It is time once again, my friends, to journey to the vast flatlands of Texas. It is time to voyage to that place where music-obsessives gather each year to feast on tasty musical offerings from far and wide. Yes, we're talking about South by Southwest 2008 (SXSW 08), and yes, it's almost here!
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It is time once again, my friends, to journey to the vast flatlands of Texas. It is time to voyage to that place where music-obsessives gather each year to feast on tasty musical offerings from far and wide. Yes, we're talking about South by Southwest 2008 (SXSW 08), and yes, it's almost here!

We here at Wiretap Music are deeply excited by this year's line-up and we're impressed by the incredible amount of reprezentin' shown by the Bay Area music scene.  At last count, there were 73 Bay-Area bands confirmed at the festival – w00t!

Because we know navigating the SXSW landscape can be an eye-crossing task, we wanted to cull the list a bit for you, our beloved readers. Listed below are our Top Ten Picks, a few more random picks, and a full list of Bay Area bands playing SXSW 08.

Wiretap Music's Top Ten Picks for SXSW 08: 

1.    Little Teeth
"A wild, spastic explosion of edgy, experimental folk musicianship. Each member plays multiple instruments, and plays them with a reckless, passionate exuberance that is enthralling to watch."

2.    The Dodos
Energetic psych-folk-pop drum/guitar duo with sharply crafted lyrics and melodies.  Singer-songwriter Meric Long's fast acoustic finger-play combined with complex, driving drum lines.  A tight live show that'll make you dance 'til you sweat.

3.    Pidgeon
"One glorious cluster-fuck of indie/hardcore/thrash rock and feedback.  The quieter parts of Pidgeon's music are often angular slices of haunting indie rock, and the loud parts are as hard and nasty as any crusty hardcore or thrash metal band ever thought of being."

4.    Death Sentence: Panda!
"PANDA influences range from Korean folk music and New Orleans marching bands to jazz and hard-core punk.  Their sound is new, adventurous, panda2.jpgexperimental, and unpretentious all at the same time. In other words, exactly what mind-blowing rock and roll should be."

5.    The Oh Sees
Lo-fi psychedelic-garage-pop.  Mellow harmonies and fuzz-laden guitar lullabies recall a San Francisco tripped-out day in the park circa 1968.  Live shows much more upbeat & head-boppin' than their albums. [VIDEO]

6.    The Morning Benders
"Like a love-letter to 1960s West coast rock n' roll, they blend sweet impersonations of Beach Boys melodies with a rhythm section that chugs along like Neil Young's Crazy Horse."

7.    The Botticellis
Hazy, echoing twee-pop with sweet lilting melodies & jangly, sentimental guitar lines to nurse your broken heart.

  8.    Clipd Beaks
"A meltdown of dreamy synth fuzz, dancey, funked-out rhythms, and shoe-gaze delight."

9.    Built for the Sea
"If you're into relaxing on your screened-in porch in your rattan rocking chair on a drizzly,    dreary day… Built for the Sea is your soundtrack."

10.    Sugar & Gold
Hook-heavy danceable disco-pop charms the dance-pants off even the most jaded hipsters.  Occasional happy synthesizer blasts keep your booty-shakin'.


More Wiretapper picks:

• Nurses (NRSZ) 

• 60 Watt Kid

• Triclops!

• Port O'Brien

• Cryptacize

• Citay

• Wooden Shjips 

• Mark it in your Hipster PDA's - Two fantastic local showcases to check out – SFXSXSW and the Bay Area Take-Over!!!

The whole list of SF bands playing SXSW 08:

60 Watt Kid
Aim Low Kid
Arp
Greg Ashley
Audrye Sessions
Bird Monster
Birds and Batteries
Blue Cheer
Built for Sea
Citay
Clipd Beaks
Cold Hot Crash
Cryptacize
Death Sentence: Panda!
Elephone
Film School
Form and Fate
Gowns
Tommy Guerrero
Hank IV
Sean Hayes
D.W. Holiday
Howlin' Rain
Immigrant
Kid Beyond
Kreamy 'Lectric Santa
Nyles Lannon
Little Teeth
Loquat
Lou Lou & the Guitarfish
Love Like Fire
Magic Bullets
Magic Christian
Minipop
Morning Benders
Nino Moschella
Mud
Music For Animals
New Monsoon
Nurses (NRSZ)
Oroll
Pidgeon
Port O'Brien
Chuck Prophet
Rogue Wave
Rupa & the April Fishes
Shoti
Scissors for Lefty
Scrabbel
Social Studies
Songs for Moms
Spear of the Nation
Kelley Stoltz
Sugar & Gold
Sun Kil Moon
The Blacks
The Botticellis
The Cuban Cowboys
The Dodos
The Heavenly States
The Matches
The Radishes
The Reaction
The Union Trade
Thee Oh Sees
Triclops!
Tulsa
Two Gallants 
Von Iva
Why?
Wooden Shjips

