Pitchfork

[above: Mae Shi]

I had just seen Fuck Buttons at our own party and yet I kicked off my night searching them out again. That kind of thing happens at SXSW. Or you might travel a dozen blocks out of the way to catch your favorite hometown band. Or you might stumble on the noisiest, most energetic group of overworked kids at the festival. If you were me, you'd do all these things.

Snowglobe [Opal Divine's; 9 p.m.]


I grew up in Memphis, a city with a lot of musical past, but a somewhat shaky musical present. Aside from Jay Reatard's hepatitic punk scene, one's options for a weekend concert in the Bluff City are rather few and far between. But for the past decade or so, Snowglobe has been our rock band, dance band, jam band, and any other musical niche that needed to be filled on a given Friday.



Well this Friday, Brad Postlewaite and crew brought a taste of the mid-south to Austin, playing a set of vintage material from their first album, 2002's Our Land Brains, with a smattering of songs from 2006's Oxytocin and a few new numbers. It wasn't quite the musical-chairs extravaganza that the old HiTone shows used to be, but it was still a blast from Memphis' past.







Fuck Buttons [Prague; 10 p.m.]


When Fuck Buttons played the Pitchfork/Windish party earlier in the day, I foolishly left my earplugs at the merch table. When I caught their set at Prague later that night, there was no chance I'd make the same mistake. Having witnessed the event twice, I know I didn't miss anything by blocking out a few decibels; their aural assault is really something to behold, and it requires more than just one's ears, anyway.



Andrew Hung and Benjamin John Power began the set of tunes from their new LP Street Horrrsing with a wave of electronic tones, banging their heads in unison and fidgeting around with their Frankenstein's lab of equipment. Hoodie-clad Hung stepped out into the crowd for a song, half dancing half contorting his body to the rhythms that made their way through the din of blips, beeps and shrieks from their computers.







Mae Shi [Flamingo Cantina; 1 a.m.]

Admittedly it's not an official source, but someone in the crowd at the Flamingo Cantina told me the Mae Shi were playing 18 gigs this week in Austin. Later in the show, someone in front of me turned to his friend and said, shaking his head in disbelief, "the hardest working band in show business!" He was of course referring to last year's New York Times piece on SXSW, which bestowed that laurel on Black Lips, due to their hectic schedule of a comparatively fewer 12 shows. So, make of that disparity what you will, but assuming that by this point the Mae Shi had performed roughly half of their shows, these guys were in pretty impeccable form.



To wit, their singing shouting voices didn't sound at all dampened by 10-odd performances; their energy on stage was impressive just given the time of night, not only their backbreaking week's schedule. One guitarist worked the crowd, hunching over the front of the stage, singing straight into faces; a few minutes later he tossed a huge white canopy over the audience's heads, and hopped underneath, performing half of a song in what sort of looked like a budget big tent revival. Their relentless noise was enough to make the band a few converts last night-- and if there weren't as many as they wanted, they'll apparently have a few other opportunities before the week is up.