but not from Starbucks. We should go to that really danky shop, you know on the corner of…

The fun he pokes towards artistes is gentler, because he knows we’re all a little silly here in North Brooklyn, including guys who rap about how tight their pants are (Ninjasonik's Tight Pants EP came out on Chief Records this month), and anyway, at the end of the day what really matters about a girl is not how pretentious her art is, but whether she will suck your dick from the back.

From Brooklyn to England, we get the dancefloor jumpin’

In which Jah shows us that, in addition to shouting, “I’m a tight pants wearin’ ass nigga!” in a bad ass way and rocking said tight pants, he can actually rap as well, and engages in the time honored tradition of talking shit about how he's a better rapper than everyone else. He may not be “the new O.D.B.” like he fronts, but we love him just the same.

She and Him-“Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?”



Unlike most “music” made by actors, the songs on She and Him’s debut album, Volume One, are all addictively good, and not even in a “guilty pleasure” type of way. This one is no exception: a confection of June Carter-era country, '60s girl group harmonies, descending choruses of “aahs” and “ba bas,” and hooks galore, it’s a perfect vehicle for Zooey Deschanel’s perky, quirky voice. The song’s weird video undercuts all the cheesiness nicely: donning various cute outfits, the heartbreakingly adorable Zooey grins and skips through shootings, stabbings, and a downright Vaudevillian death that leaves her lying in a pool of cartoon blood as vultures close in. Girly lyrics like "Why don’t you sit right down and stay a while/We like the same things and I like your style" are simultaneously modern and classic. The icing on the cake? Deschanel wrote most of the music herself. Girl power!

Abe Vigoda-"Dead City Waste Wilderness"

Denizens of Los Angeles D.I.Y. hot spot The Smell, these tropicali-punksters do a cool take on world pop that is considerably more likeable than that of certain other collegiate, world music-pillaging, Paul Simon-loving bands. Yes, this track has a rollicking tribal beat and steel pan drums, but you get the idea that their hearts are in the right place with it. With a less polished vocal style, fuzzier production, and more room given over to noise and chaos reminiscent of an actual Caribbean island, these kids make music you can enjoy even if you've never owned anything from Louis Vuitton. Would my old pals Vampire Weekend ever write a song called "Dead City Waste Wilderness"? I think not. Then again, I'd be a big liar if I said I wasn't bringing Vampire Weekend to the beach as well. They don't get their own entry because I'm assuming they're already in all of your mixes, and also because I'm tired. I guess this would be as good a time as any to reveal that I'll be passing through the Afro-pop capital of the world on the way to my destination, and will quite literally "get out" of Cape Cod, via ferry, at night. Glass houses, etc. I can't wait.

As I write this, I’m sitting in an RV somewhere between Atlanta, GA and Tallahasse, Florida. I’m hung over, coughing my lungs out, mildly disoriented, menaced by each Georgia police car that passes, and caked in three days’ worth of my own filth. I’m sleeping as much as the bumpy road will allow and surviving on junk food from gas stations. I couldn’t be happier.

This year’s South by Southwest Music Festival, which ended five days ago, nearly did me in. It nearly did everyone in; that’s its job, which it seems to get better at every year. However, unlike most people, I did not take my battle wounds home to nurse on Sunday, but motored off to cover a house show in Little Rock…then Springfield, Missouri, then St. Louis, then Knoxville, and tomorrow, Tampa. I’m traveling with Impose Magazine, writing daily updates for the website, and helping make a DVD with our partner/sponsor Viva Radio. Austin is miles behind us now. Amid the calm discipline of ten-hour car rides spent typing, napping, and staring out the window, it’s hard to believe such a festival even happened. I saw how many bands? Walked how many miles? Drank how many beers? Impossible! But true.

No matter how hard we busted our asses, Erin Broadley and I did not see close to everything we wanted to; there were simply not enough of us or enough hours in the day. To try to give an accurate list of precisely who had the most buzz, best performance, or highest percentage of dancing audience members would just be silly. The best thing I can do is account, as accurately as possible, the most interesting sights and sounds that entered my own particular sensory organs, for better or for worse. Here is my short list:

Ponytail



Freshmen of the eclectic Baltimore scene, this band has mainlined into the pure, childlike pleasure of noisemaking. But unlike the animal squeals of some dumb toddler, the noises they make are actually fun to listen to. Though I’ve seen them several times, their energetic art punk never gets old. From a packed show at the Market Hotel in Brooklyn to the somewhat sparsely attended showcase I saw them play in Austin, each performance I’ve seen of theirs has been fully lived in. Improvisational sections keep everyone on their toes, and no song sounds exactly the same twice in a row. At the same time, they maintain enough structure and rhythm so one can boogie and sway along for the duration of each meandering composition. When I saw them on Saturday, singer Molly Seigel jumped up and down in a trance as if trying to raise spirits from the depths of the Earth with her nonsense incantations, screeches, and yelps. They get even cooler when you find out that they started as a class assignment in art school wherein teacher-selected groups had to start a band together. They had so much fun they decided to stick with it, and I’m glad they did.



O’death

I felt a little guilty seeing them in Austin when I can see them any time back home, but the truth is I saw approximately 234,987 bands there and O’death was still one of my favorites. A fuller description of their raucous goth-country-punk can be found in my last column, but suffice it to say that I’ve seen them a million times and will probably have to see them a million more times before I get sick of them. Video footage of me bro-ing down with them can be seen in Erin’s forthcoming video reel.

