Six-Word Reviews of 763 SXSW Mp3s

CIRCLE DISTRIBUTION

1852 circles were assigned with an average rating of 2.42 circles.

GHOST BANDS

White Ghost Shivers · Television Ghost · The Black Ghosts · Ghosthustler · Holy Ghost!

ANTHEM

This song by Born in the Flood is inexcusable. Consider: (1) It is called “Anthem,” and it is an anthem. (2) It sounds like Bono and the Edge riding around on Sparklehorses. (3) I can’t understand the lyrics but there’s a crown mentioned. It was heretofore considered impossible for any singer to overcome these cognitive challenges in order to create a distinct and memorable song. And yet this man does exactly that.

Or to put it another way: When you were 23 and living alone without many friends and definitely no girlfriends, did you ever jerk off and cry at the same time? This is your song.

FISH BANDS

Catfish Haven · Fishboy · Lou Lou and the Guitarfish · Rupa and the April Fishes

EXPLAINING THE ARBITRARY RATING SYSTEM

●●●●● Worthy of five circles.
●●●● Worthy of four circles.
●●● Worthy of three circles.
●● Worthy of two circles.
● Kill me.

MUSICAL GENRES

Based on what I believe to be a complete list of 1,955 bands. Some outliers removed.

YELLING

Yelled choruses are very common. Singers should always have a reason before they yell; “our song is boring and lacks hooks” is not reason enough.

VERY COMMON WORDS IN ARTIST NAMES

Black · DJ · Band · White · David · Little · King · Paul · Out · Me · Matt · Man · Kid · Joe · James · Dan · Brothers · Williams · Smith · Radio · Project

ORGAN

I never had this problem before, but the more organ in a song, the more I was likely to hate it. By the end of this experiment the simple peal of rock organ caused me to squint and hunch in my seat, bracing myself for the next three minutes of music. It’s a crutch; when there is an uncertain patch, a musical problem to solve, the band thinks, “I know. We’ll use organ.” Now they have two problems.

PATTERN

When reviewing a band’s web page, if I saw a six-member ensemble with a fiddler, I knew it would have the indie-brigade sound of the Arcade Fire. Three, four, or five young, hairless men straight out of a Gus Van Sant movie means a Strokes/Killers/Kaiser Chiefs/Arctic Monkeys sound—as if there is one platonic album of garage pop rock from which everyone cribs. Beards means Brooklyn.

GOLD BANDS

Golden Arm Trio · Golden Boys · Santogold · Goldspot · The Golden Dogs · Jacob Golden · Solid Gold

SOMETHING I GLEANED

Many bands say they were influenced by Pavement. Very few say that they were influenced by No Doubt.

ANIMAL BANDS

Hearts of Animals · Tiny Animals · Extreme Animals · Plants and Animals

IMPRESSIVE PROMO COPY

“Hello motherfucker!!! Kalashnikov’s a legendary Portuguese band, pioneer of wartime rock ’n roll: music made for the battlefield. Born in Lisbon in 1996 they soon started to play in wartime scenarios to motivate men to slaughter. From Bosnia to Colombia, from Afghanistan to Tchetchenia, from Liberia to Iraq wherever there is war, you will hear the Kalashnikov sound.”

SOMETHING ELSE I GLEANED

Many people don’t write songs for an audience. They write songs for Gray’s Anatomy, for Zach Braff, and for Apple advertisements (Volkswagen if they’re not ambitious). If I was in a band I would write a slow song with an 808, reverb, and a female vocalist, and call that song “Zach Braff’s Eyes Reflected in My Nano.” I would make sure it got to the right people. By which I mean Zach Braff, or one of the leechlike marketing creatures that feed from the skin of Steve Jobs under his mock turtleneck.

FRATERNAL BANDS

The Breakup Society · Great Lakes Myth Society · World/Inferno Friendship Society · Beat Union

I NOTICED

I wanted to like more of the rap here, but I became very tired. Everything was either about acquiring material goods (which includes women), or, alternately, about how all other rap is about acquiring material goods.

On hearing my nth predictable song about how hip-hop is predictable, it struck me that I was witnessing individuals engaged in a formalist exercise where the form itself is the only appropriate lyrical subject; thus rap is, in some ways, the blogging of music. (This is happening to “indie rock” in the Strokes/Killers/Libertines mold, as well.)

CREATURE

Creature is a massive relief from Montreal. For the first few seconds it all sounds like a mistake—perhaps they are the new Waitresses?—and then I realized that they are wonderful and exhaled a long sigh.

