Just when you think that all the good songs have been written, a young one finds you and tells you music is infinite. I heard about this one from Rachel and had to share because it’s wow. Listen for yourself.

Take the things you love about a guy that reinvented singing and songwriting in the ’90s … say Jeff Buckley:

Now, turn him into a band and fast forward to 2011, with all the respective influences (Bon Iver, Neutral Milk Hotel).

You’d have something sounding much like the Antlers. Of course, the band’s real magic is that it expands all these influences to create rock that’s beautiful, lyrically imaginative and fresh.

Well, that was fun. Thanks for visiting music with me!

This is nice.

Where does it come from? I hear a crazy mix of stuff like this:

Dedicated to all of the beautiful songs that have not yet been written.

Where is music born? Once a week I attempt a DNA test on some rock n roll, using the ever-inspiring medium of video. You wouldn’t believe some of the things that surface — what an inspiring world of mixers, inventors and creators we live in!

Ponytail has a fresh video out, “Honey Touches.” It’s repetitive, yes, but upbeat and melodic enough not to be obnoxious. It would be fun to listen to on the beach with friends, that part of the day when you’re relaxed and playing frisbee or building sand monsters or just dancing, as the case may be.

Given this video’s ’80s-video-game-influenced attention span and aggression toward flying fruit, I’d say this is a clear influence.

And who could deny this one?

“Many people hate my screaming,” Yoko informs us at the end. Not the kids from Ponytail. They’ve been inspired.

Clearly, there are many influences streaming together within “Honey Touches.” Some might even call it a tangled mess. I wouldn’t call those people wrong, but I would say, “Look at these pictures! These kids are dern cute. And they’re happy.” So if you can get used to a little of the playground chaos, let some happy back into your life.

This video has a slow build. Stick with it for a minute and it becomes spellbinding.

The harmonies seem influenced by this sexy quintet (with their own lovely spin):

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart: “Heart in Your Heartbreak.” This song is two parts Ash and one part Sesame Street. In a good way.

I love Ash’s “Girl from Mars” and, until today, I never knew how awesome the video was. Totally fits with Pains’ innocent-rebel theme.

And you can’t really miss the sweet hints of racial diversity and commonality tossed into the “Heart in Your Heartbreak” video. Reminds me of one of my old faves, “My Name is You.” Remember?!?

After a night of great sleep and breakfast from Whataburger (oy, meat), we got word from our friends that they were headed into the city. We hadn’t planned on going in early, but we had heard rumblings that the Mess With Texas party at the Eastside Drive-In was going to be huge and to come early. So we drove in and had a billion free parking spots to choose from.

We checked into the festival at nearly 1 pm, shortly after it started, and saw it was pretty thin. After yesterday’s lethal combo of too much walking + too much sun, we exercised extreme caution and went and sat under a tent in the dirt. It wouldn’t take long before we were covered top to ankles in Texas dust. Our friends, who were “on their way” back when we were still at our hotel room, never did show up until almost two hours after we got there. In the meantime, we met up with a couple random friends, who came by for a brief stop before taking in other bands at other parties. Such is SXSW life.

The first band we left the security of the shade for was Austin locals Strange Boys. This was a band that was hyped among our musical circle of friends, but after a couple songs I realized that these boys were not my taste. Jon also wasn’t really feeling them so we went to the side tent (and shade!) to catch the last song of English band Esben and the Witch.

Our friends decided to go off somewhere and we made plans to meet up later. (Future tense: we never saw them again!). Jon and I decided to exercise further cheapness by searching for less expensive truck foods outside of the festival grounds. What we found was chicken & waffles. That is chicken wrapped in a waffle – like a taco. It…was… AWESOME. Despite my deeply satisfied taste buds, I owe the chickens of the world big-time. We returned to the festival and suffered through a Ted Leo solo set (barf!) just because it was shaded. The Fresh & Onlys went on again and despite there being a few hundred in attendance (vs a few dozen before), it seemed to lack a certain je ne sais quoi that was present yesterday. Jon contends the sets sounded exactly the same. What does he know??

Jon and I split up because I wanted to check out one of my favorite dance bands, !!!, and he wanted to secure a good spot for his favorite band, Thee Oh Sees.

!!! stage

!!!, out of Sacramento, was one of the big acts of the day (the other being the Dead Milkmen, who we skipped… we’ve no punk soul). !!!’s front man, Nic Offer, was a dancing, posing, voguing maniac and it brought a ton of energy to the audience. Every other song he seemed to jump into the crowd — including right in front of me. No, I didn’t get front-row for this, but I didn’t need to, I had my zoom lens! But Mr. Offer did hip-thrust and bump & grind right in front of my face way out in speakerville.

!!! crowd

I didn’t know a lot of !!!’s new material so I decided to go check out Thee Oh Sees on the side stage. Did I mention they are from San Francisco? I’ve seen Thee Oh Sees twice before and they are guaranteed to put on a high energy show. The tent was incredibly packed, but with my big fat camera, I walked along the outer edge towards the front. The crowd was unruly so I did the next best thing: I stepped over the barrier and found my way to the very front of the side/backstage area. It finally occurred to me that if you show up with a camera and act like you’re supposed to be there, you can basically go anywhere. There I sat watching Thee Oh Sees tear it up with the Fresh & Onlys standing right next to me. This was also one of the best shows of the festival.

thee oh sees

After Thee Oh Sees, we found some friends we met in Austin. We told them we were headed to see Shannon and the Clams.

