Saturday Picks and Sleepers

Saturday night SXSW blurbs

Fri., March 14, 2014

Saturday Picks

Terry Poison

8pm, Speakeasy The cultural dialogue around Israel remains dark and sobering, so we should be blessed to have bands like Terry Poison to prove that not everything has to be so ugly and complicated. A trio of fashion-forward kids from Tel Aviv playing bubblegum electro-pop that seems genetically engineered to reassure us all that everything's going to be okay.

Luke Winkie

Underbaby

8pm, Bar 96 The original Chinese punks, Beijing brothers Gao Xing and Gao Yang have been kicking against the pricks with their Sham 69-style slam dance since 1994. Reforming last decade with a blend of Oi! and late-era Stiff Little Fingers, they perform for the first time in the U.S., first stateside visuals outside crackly old VHS footage from mid-Nineties basement gigs.

Richard Whittaker

Guantanamo Baywatch

9pm, Headhunters Patio The rain rarely pauses in Portland, Ore., but the beach is only an hour away. Hence Guantanamo Baywatch, a feral trio that plays blown-out surf-punk with the tremolo riptide of Dick Dale and the Cramps' B-movie sleaze. 2012 debut Chest Crawl is an instant party LP, but Surf N Turf, a recent split EP with Natural Child, proves the band's equally capable of bleary-eyed ballads.

Austin Powell

Paper Lions

9pm, Friends Power-pop from Prince Edwards Island in Canada, Paper Lions had an unusual YouTube experience in the last year. A video for "Travelling," originally uploaded in 2007, went viral resulting in more than four million views and an exploding fan base. Late 2013, the foursome released My Friends, which displayed a matured songwriting style while retaining their ability with bouncy pop hooks.

Jim Caligiuri

Mandolin Orange

9pm, Holy Mountain Since meeting in 2009, Andrew Marlin and Emily Frantz have melded folk, gospel, and bluegrass into a seamless whole. With their third release, 2013's This Side of Jordan, the North Carolinians push gentle, easygoing harmonies, all the while urging spirituality before religion and expanding their sonic palette into blues and honky-tonk.

Jim Caligiuri

Cherry Glazerr

9:30pm, Hotel Vegas @ Volstead Frontwoman – strange to call her that, given that she's still in high school – Clementine Creevy snarls and swoons on a dime on this L.A. snot-punk trio's debut Haxell Princess (Burger Records). One minute she's crooning about grilled cheese, then reflecting on the vagaries of growing up, her voice slicing through a backdrop of grungy guitars. Creevy's also a contributor to blogger enfant terrible Tavi Gevinson's Rookie mag.

Melanie Haupt

THEESatisfaction

9:35pm, Bungalow Seattle duo THEESatisfaction conduct extreme adventures in sound. Awe Naturale, the wonderfully weird self-produced debut by rapper Stasia Iron and singer Catherine Harris-White, mixes soul and hip-hop both bizarre and brilliant – intergalactic and out of the box. The pair of "QueenS" share a cosmic aesthetic with Sub Pop labelmates Shabazz Palaces and offer this advice: "Turn off your swag and check your bag."

Thomas Fawcett

Sara Hickman

10pm, Ten0ak Local treasure Sara Hickman could be our version of Beck: A hard-to-classify singer-songwriter who spans genres from children's music to the Beatlesque psych-pop cloaking a vicious putdown on 2013's Shine, "Selfish Freak." Even her vintage bubblegum evinces a strong eroticism ("Tasty Sweet"). It's all so artfully warped yet still indescribably sweet; Hickman manages to always be no one but herself.

Tim Stegall

Dikes of Holland

10:15pm, Hotel Vegas @ Volstead The first thing I do when I visit Austin is check to see if/when Dikes of Holland is playing. The local garage-punk quintet boasts the best frontwoman in town, Liz Herrera, an unmanned firehose whose whiplash tenacity intensifies the band's no-wave punk. It's a cathartic calamity, and the Dikes never disappoint. A third LP and European tour are both in the works for the fall.

Austin Powell

Suzanne Vega

10:30pm, Central Presbyterian Church Greenwich Village's adopted daughter adds grime and grit to her nouveau folk with Tales From the Realm of the Queen of Pentacles. It's yet another experiment from the whispery chanteuse who dabbled in a cappella urban beats on "Tom's Diner" and industrial influences on 99.9F°, but the Presbyterian's acoustics might tempt something closer to the Close-Up series' acoustic reinventions.

Richard Whittaker

Giving Tree Band

11pm, Shotguns Led by brothers Todd and Eric Fink, Illinois septet the Giving Tree Band takes its cues from original roots rockers like the Band and the Grateful Dead. They aren't copying what's come before them, simply using it as a road map to an honest and exhilarating sound of their own. Recent release Vacilador featured the band's impeccable ensemble play and songs both joyous and creative.

Jim Caligiuri

Sturgill Simpson

11pm, St. David's Sanctuary Currently from Nashville but a native of Kentucky, Sturgill Simpson makes country music with an old-fashioned bent. In many ways, he recalls the like-minded Marty Stuart, last year's High Top Mountain featuring no nonsense honky-tonk and mountain music that's lyrically direct and emotionally deep. Follow-up Metamodern Sounds in Country Music drops in May.