[Ann Larie Valentine]

SPINDRIFT
LSD AND THE SEARCH FOR GOD
12 Galaxies
Jan. 16, 2008

I like the idea of a good transcendental mind-fuck. My experience with the drug-induced kind is limited, however, to a couple overnight “trips” to the Ocotillo desert when I was in high school. Nothing in my life was so transformative as those warm spring nights exploring cacti like some prescient moon cowboy. I’m pretty straightlaced now – thanks to grad school, rent, and other sobering realities – but sometimes I feel that vestigial self yearning for its origins. And it is often piqued by music. ...

SPINDRIFT
LSD AND THE SEARCH FOR GOD
12 Galaxies
Jan. 16, 2008

I like the idea of a good transcendental mind-fuck. My experience with the drug-induced kind is limited, however, to a couple overnight “trips” to the Ocotillo desert when I was in high school. Nothing in my life was so transformative as those warm spring nights exploring cacti like some prescient moon cowboy. I’m pretty straightlaced now – thanks to grad school, rent, and other sobering realities – but sometimes I feel that vestigial self yearning for its origins. And it is often piqued by music.
   
When I saw Spindrift was playing the 12 Galaxies, it nearly triggered a flashback to a moment I never experienced. I knew my life had been missing its psychedelic, spaghetti western soundtrack. I happened also to be curious about what the deity was up  to.. and holy shit!, LSD and Search for God was on the bill. Two birds, one stone - folks.
   
LSD and the Search for God plays straight shoegaze: Spacey, droning guitars, ethereal vocals about tantric sex pilgrimages, etc... There’s something too sincerely romantic about it for my taste; something that irks my postmodern cynicism; something that makes me embarrassed about my adolescent faith in a drug’s ability to transport me beyond the realm of suburban malaise and lame parents.
   
The band sounded good, but chased no chances. With all those three guitars, LSDatSfG managed the structural force of a breath, not the daring, massive wall of sound expected. The tunes were pretty and entrancing and they fulfilled my roommate's shoegaze fantasies – my  roommate who is only satisfied by the lush flavor of Stoli blueberry – but my own prejudice (against the conceptual tenets of the whole genre), and LSD’s affectations and overall mediocrity, impaired my appreciation. Instead of realizing the liminal sensory dimension all that delay and reverb are supposed to conjure, I spent LSD’s set feeling sober as a rock. Not quite on God’s level.   
   
During The Vandelles’ (Brooklyn, NY) set, I went next-door to Doc’s Clock for a few drinks. Drinks were cheaper there and the bathrooms cleaner.  I thought maybe I could stave off, with plain drunkenness, what I felt was an impending disillusionment with revelatory experience (this would ruin Spindrift for me). Maybe a head full of booze would make a nice home for Spindrift’s trippy sound. I had a Jameson and a Newcastle and felt a flame from my warm belly reach up and lick my mind. The bar became too bright, too clean.
   
Back at the 12 Galaxies a small crowd was buying drinks from an enormous bartender. Spindrift were nursing their own in the half-lit corners. Or so I thought. Who were these dark, bearded figures in shit-kicker boots? I needed another drink and got it. My roommate disappeared with her cell phone to her ear. 
   
The next ten minutes were lost. Then Spindrift was on stage looking like the materialized specters of New Mexico, circa 1881. A black and white western film was projected over them and their monstrous shadows inhabited the scenes. Their music was half nightmare, half breathless dream: howling vocals, shimmering guitars, plodding, deeply grooved bass, trembling organ – all awash in reverb. The old theater began to feel as vast as a desert.