Some things that remind me of Creature: dancing with a golden retriever up on its hind legs; jumping on your parents’ bed to FM radio; a treehouse that is also a helicopter. Far and above my favorite of this set; I bought their album immediately and it is just as good as the song linked above. Here they are rehearsing a song about the pleasures of being a senior citizen, which has the lyrics:

I don’t work,
No salary.
I’m done,
That slavery
I get special
Discount rate
When a senior gets a deal
You’re damn right I celebrate.

WHY?

This band is the anti-Creature—narcissistic indie navel-gazing, lyrics that ramble, no women. But the crunching guitar at appropriate moments, the smart drumming and bass work, and assured performance of the vocalist (“I curse the last six months I’ve been hiding behind a moustache...yeah”) as he delivers the lyrics to their song “The Hollows” is captivating; he is fully aware of how ridiculous he is—and thus the song becomes an honest narrative of creative angst. I never expected to hear this in a song:

In Berlin I saw
Two men fuck
In the dark corner of a basketball court
Just the slight jingle of pocket change pulsing. [Guitar]

SOUND BANDS

Sounds Under Radio · Nameless Sound Collection · The Soundtrack of Our Lives · Axel K Soundsystem · Atlas Sound · The Sound of Urchin · The Hush Sound

NEW YORK VERSUS CALIFORNIA

AWESOMENESS VS. CUTENESS

It’s easy to quantify male vocalists: they are either douchebags, or, if they play guitar as well, double dog douchebags. But I also found myself dividing the female vocalists—and there are surprisingly many, which is a promising development—into two camps.

First, there are twee little things who will sing about forest sprites and make you collages when you have the flu. Then there are the tougher ones who wear glitter and make eye contact.

The question I asked myself, to divide between the awesome and cute, was: would this woman (1) help you to get an abortion? Or (2) just write a song about it? The ones who would drive you to the clinic without judging you, in my opinion, make better vocalists. I could be wrong but I think Martha Wainright, and the women from Creature, would go with you.

MARTHA WAINRIGHT

She wrote a song called “Bloody Mother Fuckin Asshole” and while I enjoy it on its own merits, I enjoy it more knowing that it will be difficult to use this song to sell Volkswagens.

BLACK BANDS

Black Diamond Heavies · Black Earth · Black Helicopter · Black Joe Lewis & the Honey Bears · Black Mike and Chemistry · Black Moth Super Rainbow · Black Mountain · Black Pus · Black Tide · Black Tie Dynasty · Black Top Demon · Black Tusk · Blackholicus · Blacklist

ON NODDING

Even with the most peculiar songs (“Break” by Son Lux, say) there is some innate sense of structure that caused me to nod my head, perhaps just a little, as I listened, and with certain songs (“Rich Girls,” by The Virgins) it was hard not to jump up out of the chair. Working through the nearly 48 hours of music in this collection I found myself craving that stimulus like a rat trained on cocaine. And when a song that produced that feeling was over I felt a sense of despair—once again I would be thrown into an hour or more of music that would generate no interior response. I wanted to go back and listen to the good songs over and over but that was a pleasure denied for later.

TECHNOLOGY NOTE

The productivity revolution—easy mixing, software like Logic, ProTools, and Ableton Live—has brought us more polished production, but there seems to be a surprising lack of attention to dynamics. Do musicians see dynamics as simply volume now? (The jazz musicians of course are more conscious.)

Many arrangements crescendo or decrescendo in unison, as if mixing is just turning a knob, and often while listening to these bands I could imagine the screen with multiple colored lines and waveforms, the overlapping triangles representing the triumph of amplitude. The suspension of disbelief—the sense that I am inside of a song—was ruined when the music evoked only its own production.

IMPORTANT LYRIC

“So there’s a broken mirror on my bed. I’ll clean it up. So what? You don’t have to be such an asshole all the time. Awwww, don’t be like that. Ha ha. (Hic.) Whooooo, ooo ooo oo oo, a uh uh oh oh oh.“ —The Virgins, Rich Girls.

VERY COMMON WORDS IN SONG TITLES

I · You · My · Me · Like · No · Your · Don’t · What · Red · Love · Do · We · Get · Down · Time · Song · Black · Summer · Man · Life · Heart · World · Room · Right · One · Girl · Day · Big · Sun

BEAR BANDS

Mostly Bears · Bearsuit · Care Bears on Fire · Bear in Heaven · Black Joe Lewis & the Honey Bears · Honey Claws · I was a cub scout