Vivian Girls


Photo Courtesy of Impose Magazine

Another New York band; I swear I am not doing this on purpose. These chicks stood out from the gaggle of groups playing Todd P’s outdoor shows at Ms. Beas with their super cool lo-fi garage rock. They reminded me of early ‘90s riot grrl bands like Bratmobile, only more adept at/concerned with solid pop structure. Also more reverb-y. Tinges of surf rock conjured up images of girls in ‘50s style bikinis, tiki parties, and summertime concerts in friends' basements. If you dislike these things, you obviously hate fun, so you probably shouldn’t bother with Vivian Girls. Band trivia: their name is taken from characters appearing in the work of outsider artist Henry Darger who are actually girls with penises!

Though they didn’t get a full heading in this list, I have to mention Mika Miko, another great band in the riot-grrl-ish genre. They rocked Emo’s and made me dance despite my horrible Sparks-induced headache. Look them up and love them.

The Apes


Photo Courtesy of Impose Magazine

I caught them at the garishly lit American Apparel store of all places, where they rocked out amid brightly colored, unkindly cut clothing. This band has been around for a long time but I think they’ve really got something with their current singer: his power and range helps them sound like soul, punk, electro, and psychedelic all at once. My snobby ex-boyfriend got mad at me when I compared him to Jimmy Urine because Mindless Self Indulgence is not a hip underground band, but a favorite of the stripes-and-suburbs Hot Topic set. Sorry hipsters, but this guy’s menacing falsetto sounds a lot like Urine and that’s not a bad thing. Creepy organs and electronic drum sounds that drop in and out like very erratic stones add the same tingly, what-will-bitchslap-my-ears-next vibe that MSI has without being too heavy handed about it. My advice: stop worrying about what genre the Apes are and enjoy them.

The Airborne Toxic Event



I should start this off by noting that Erin is pretty good friends with this band. She had been talking big about them all week, and I was all, “Oh yeah? I’d like aural proof of your big talk.” Proof came during the Indie 103.1 FM (home of Suicidegirls Radio) showcase Saturday night, where I also got to sit down for a second and hang with local SGs Selket, Illyria, and Zak. To be honest, I was a tad nonplussed at the prospect of taking in a whole showcase worth of “indie rock,” which seems to have grown a bit boring and stagnant as of late. I’m talking about it as a genre/aesthetic, not a business model. I mean, how many times can you clone the Strokes before the copies of copies grow as dim as Doug Number Four in 1996 hit film Multiplicity? But the Airborne Toxic Event won me over with their mega-tight performance and skilled songwriting. It also didn’t hurt that their name is from one of my favorite books of all time.

I wasn’t surprised to learn that there are several music critics in this band; their songs show a command of pop structure borne of years of dissecting what gives a song that extra oomph. Great arrangements kept things moving with well-placed synths, violin, and crescendos. It seemed like every few minutes, most instruments would drop out and the crowd would gasp at yet another heart-stopping moment. This might have made me feel manipulated had they not sold it with emotional authenticity. Though he’s no young sprout, the lead singer seemed to have that man-child vulnerability that makes for a great rock front man. He mumbled his thanks between songs, and as he rasped emphatic lines like “when your friends say what is it/you look like you’ve seen a ghost” and “you just have to see her/you know that she’ll break you in two” he convinced me he meant it. I danced like a 16-year-old who’d just lost her virginity. At a Cure concert. In the ‘80s.

Parties thrown by Vice Magazine


Dark Meat rocks

Recipe for a damn fine late night throw down: one part hotties, two parts people I know and/or like, one part accessibility to downtown (getting a cab in Austin at 2am is hard), then throw in one psychedeltic party orchestra and the faintest soupçon of lame people (for mocking). The folks at Vice work hard because they want you to enjoy yourself to death. But don't touch the smorgasbord of free Sparks, or the monster with eyes in its hands will eat your head (see below).

Bouldin Creek Coffeehouse

If you are vegan/vegetarian and looking for a cheap, tasty and filling brunch/lunch in Austin, look no further. It’s a little off the beaten path, but everything good is. I chilled here for a bit and caught up with my old friend Adam, aka Ladyfingers while chowing down on tofu rancheros, hash browns, and some bangin’ ginger-honey lemonade. Perfection.

Walking

Walking did not much impress me at South by this year. In fact, I would have to say that walking downright sucked. I am used to New York where things are easy to get to, and if my feet start to feel like they're falling off, I can hop on the subway. A combination of heat, drunkenness, and dehydration made walking suck even worse. Two thumbs down. Next year I’m renting a pony or something.

Sparks

She is a fickle mistress. First I was riding high on a seemingly endless reserve of drunken energy, then next thing I knew I was hunched over with a pounding headache hating everyone and wanting to go home. All the way home, like to my mom’s house in Connecticut. I know it’s tempting when you’re offered delicious drugs in a can, but if you mess with Sparks and don't want it to mess with you right back, heed my advice: only drink one, and hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. This stuff is worse for you than ecstasy and cocaine combined. Ask me how I know sometime.

Drunk bitches everywhere

When the bars let out at 2 a.m., you’d best mind the drunk bitches, because they are everywhere. I thought there were a lot of drunk bitches in Brooklyn; I was wrong. We’re talking sprawled on the hoods of cars, puking in the gutter, skirts above their heads, shrieking, crying, hot messes wherever you are trying to walk. The guys weren’t much better, but I’m not as afraid for their safety. Seriously ladies of Austin/South by: take better care of yourselves. I worry.

That’s really just a slice of what I encountered this year. Erin was there to take video evidence of the mayhem, so if you can’t get enough SXSW coverage or are lazy enough to have scrolled through this entire column in search of visuals, the reel is coming soon. Don't worry, I'm not cross with you. Would you care for some Sparks?