Concerts

Don your party hat and get ready to indulge in Spring Break, Cobraconda style. Right off the bat, the music on this joint is bass-thumping, lighthearted and electric. Graham Nation and Spencer Foreman engage listeners with their best party-rap verses and say hilarious things over dance-style rhythms. “Dick Master” is simply…

Cynics need not apply when considering Kyle James Hauser’s debut solo album, Oh Oh. With its delicate Americana-style banjo picking and soulful, sentimental vocals, it’s the ideal morning record, an unabashedly cheerful collection of expertly crafted songs. Collaborating with singer/cellist Ben Sollee, guitarist Grant Gordy (of the David Grisman quintet)…

You’d think the psychedelic-classic-hard-rock-revival vein would be completely tapped at this point. But Amphibious Jones didn’t target the usual suspects in terms of sounds to appropriate, and that’s what makes this album stand out. You get the sense that these guys watched Heavy Metal dozens of times and contemplated the…

The Ting Tings were one of the first bands to emerge from the Apple iPod commercials in 2008. Thanks to the overnight exposure of “Shut Up and Let Me Go,” the band went from being a blogged-about British import to becoming a major player in American pop music, creating a…

House music lends itself well to worldwide variation and influence, so it’s not entirely unexpected that a subgenre like salsa house would garner a widespread following. And when you’ve got someone as talented as DJ Carlos heading up a movement to bring the style to the forefront, then it’s also…

KELLY CLARKSON @ 1STBANK CENTER | 3.18.12 When Kelly Clarkson opened the night with “Darkside” singing alone behind a stage spanning screen covered in slanderous headlines describing the American Idol’s looks, mistakes and “make-up mis-haps,” it became very apparent that the pop star would not be catering to the media:…

You were a little flat at the end of your performance of “Happy Birthday” there, Wolf ViolinistThe last few days, Village Voice Media’s indefatigable music staff has been regaling you with stories of the best from SXSW 2012. In the midst of these discoveries, we’ve been culling another list: the…

White Rabbits (due tonight at the Bluebird Theater) moved from Columbia, Missouri to Brooklyn within a year of forming in 2004. The group’s music had, from the beginning, an ineffably energetic spirit that could be heard by broader audiences first with its 2007 debut album, Fort Nightly. But it was…

THE JOY FORMIDABLE @ BLUEBIRD | 3/17/12With a sample of spoken words as an intro, one of the moments in the set where The Joy Formidable shined the brightest was during “Buoy.” From its moody, murky beginning to its steady, rapid progression into something altogether more bombastic and expansive, the…

Thursday, March 15: Thousands of bands were packed into stages around town, fans were going nuts on every street corner. How’d the Morning Clouds spend their off day? Doing laundry. We’re pretty rock like that. With piles of clean undies and non-smelly socks back in our room, we managed to…

Coming into our seventh year playing SXSW, we’ve got it down to a science. We’ve already been out on the road for two weeks and have two to follow after SXSW, so it’s about getting in, playing your heart out, supporting your friends and hopefully catching a few new bands…

There is a place somewhere in the pacific ocean that is essentially a cesspool for plastic waste and various other bits of debris and man-made trash. The rudimentary physics and science behind this collection is that all ocean currents from all over the world eventually whirlpool and cycle through the…

Farewell, Austin: Kalyn here checking in for Wheelchair Sports Camp and Company’s last night at SXSW! Grab a cup of coffee — you missed a lot since our last check-in: We took our precious time getting out of our RV park home yesterday and loaded in our gear to The…

MIRANDA LAMBERT @ 1STBANK CENTER | 3/17/12 Miranda Lambert is justifiably incredulous. She’s twenty songs into a 22-song set, and just as this St. Patrick’s Day edition of her She-Woman Men Haters Club is winding down, someone on her crew has taken it upon himself to preempt the proceedings by…

Nick RalloJustin Townes Earle at Stubb’s BBQSo, we come to it: the end of all things. Four days of madness, Doritos, Skrillex and finally, St. Patrick’s Day. Before we bid SXSW 2012 farewell, allow us to share our favorite moments from SXSW day four. Later, we’ll let you know which…

Marco Torres50 Cent and Eminem at the Austin Music Hall. More photos below.If you’re familiar with chaos theory, which in its basic form is the attempt to find patterns in the random acts of shit on Earth, then you may understand the difficulty that comes with describing a full day…

GIRLS @ GOTHIC THEATRE | 3/16/12 When Girls took the stage at the Gothic Theatre last night, it was like seeing something out of the early ’90s, the time when not having a fashion statement was a fashion statement, when the attitude of the musicians and their performance spoke volumes…

Tarantulas, Fireballs, and Doppelgängers – SWSX Day One: I had heard a story from a friend of mine about driving through west Texas in the pre-dawn hours. He recounted that after about nine hours on the road heading south from Denver, just before sunrise, he and his co-pilot encountered hundreds,…

Local beatsmith Selko has officially inked a licensing agreement with Atom Factory Music Licensing last month. According to Selko, the deal came about when he sent a recent instrumental of his to music supervisor, Paul Stewart, who liked what he heard and responded rather quickly. The licensing company later presented…

This weekend’s best party bets come to you in the form of reggae and head noddin’ beats courtesy of Peter Black, Mu$a and Nofrendo, who will be rocking the Meadowlark tonight, getting their groove on like they do. Govahment Promotions, meanwhile, will be keeping the reggae crowd moving this evening…

During SXSW, and especially in the last five years or so, Sixth Street turns into one long, strange sensory overload. People nearly give you eyeball papercuts trying to get their fliers in your hands, before they’re promptly tossed on the ground. If you get the right combo of marketing types…