SXSW: Thao, Queen Killing Kings, Pure at Heart

Kevin Bronson on March 21st, 2009

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[Friday night at SXSW with bands that have really long names …]

Thao With the Get Down Stay Down (at Momo’s) – Thao rhymes with wow, and maybe Thao Nguyen ought to think about working that into her unruly but perfectly appropriate band name. Appearing slightly rough round the edges from three SXSW shows on Thursday, the San Francisco-based trio nonetheless wowed a full house at Momo’s with a set of articulate, brash and playful music that bends genres.

Nguyen is the kind of artist that defies the easy festival summaries that people ask you for when you bump into them on the street. No “Oh, she’s doing the folk-rock thing,” or “She makes acoustic roots music.” Best I can come up with for Nguyen would be “punky-tonk.” It’s a bit swampy, a bit woozy, a lot in-your-face, and if you’re not into handclaps or foot-stomping you’d better stay home. Did I mention she beat-boxes too?

The band has an album out on Kill Rock Stars, “We Brave Bee Stings and All,” and as smart as it is, it doesn’t do her live show justice.

The Queen Killing Kings (at Friends) – Ah, the frontlines of the piano-vs.-organ wars. Dueling keyboardists Coley O’Toole and Zac Clark – obvious finalists in the South by Southwest Best Sideburns Olympics – infuse their rollicking glam with big beats and good humor. And the Connecticut four-piece gave a stage-shaking performance at Friends, where, thankfully, much of the monitors and other equipment is strapped down.

Unless you have quite a buzz on, and a healthy portion of Friday’s crowd did since this was going around, TQKK’s stuff wears thin after four or five songs. But it’s sticky enough that, the morning after you see them, you might just wonder what ever happened to that old Supertramp cassette you had in your car console.

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart (at Emo’s Jr.) – I’m not quite sure how it happened, but this New York quartet has suddenly made shoegazey jangle-pop fashionable, almost two decades since the heyday of Sarah Records (as much as Sarah Records had a heyday). File this music with the Field Mice, Teenage Fanclub and the Pastels; the Pains’ rather gleefully fey pop will stand up to any of it.

Cherubic Kip Berman is one of those frontman who fixes his wide-eyed stare on a spot in the back of the room while he sings, and somehow, in the year 2009, that innocence doesn’t seem affected. The driving beats and Alex’ Naidus thick basslines slyly turn the Pains’ sweet melodies into dance songs – is it stealth disco for people who dance alone in their bedrooms? Quite possibly.

The quartet was playing the Slumberland Records party, the ninth of their 10 scheduled shows at SXSW, and the set seemed as fresh as one of those cold bottled waters you bought on 6th Street.

All the Saints (at Flamingo Cantina) – This Atlanta psych-rock trio trades in droning, dark noise that often gets swallowed up in its own reverb. They blasted through a set at the Touch and Go showcase that roared with Matt Lambert’s almost-bestial guitar tones – and also reminded me that even the tallest of guitar gods can tumble if not for the underpinning of a good drummer. On that front, Jim Crook’s absolutely manic work on the skins gave fangs to all Lambert’s pedal-pushed feedback and distortion. If I had much in the way of hair, this set would have blown it back.