Kevin Bronson on March 18th, 2016

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Julien Baker, Haelos, the Wild Feathers, the Last Bandoleros, Bayonne, Mitski, Molybden, Japanese Breakfast

By 9 p.m. on Thursday, 6th Street in Austin was a raging cesspool of green, with St. Patrick’s Day revelers commingling with attendees of the South by Southwest Music Festival and the thrum of music from almost every bar and storefront reaching a menacing din. Upstairs in a crowded room at the Parish, though, it was so quiet you could hear the clicks of photographers’ shutters.

Twenty-year-old Julien Baker commanded the room, just a young woman from Memphis and her guitar, playing songs from her debut “Sprained Ankle,” recently out on tiny 6131 Records. The crowd was merficully reverent, save for a a few whispered observations and a fellow — in mid-song, no kidding — explaining Autonomous Median Sensory Response to his girlfriend. AMSR is better known as “getting the chills.” Thank you, Julien Baker.

Baker, who will tour with L.A.’s Phoebe Bridgers later this spring, writes heartbreaking vignettes and delivers them in a fragile voice. “Come visit me / come visit me / in the back of an ambulance,” she sang in “Blacktop,” one of her many songs in which small details take on bigger meaning. Nobody left the Parish early, but when they finally did, a loud band playing a bar with an open-to-the-street stage was covering “It’s Only Rock ’N Roll (But I Like It).”

SXSW on Thursday was a picture of such extremes. There were long lines at some downtown venues — and on Rainey Street for the Kills and Bloc Party — including a daunting queue at 7 p.m. at the Easy Tiger, where L.A.’s James Supercave kicked off the music at 7:30. But there was easy-schmeezy access at others.

The latter was the case at Stephen F’s, the posh bar/lounge at the InterContinental Hotel, where another singer-songwriter, Molybden, performed her spare avant-folk. The Austin-based artist hails from Marfa, and the fabric of windswept West Texas runs through the songs she performed from her forthcoming album “Long Lance.” Molybden’s songs use silence as an almost-deadly dramatic device, their pregnant pauses building anticipation for the next poetic phrase. File under: Revisit in quiet times.

Performing with substantially buzz was U.K. sextet Haelos, whose debut album “Full Circle” is just out. Playing a post-midnight set to a modest-at-best crowd at the sterile 3TENaustin (where security was possibly trained by the TSA), Haelos boast two drummers, two lead singers and two mixed styles — trip-hop and atmospheric synth-pop. Wistful and ethereal for the sad dancers, if you will. And on this night, there were some.

Earlier at the Secretly Canadian showcase at the Barracuda, Brooklyn-based trio Mitski previewed their forthcoming album “Puberty 2,” which is hard to pigeonhole. Some of Mitski’s intense relationship-based songs were almost girl-group pop (albeit with bite); others were cathartic, scream-’n’-bass indie-rock. Frontwoman Mitski Miyawaki seems not to be trifled with either way. “I personally want to swan-dive into a trash can … in the best possible way,” she said of her festival experience. “Hashtag South by Southwest.” Another trio, Japanese Breakfast, busted loose with some fuzzy punk-gaze.

Kicking off that showcase was local sound collagist Bayonne, who welcomed the crowd with “I’m from Austin and it’s nice to have people come to me for once … I’m gonna make some weird loops for the next 35 minutes.” And that he did, stitching together synths and samples and live drums and all manner of vocals. It recalled an experimental Robert DeLong, segueing from ambient to dancey and cavorting around his gear like a mad scientist. Of course, it’s 2016, and people cheer when somebody turns a knob. The crowd did.

Thursday afternoon was a collision of day parties — and also evidence that you don’t need eclectic tastes to enjoy SXSW. Nashville harmonizers the Wild Feathers did a winning folk-rock set at the Radio Day Stage (presented on this afternoon by L.A.’s KCSN), and later at a Gibson showcase the Last Bandoleros — who belie their dangerous-sounding name — played a fun-for-the-whole-family set of technically perfect roots-rock.