Jim Caligiuri

Protomartyr

11:10pm, the Hideout An indie punk band's indie punk band, Protomartyr captures the best parts of Detroit's rock lineage: impulsive energy greased with assembly-line efficiency. Frontman Joe Casey captures Motor City bankruptcy in more ways than one, with wry observations and telling details, like the Hold Steady's Craig Finn raised on the wrong end of 8 Mile. Second LP Under Color of Official Right drops next month for Sub Pop offshoot Hardly Art.

Austin Powell

Graham Reynolds/Golden Arm Trio

11:15pm, Elephant Room At this point in Graham Reynolds' career, labels like "jazz" or "classical" or even "avant-garde" mean little. Even the more fitting term "composer" seems too limiting for a dude armed with film scores, theatre accompaniment, symphonies, string quartets, rock songs, and countless freewheeling performances by his amorphous ensemble Golden Arm Trio.

Michael Toland

Junius

12:30am, Valhalla One limb of the brooding post-rock Radar Recordings collective, Massachusetts Hum fanatics Junius will be packing copies of new EP Days of the Fallen Sun for Texas. Returning to the epic, doom-laden insistence of 2009's The Martyrdom of a Catastrophist after 2011's soaring Deftones-meets-King Crimson Reports From the Threshold of Death, tracks like "Forgiving the Cleansing Meteor" are modern cosmic chants.

Richard Whittaker

The Cynics

1am, Lit Lounge Founded in 1983, Pittsburgh's Cynics became a favored child of Nuggets on the strength of Sixties-style contagions like "Baby, What's Wrong" and "Now I'm Alone." Three decades on, this action-packed garage rock combo still delivers. Guitarist/Get Hip Recordings head honcho Gregg Kostelich unloads fuzzed-up riffs with the efficiency of a candy factory as vocalist Michael Kastelic seals the deal with his sneering, bug-eyed demeanor.

Greg Beets

Japanther

1am, Parish Underground Puppets, dinosaurs, BMX, and art punk: Brooklyn duo Japanther knows how to put on a show. For over a decade, Matt Reilly and Ian Vanek have churned out lightning-fast cuts augmented by a fantastical live interpretation. Mid-2013 album Eat Like Lisa, Act Like Bart furthers the crust-punk aesthetic.

Abby Johnston

Spirit Caravan

1am, Red Eyed Fly Given doom legend Scott "Wino" Weinrich's penchant for spelunking in his own past – witness the recent Obsessed festival appearances and the ongoing Saint Vitus reunion – it shouldn't be any surprise that he's decided to revisit one of his best projects. The original run by his spiritually inclined psych-metal trio lasted just long enough to be perfect.

Michael Toland

ST 37

1am, Lit Lounge Upstairs These veteran Austin space cases fuse experimental, psychedelic, prog, and punk impulses into a synapse-bending parallel reality. ST 37 commemorated the 50th anniversary of JFK's assassination with a twisted ode to Marina Oswald. Before that, they composed alternate scores for Fritz Lang's Metropolis and Destiny. Whether they're floating across a desolate sonic frontier or roaring with hardcore temerity, normalcy is never the norm.

Greg Beets

Micah P. Hinson

1am, Shotguns Micah P. Hinson's decade-long career winds through a tale of exceptionally inspired songwriting and constant near-music-ending disasters. The latest to befall the Abilene artist resulted from a 2011 car accident in Spain, almost losing use of his arms, but recovery delivers the harrowing, upcoming And the Nothing on French label Talitres. Hinson's scarred croon embeds the weary experience of dread and determination.

Doug Freeman

Wild Child

1am, Dirty Dog Bar The infectious folk-pop strumming and intimate, playful harmonies of Wild Child's 2011 debut LP Pillow Talk swept the Austin quintet to national attention, and last year's sophomore LP cemented the love. Produced by Ben Kweller on his Noise Company label, The Runaround adds more power and diverse arrangements, while still highlighting the interplay between Alexander Beggins uke melodies and Kelsey Wilson's dynamic vocals and violin.

Doug Freeman

J. Roddy Walston & the Business

TBA, Stubb's They're better suited for the stage, the only place where this style of old-time rock & roll can get a true workout these days, but fourpiece Baltimore sweat rag J. Roddy Walston & the Business have found a way to redirect that energy onto wax. Released last September, second album Essential Tremors did what the first one couldn't: leave you listening until the very end.

Chase Hoffberger

Saturday Sleepers

Christopher Denny

7pm, St. David's Historical Sanctuary His voice will give you chills. Reminiscent of Roy Orbison, although higher and sadder, the Arkansas native's trembling, ethereal pipes are a gift, adding a forlorn quality to his songs of love and life. Tragic as Townes Van Zandt and romantic like Patsy Cline, Denny's songwriting exudes a respectable country classicism. A long overdue follow-up to 2007's Age Old Hunger is finally in the cards.

Kevin Curtin

PapaNegro

9pm, Half Step I'm fairly confident in saying PapaNegro is the greatest dirty funk/hip-hop quintet that came out of Chile in the late Nineties. Beloved at home, and working on their fifth album, it's acts like this that make SXSW feasible in Austin every spring. I doubt they'll be making any other U.S. stops.