[Nathan Ladd]

 
[STREAM] Spindrift: Various Tracks
[STREAM] LSD and the Search for God: Various Tracks

BUILT FOR THE SEA
Built for the Sea
(Self-released; 2006)

Built for the Sea's self-released, eponymous debut album plays like a well-crafted novel in which good exposition, rising action, and an emotionally ambiguous resolution form a complete picture. If you're into relaxing on your screened-in porch in your rattan rocking chair on a drizzly, dreary day… Built for the Sea is your soundtrack.  ...

BUILT FOR THE SEA
Built for the Sea
(Self-released; 2006)

Built for the Sea's self-released, eponymous debut album plays like a well-crafted novel in which good exposition, rising action, and an emotionally ambiguous resolution form a complete picture. If you're into relaxing on your screened-in porch in your rattan rocking chair on a drizzly, dreary day… Built for the Sea is your soundtrack. 

The album sets a tone early on with lots of soft piano, soaring background harmony, and the lilting lead vocals of singer Lia Rose. The arrangements, as well as her voice, are reminiscent of Emma Pollack and The Delgados. Much like that band, Built for the Sea makes calming, delicate pop music that draws you in with deceptively simple lyrics. The record establishes a mood quickly with "We Now Know,"  the slow ballad opener. The songs build their arrangements patiently, with Lia singing her own harmony and the band alternating between sparse verses and richly textured choruses. 

The standout track is "Dive In," with a rhythm guitar tone borrowed equally from old Police records and Link Wray. Besides just sounding cool, the surf rock-style heavy reverb guitar tone makes even more sense as setting the scene for a song about the ocean. "Dive In" builds to an excellent climax with stacked vocals and culminates in two well-placed bars of 6/8 time (in an other wise 4/4 song) that hammer it home. Never ones to break the flow, Built for the Sea follow it with "Awake," a song that retains the 6/8 time signature and really keeps the album moving along. I wish more bands wrote pop songs in 6/8...it's a completely underused device that breaks up monotony and gives songs a real sense of urgency.

After that, the album lulls us into a sweet, simple resolution before its closing track, "Dreamer." In it, Lia sings, "go to sleep and dream for us all,"  and you can't help but get the feeling that she's been doing that already, with Built for the Sea backing her up.

[Rob Kassees]

[STREAM] Buit for the Sea: Various Tracks

TEMPO NO TEMPO
Repetition EP
Double Negative Records; 2007

On their second EP, Repetition, Tempo No Tempo deliver five neatly layered songs that feature well-balanced arrangements of keyboards, guitar, and bass all weaving and darting melodically over party jam disco drum beats. This second disc continues their trajectory of Television- and Wire-influenced intelligent punk rock songs that open up into crowd pleasing pop melodies. ...

LOW RED LAND
The Elbo Room
Feb. 6, 2008

I first heard Low Red Land on the Dragon Slayers Vol. 2 comp put out by Thread Productions. There isn’t a bad song on that disc, but Low Red Land’s stuck out in my mind because their song, “West Texas,” is named after my home state. And also because the guitars and vocals would stay in my head long after the disc stopped spinning. ...

LOW RED LAND
The Elbo Room
Feb. 6, 2008

I first heard Low Red Land on the Dragon Slayers Vol. 2 comp put out by Thread Productions. There isn’t a bad song on that disc, but Low Red Land’s stuck out in my mind because their song, “West Texas,” is named after my home state. And also because the guitars and vocals would stay in my head long after the disc stopped spinning.

Their live show was everything I’d expected: Loud, swelling guitars and desperately earnest, often shouted vocals. Indie punk and hardcore riffs atop driving rhythms. Sheer blasts of echoy guitar noise. It’s kinda like Fugazi meets post-rock, if you will.

But a surprise was in store at the end of the night, when the band closed their set with a quiet, all-acoustic number on banjo, guitar, and accordion. Singer/guitarist Neil Thompson didn’t sing into the mic, either, instead letting his vocal chords provide their own amplification, just as the other instruments were doing. It was a brilliant way to end the show, demonstrating a completely different side to the band’s talents.

Low Red Land has actually released one acoustic EP and plans to release another this year. They'll also be releasing their second electric album in 2008. You can catch Low Red Land play an all-acoustic show before they head out on tour through most of March.

Whether they’re electrified or not, the Low Red Land live experience will amply reward your attendance.

[Mike G.]

Discuss this review on Livejournal!

There are more photos of Low Red Land live at the Elbo Room at the Wiretap Music Facebook group.

[STREAM] Low Red Land: Various Tracks