Wednesday is one of the best day showcase of SXSW 2015

SXSW (South By South West) 2015

Tuesday 17th to Sunday 22nd March 2015
various venues, Austin, Texas, USA MAP
from $650 to $895 (approx £450)

Daily capacity: 20,000

In what might just have been the best day showcase of SXSW 2015, Flood Magazine announced their arrival at SXSW in fine style, with the first of three days of some of the best bands at SXSW. It would have been easy to stay in this one spot for three days, and not feel like anything had been missed. The First Annual Flood Fest at Cedar Street Courtyard opened with a showcase of up and coming Dutch bands. I arrived to catch the last of them, Taymir. If I didn’t know better (or hadn’t read the poster) I would have expected them to be the latest bright young things out of Shoreditch. Part Libs, part Strokes, part Levis, they fit perfectly on a bill top heavy with London talent.

Next up, Skinny Lister provided me with the revelation of the week. The London-based folk six-piece, who will put out their second album this year on Xtra Mile (unless you live in Japan, where it’s already out for some reason), had garnered rave reviews for their St. Patrick’s Day show the preceding day at BD Rileys, so I thought it wise to check them out. I was treated to one of the best gigs of my life, never mind the week. Raucous, riotous, and racy, this is folk at the drunken end of the scale, and was all the better for it. Trouble On Oxford Street and Rollin’ Over typified a storming set which culminated in a crowd-surfing Michael Camino not missing a note on the double bass as he took it for a ride.

Whoever followed that was in for a rough ride, and the job fell to Geographer, or Michael Deni as he’s known to his mum. I can see why the American kids love it - it’s pretty decent synth-pop - and I can’t find much to criticise, other than the billing. However, the billing was what killed it. An hour previous, it may have been enjoyable, but as the meat in a Skinny / Barat sandwich, it was just dull.

Carl Barat & The Jackals: SXSW (South By South West) 2015

It’s a truth often spoken that first albums by new Carl Barat bands are always stupidly good, and his debut effort with The Jackals continues that trend. Let It Reign contains some of his best work post-Libs, and it beats quite a lot of that particular canon as well. Barat doesn’t do bands, he does gangs, and this was apparent with Carl Barat & The Jackals. Wherever I saw Carl around Austin (and there were a few times!) I saw the band. From gigging to getting pissed, there was no doubt that they were all in this together. This unity shows in the live show, which, as ever with a Barat band, was as tight as it was tightly would, right from the off. As well as cherry picking the best bits of Let It Reign, including the superb Glory Days (which this reviewer regards as the best thing Carl Barat has ever written, in any band), The Jackals tore through a number of Libertines and Dirty Pretty Things tracks, including Death On The Stairs, Deadwood and a stunningly emphatic take on I Get Along, which, sorry Pete, The Jackals owned. Better than Dirty Pretty Things, and more professional than The Libertines, The Jackals might just be Carl Barat’s best band yet.

It’s not a festival without Frank Turner these days, and Cedar Street Courtyard is his spiritual home in Austin. Arriving clearly hungover, but armed with a fantastic story of getting pissed on 6th Street the previous night and swapping his shirt with a fan, he launched into what is these days a rare solo set. Frank Turner is an artist I’ve grown with (my first gig of his was a job for eGigs in a pub in Newcastle in 2007). In that time his sound has changed little, but his songwriting has improved markedly, and the new material aired this afternoon showed a continuing maturity. The anger is still there, but it’s now tempered by experience. As ever, Turner seemed to feed off the warmth of the crowd. However long he does this, and in whatever venue, I believe a Frank Turner gig will always feel more like you and your mates, around a campfire, with an acoustic guitar, than a live show, and long may it continue.

Today’s second bout of weird billing came at Clive Bar this evening. Elliphant (aka Ellinor Olovsdotter) is a product of Swedish producers Jungle, and fuses the staple themes of gangsta rap and reggae with europop and dubstep beats, and then polishes it to within an inch of it’s shiny life. It’s a weird if not entirely unpleasant juxtaposition, and I can’t deny that despite only coming in to see the following band, I got into it surprisingly quickly. Olovsdotter’s relentless enthusiasm is hard not to admire, and even harder to resist.

The Cribs: SXSW (South By South West) 2015

From the most slickly produced act of the day to possibly the least of the week, The Cribs took to what these days is a vastly smaller stage than they’re used to, and looked right at home again. This is a band that to me have never looked quite comfortable with their popularity, and a stage out the back of a grimy pub in Texas might just have been the place for them to reclaim their mojo. From the get go, Ryan Jarman was in contrary mood, showing his dissatisfaction with the sound by hurling his mic stand into his battered Orange amp, which is somehow still going strong. The old punk feel was back and angrier than ever. For forty minutes the pace was relentless, with even the odd slower song injected with vitriol, sweat and menace. This felt like The Cribs before they got big, and hopefully they can keep it up.

What was meant to be a quick pint in The Blackheart next door turned into me stumbling upon an impromptu The Vaccines show, which was serving as a warm-up for their show in Clive Bar following The Cribs. This is the beauty of SXSW, huge bands in tiny pubs, for no other reason than they can. Like the brothers Jarman previously, they seemed to thrive off the heat, noise and proximity of the fans, and ripped through a set of punked up fan favourites with a sense of fun and an ease which has been missing of late. No Hope and Bad Mood stood out, as they always will in their live shows, but in reality it was a superb performance from top to bottom, summed up perfectly by them ending the final number, unplugging their amps, and walking next door with their gear to do it all again. I was tempted to follow them.

My evening ended with Catfish & The Bottlemen on the same tiny stage. This is a band that, until tonight, had largely passed me by, but when one of the most hotly tipped bands in the UK are playing in a pub you’re already in, you don’t leave. I was glad I didn’t. Van McCann and co. are everything a rock n roll band need to be. They’re young, they’re passionate, they’ve got the tight jeans and they’ve got the tunes. And what tunes they are! Kathleen and Homesick stood out tonight, but they only tell half the story. The lock in between bassist Benji Blakeway and drummer Bob Hall form a rhythm section of a power which belies the band’s young age, and creates a foundation upon which Johnny Bond and frontman Van McCann can play with the sound and lift it above the level at which most similar bands peak.

Catfish & The Bottlemen: SXSW (South By South West) 2015