My cover story on the local presence at this year’s South By Southwest Music Festival is out. I didn’t have space to write about the non-locals in the paper. And though I wrote plenty from Austin in this space last week, I wanted to do a final blog post on non-local SXSW stuff, especially as an excuse to publish some more photos Justin Fox Burks took while down there.
So, here’s my Top 12 non-local acts I saw last week:
1. Wild Flag
- JUSTIN FOX BURKS
- Wild Flag at The Parish
I don’t know that this was purely the best set I saw, but it was the most satisfying in part for not knowing what to expect. Two members of my favorite mid-’90s-mid-’00s band, Sleater-Kinney (guitarist Carrie Brownstein and drummer Janet Weiss) team with a singer/guitarist I hadn’t thought about in years (Mary Timony of ’90s indie rockers Helium) and a keyboardist I was unfamiliar with (Rebecca Cole of the Minders). The result could have gone any which way, but Wild Flag was fresh and fun, somehow both poppier and more guitar-oriented than Sleater-Kinney, with great on-stage chemistry. I couldn’t make out enough words to get a feel for their songs, but I’m really looking forward to when this band finally puts out their debut album.
I wrote longer on Wild Flag here.
