Click here to check out Tony Nelson’s SXSW photo gallery from Day Two. 

BEST ACT OVERALL: Heartless Bastards (see previous entry) or the Delta Spirit. The latter is a San Diego quartet with a heavy rock sound but soulful overtones. Singer Matthew Vasquez sang with Waterboy Mike Scott’s scratchy urgency, and the band kept up a driving, persistent pace that was downright visceral.

CRAZIEST SET: Surprisingly, it wasn’t King Khan & the Shrines (see next entry), it was Atlanta neo-soul/funk singer Janelle Monae, who sang at the Austin Music Hall a few slots before her pal Big Boi and left everyone there wondering what they had just seen. With a big pointy haircut and a hyper showmanship, she looked and sounded like an unlikely cross between Grace Jones, Prince and Gwen Stefani (the latter of whom, I found out later, she’ll open for on the upcoming No Doubt tour). Weirdest of all, her songs were all like 12-minutes long, including a Judy Garland-like torch ballad called “Smile” that broke up her band’s P-Funk-like funk.

BEST SET THAT COULD’VE BEEN MUCH BETTER: King Khan & the Shrines. The Montreal-reared, Berlin-based freakshow of a frontman Khan came out in a cape and hat with a cheerleader/go-go girl by his side and was all set to blow, but the club (El Sol y La Luna, a restaurant on non-SXSW week) had a fizzling sound system. The crowd kept yelling, “Turn it up.” Even muted, though, Khan’s horn-blasting, organ-laden, guitar-grinding ’60s garage-rock/soul band clearly had a great thing going on, with totally unhinged energy and songs that would’ve been hits in 1965.

BEST NEW SONG BY A MINNESOTAN: “Hell and Back” by Haley Bonar, which she played during a solo/acoustic set Thursday afternoon at the convention center’s day stage while Quincy Jones was giving his keynote speech a few doors down. It was Bonar’s first time at SXSW, and she said, “I think I’ve finally come up to speed with the madness.” She said she was thrilled about her set the previous night inside Sixth Street’s posh Driskill Hotel (right before Mark Olson and Gary Louris), and she had two more shows to go through Friday.

BEST OLD SONG BY A MINNESOTAN: “Take Me Home” by Brother Ali, with which he raised the (tent) roof late Thursday near the end of the Rhymesayers showcase outside the Habana Bar, which also included a fine coming-out of sorts by Toki Wright plus I Self Devine, Eyedea & Abilities, P.O.S. and some of the label’s non-Twin Citian crew. 

DISAPPOINTING SET: Genuinely not a single one on Thursday night, out of about 10. Really pretty amazing.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 20th, 2009 at 11:15 am and is filed under Main, SXSW. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.