Thousands of bands converged in Austin last week, performing all over the city as part of South by Southwest 2014. Some might find the prospect of seeing music at every waking hour exhausting, but there’s something surprisingly energizing about the mass convergence of creative talent in Austin each year. SXSW remains one of the best places to discover new bands, a remarkable, unique opportunity to watch, discover, be disappointed by, and celebrate a ton of indie music’s most buzzed-about (and completely unknown) artists.
It cannot be easy to be a band at SXSW. Best case scenario, a group is playing a dozen or more shows over the course of the week, frequently under less than optimal conditions, without adequate sound checks, and to audiences that are somewhere between hungover and drunk and always distracted by their phones. It’s unreasonable to expect too much from a SXSW performer, which makes it a welcome surprise when a band rises above “just okay” and blows you away. Plenty of bands did impress us over our four days in Austin, and we’ve collected a dozen highlights in this mixtape.
However, it’s not possible to reflect on this year’s South By festivities without acknowledging Wednesday night’s tragedy, when a drunk driver broke through barricades on Red River Street, hitting and killing two people — a third passed away from her injuries on Monday — and injuring twenty-two others outside the Mohawk. It was strange to be at the Mohawk, one of Austin’s best venues, on Friday, seeing a schedule of set times from Wednesday night still taped to one of the bar’s cash registers. While the tragedy made the whole let’s-see-a-ton-of-bands thing feel even more shallow than normal, there was ultimately inspiration and relief to be found in the music, a much-needed reminder of the medium’s very fundamental importance.
Below, find out a little bit more about each of our South by Southwest standouts.
Withered Hand — “Black Tambourine”
Dan Willson’s work as Withered Hand mixes folk rock and indie pop, with songs that sound great but are elevated even higher by heartfelt, compelling lyricism. New Gods is being released in the US by Slumberland Records, which should be recommendation enough, but the album’s list of guest performers — Pam Berry of Black Tambourine, Eugene Kelly of The Vaselines, members of Belle & Sebastian and Frightened Rabbit — also says volumes about Willson’s remarkable talent.