SXSW Day 2: The wonderful weirdness of Fite
It's hard to imagine there is any performer at the South by Southwest Music Conference (SXSW) in Austin, Texas, more delightfully weird than Anti-'s Tim Fite.
Fite is where my evening beginning, and when all was said and done, he provided the most captivating performance of the night. That's not to say there weren't other highlights. German dance duo Boys Noize inspired crowd surfing with its rock-laced techno, the Evangelicals delivered hauntingly mesmerizing psychadelic rock, Bon Iver offered up lushy adult pop, Genghis Tron was electro-heavy metal worthy of laser light show and Canada's Holy [Expletive] performed heavily textured and surprising catchy keyboard-driven instrumentals.
The second night of SXSW offered headlining performances from Yo La Tengo and My Morning Jacket, and since I've seen and like both of the aforementioned acts, I used the evening to attempt to club hop. It wasn't always successful, as 20,000 or so thousand music attendees mean getting into venues is not the easiest of tasks, a lesson I still haven't learned after four trips to Austin.
While snythy-rockers MGMT has a larger outdoor showcase on Friday night, I have 27 acts circled to see on March 14, and had hoped to catch the band on Thursday. The group's hard-to-resist single "Time to Pretend" opens up upcoming film "21," and should help the act continue to find a wider audience in 2008. It's Thursday showcase, however, was held at a Mexican restaurant, and a 100-plus attendees were left stranded in line, although watching kids hop the fence to sneak into the establishment was entertainment enough.
Some highlights from Thursday night:
Tim Fite: With facial expressions and stage antics for fit for a carnival show, Fite and his brother Greg are hilariously entertaining. Dressed in orange pants and suspenders, Fite is part Pee-Wee Herman and part Tom Waits, with overly cartoonish expressions and some between-song performance-art antics (the video screen flipping through crayon-like drawings of "things [Fite] lost but never found" had much of the crowd laughing}. Yet all of this would be meaningless if the tunes didn't hold up, and here Fite delivers. Fite showcased songs from his upcoming "Fair Ain't Fair," which appear to bring more pop textures to his appealingly odd mix of folk, hip-hop and electronic loops.
The Evangelicals: The band lost a point for being about 25 minutes late to taking the stage, but won it right back after lurching into ghostly psychedelic rock songs. With a vintage garage rock base, the Evangelicals soon veer off into more atmospheric territory, where a voice is used as another instrument. Vocals hover over walls of guitars, and a heavily melodic bass cuts through the haze to define the band's hooks.
Genghis Tron: Turning the corner at 6th and Red River in Austin, the machine-like guitar riffs of Genghis Tron didn't catch my attention. But when the noise suddenly stopped and the songs opened up for some trip-hop-like keyboard effects, I turned and headed back. Genghis Tron ups the tension by alternating its grinding guitars and growling vocals with spacey keyboard solos and some left-field synthesized rhythms.
Photo: Tim Fite, courtesy www.myspace.com/timfite
