SXSW, Friends & Exhaustion.

The weird thing about SXSW ending is that for most people, the week has been a bizarre sort of break from reality. I didn’t do half as much music last year as I did this year, and that’s partially because I was knee deep in maps and schedules and emails (one friend created this amazing spreadsheet in Excel with parties, highlighted and color coded according to venue, etc) and partially because I actually took a couple days off work to wander around and try to catch things.

As you might expect, Midlake, Menomena, Field Music, and Mew were amazing. The Mew show especially really just floored me. I caught them at the Spin party at Stubbs and watched from the front row, I couldn’t believe it. Such energy and so impressive, considering how intricate their album is. It’s pretty impressive when that kind of thing translates live, and now I understand why they constantly sell out arenas across Europe. Their set was definitely a high point in my show-going career, it’s really hard to put into words. Shearwater also floored me, but then again so does almost everything Jonathan Meiburg does. I simply can’t wait to hear the new version of Palo Santo.

As far as things I saw that I wasn’t anxiously anticipating that were a pleasant surprise, Apes & Androids, White Denim and the little I saw of Sparrow House were all really impressive. I’m disappointed in missing Andrew Bird at the Onion party and Don Caballero at the Relapse thing but oh well. Life moves on!

The best part about the week was probably the steady stream of good times, text messages reading something like “omg where r u” and “there’s a line :(”, and the folks I met and hung out with all week. Our Austinist parties (with Pure Volume, Virb, Gothamist and Chris et al) were all super fun and of course it’s great to see all my friends here in town in one place, but I also got to spend time with some special tourists like JED!, Michael and his pals (who are all awesome, btw)

Some other interesting moments / highlights were Spank Rock (though I was generally freaked out by the whole, shall we say ambience surrounding that event), Sondre Lerche and Pete Townsend magically appearing on stage with the Fratelli’s. Bonkers. Also we ate a lot of breakfast tacos, Jed taught me a new dance, and Michael and his friends showed me a ground-breaking sort of high-five-one up thing that made me really happy.

Good times had by all, surely. I’m still exhausted but will slowly add photos to Flickr in the coming days.

Photo of Mew by Helloali on Flickr
Photo of me by Yewknee on Flickr

The text messaging was nuts. Apparently Wednesday night after too much liquor I drunk texted or voicemailed 1/2 of my address book. Classy, eh?

While I had some great experiences this year, I never had that ‘come to Jesus’ moment like I did the past couple of years with Hot Chip, The Go Team, Band Of Horses, or Feist. But that’s really all down to luck. The closest to it this year was Girl Talk, but exhaustion replaced enthusiasm at that show on my end.

Both the Austinist film and music parties went amazingly well. Which I likely because I wasn’t involved

All my friends enjoyed meeting you as well.. so consider the feeling mutual. I’d say more but you pretty much wrapped it all up in a nice little tortilla and there’s nothing more for me to add.