Spotify Sundays: Peter Molin heads SXSW
by Peter Molin
April 2023
Last month, US-Army-officer-turned-professor Peter Molin decided he weren’t gonna study war no more (temporarily), and took himself off for a long weekend at the SXSW—‘South by Southwest’—festival, in Austin, Texas.
The 10-day event is an extravaganza of big-name stage interviews, movie premieres, awards-announcements, stand-up comedy, and tech-industry exhibits. But first-time visitor Peter was warned not to waste his money on the headline acts: more fun, he was told, just to wander around the bars and venues, catching unknown acts at random and, oftentimes, free.
Herewith, a dozen and a bit bands he caught, across a quite considerable range (there was, at one point, a free-style jazz combo featuring an oud!), in order of witnessing.
I didn’t realize while watching The Bad Ends that Bill Berry, formerly of REM, was on drums. The band doesn’t sound like REM, and the lead singer is not Michael Stipe, but he does kind of sound like him...
A singer-songwriter who leans alt-country, while also suggesting that she’s still gunning for mainstream pop-and-country glory.
Bonus points for the Chet Baker reference.
Esther Rose
Sarah Shook and the Disarmers – Fuck Up
Hard-rocking country-punk—just when you think there’s no life left in drinkin’-and-cryin’ songs.
Why Bonnie’s Wikipedia page describes them as ‘shoegaze-acana’. Well said. Brooklyn meets Texas.
Where else can you find a musician playing free jazz on an oud?
Straight from Oslo, Norway, a ‘cosmic folk’ band, as Lucinda Williams (who should know) once called them.
Cheekface – We Need a Bigger Dumpster
There’s clever-and-catchy, and then there’s Cheekface clever-and-catchy: social anxiety you can dance and laugh to!
The T-shirt worn by the keyboard/percussionist for Cheekface says it all.
Hermanos Gutierrez – El Bueno Y El Malo
Spacey desert psychedelia – as you might expect from two brothers of Uruguayan heritage who grew up… in Switzerland.
Hermanos Gutierrez
Peter One – Birds Go Die Out of Sight (Don’t Go Home)
A former star in his home country of Ivory Coast, Peter One now lives in Nashville and infuses his native West African vibe with American country licks.
Peter One
Olivia Jean – Jaan Pehchaan Ho
The wife of White Striper Jack White, Olivia Jean channels a Cramps’ Poison Ivy look and sound, and—on this song anyway—sings in Hindi as she covers a Bollywood rock-and-roll classic.
Wait, what??
Olivia Jean
And now for something completely different: alternative K-pop hip-hop. If you don’t like anything else on this list, you might like this one—and vice-versa!
The War and Treaty – Set My Soul on Fire
Country-soul-rock-gospel mash-up?
Country-soul-rock-gospel mash-up.
Jon Dee Graham – Big Sweet Life
A veteran Texas outlaw-country troubadour in the vein of Jimmy Dale Gilmore and Joe Ely, and the only act I paid to see the whole weekend (and happy to do so, Graham, sadly, having recently suffered some life-threatening maladies).
Jon Dee Graham
Later, I stood outside a bar, eavesdropping on legendary local bluesman Jimmy Vaughan, brother of Stevie Ray and formerly of The Fabulous Thunderbirds. To see Vaughan play, late-night, in an intimate club in Austin would have been quite the memory. But it was a $20 cover, I was dragging, and I knew more good free stuff was surely waiting for me in the morning.