“Oh don’t bother. They are probably drained and burnt out. I wouldn’t go somewhere just to see them.” Not having anything else to do, we went anyways. We headed over to northwest Austin to Spiderhouse, half-heartedly hoping Night Beats would be there. We noticed early that Night Beats was booked for 8:45 at Spiderhouse and at 9:00 for a party about 40 blocks away. As we had guessed, they were at the other venue. Unfortunately for the Spiderhouse staff, they got word of this double booking from us. We killed time by perusing Buffalo Exchange and eating French fries. We returned to check out Orange County band TRMRS.

trmrs

Jon nor I had ever heard of them before but we were both impressed. They sounded like Black Lips or Jacuzzi Boys. The crowd was the smallest of the festival because either a) everyone was already leaving town or b) they were trying to get into the Kanye West show at that old power plant.

Finally, Shannon and the Clams came on. Based out of Oakland (that’s basically San Francisco), I don’t particularly love their music, but I had a feeling their live shows would be awesome.

I still don’t know if I’m right because SHANNON LOST HER VOICE. She sang lightly on a couple tracks, but mostly the male guitarist sang in a bizarre falsetto voice. I wasn’t digging it. I gave them a pass but I was still disappointed that our friends’ prophecy had come true.

After catching a couple minutes of girl-group the Shrapnelles, we headed out. Tomorrow we’ll drive back up to Dallas and fly back to the land of ice and snow. SXSW, for us, was over.

Friday, the plan was this: The Fresh & Onlys at 3 pm, Dum Dum Girls at 6 pm and Ty Segall at midnight. That’s not really how it went at all.

We drove into the city for lunch hoping to finally inhale some of the Tex-Mex that has been teasing us from billboards all over the South. Along the way, Jon got a call from his friend saying a Ty Segall show was going to be happening soon.

Ty Segall is an act we both love (for real this time!) and so we quieted our crying stomachs and headed downtown. The festival is much thicker downtown, with literally building after building blaring out live music. Near the Hilton and convention centers, you could hear hip-hop. By the freeway overpass, metal. Because of the density of music, parking was horrific — even at noon, before many venues open. We were resolved to pay for parking in a lot or ramp, but all marked the FULL insignia. As we drove back to the east part of the city, we happened upon another miracle: a free parking space.

Energized by this, we headed to the Rhapsody party. The bill included Deerhunter, Kurt Vile, and Ty Segall among others. We were met with an RSVP sign. SXSW often insists that people RSVP for free parties and when they are all out, you are out of luck. As we would find out, not only were none of our RSVPs checked, but those we had missed out on (i.e. this party), they just let us in after checking an ID.

Inside, we were bombarded by swag. We got free t-shirts with the lineup printed on back and FREE BEER. Yes. I’m serious. And not just any beer: Guinness and Red Stripe.

Ty Segall (of San Francisco) was first. The stage was really cool, it was situated in front of a sheer white rock wall. My more musically-inclined friends said this caused it to sound “like shit” but I’m not so musically-inclined and this show was my favorite of the festival. But I was pretty deaf afterward.

Today I brought my “real” camera, a Canon DSLR which happens to be about the cheapest DSLR on the market and which, after a year and a half, I still can’t use properly. But nobody knows that and when I pull that thing out, especially with the telephoto lens, I look like a serious photog. So, again, I sat myself in the front row with all the others photographers, whose equipment probably costs 10x what mine did (and mine wasn’t cheap!) and snapped and rocked out.  Thanks to the fact that Mr. Segall plays loud, fast garage rock, he was able to fit in all my favorite songs in his 30-min set.

We had a (moot) RSVP to the Dickies Party at the Lustre Pearl in the southern part of the city, so we skipped Kurt Vile and trekked down. We got there right at 2 pm, when doors were supposed to open for the Fresh & Onlys to play at 3 pm. At about 2:50, after almost an hour in the blazing Texas sun, they let us in. We jumped in a taco truck line to split a delicious burrito and no sooner sat down than we heard F&O start.

fresh and onlys

The Fresh & Onlys are from — where else? — San Francisco and play garage rock with more pop-rock sensibilities. Unlike the draw of Ty Segall, which was quite packed, the Dickies party was a little sparse. I was still in the front row, but this front row was about seven feet back from the stage. They, too, played all my favorite songs and I clapped as hard as I could to compensate for the subdued crowd. Probably my second favorite performance of SXSW.

The Dickies party had its own bunch of swag – SXSW/Dickies t-shirts, freshly pressed posters and, we suspected, free beer. As someone in their late-20s, let me tell you, beer is no cure for Texas sun. In fact, it is a conspirator of evil. I love free stuff, but at Dickies, I just had to say no.

We weren’t so interested in the two bands preceding Dum Dum Girls so we took a chance and headed downtown. We sent out feelers to a few friends around the city for goings-on and waited. And waited. And waited. We rotated between resting in shade with walking and searching for… food? Music? We found neither.

Is an air-conditioned sit-down restaurant too much to ask for at SXSW? The answer seems to be yes. We finally bought a street bratwurst (so much for vegetarianism!) which we ate on a curb as music blasted from all four directions. We gave one more effort to find a friend at an address that was not on our city map and at 7 pm, after 3.5 hours of wandering, found our 92-degree car, drove back to the motel and watched horrifically bad TV movies like Deep Blue Sea and Speed 2: Cruise Control. We slept 10 hours. It was awesome.