SXSW 2011: Wild Flag goes for broke
AUSTIN, Texas -- Carrie Brownstein, the former Sleater Kinney guitarist and current "Portlandia" star, was getting herself into a state. "Yeah, I'm a racehorse," she sang, "You put your blinders on me." Later, she was delivering an angry incantation: "Pony up, pony up, pony up." Brownstein was singing like her id was on fire, and her band Wild Flag followed suit: Janet Weiss' tumbling drums, Mary Timony's untamed guitar, Rebecca Cole's thick Hammond organ drones.
In the sixth of seven shows they were scheduled to play this week at the 25th annual South by Southwest Music Conference, Wild Flag raised the ante Friday for their yet-to-be recorded debut album. Brownstein and Weiss took the cerebral passion of their old band, Sleater Kinney, and sent it rocketing out into a far less confined world, one where psychedelic guitars and free-form jams roamed free. Brownstein and Timony, herself a force in the band Helium, were a rambunctious combination up front, their guitars jousting while they crashed into each other and tumbled on the stage. Weiss and Cole held it all down, with Weiss making like a more disciplined Keith Moon, keeping the songs on course even as she orchestrated crescendo after crescendo with her drum volleys.
It was one of those sets where you wish you could rewind it and experience the whole thing over again, right now. The quartet closed with a storming version of Patti Smith's "Ask the Angels," Timony crumpling to the stage floor while Brownstein egged her on. "Wild, wild, wild..."
Though Wild Flag was easily the best band I've seen at the conference, there were some fine sets earlier in the evening. The Seattle collective Shabazz Palaces, with their reggae-flavored stoner hip-hop, the seven-part vocal harmonies of AgesAndAges, the punk-meets-the-Shangri-Las harmonies of the Dum Dum Girls (once some microphone malfunctions were overcome).
At a showcase for Spanish rock bands, the Barcelona quartet Mujeres got off to a slow start, clearly a bit intimidated by the prospect of playing a major North American show. But by the end the band was doing a terrific job of channeling '50s rockabilly and '60s Nuggets-style garage rock -- not just the sound, but the attitude behind the sound. When the singer started barking like a feral dog, the music kicked to another level, finally bowling everyone over with a rousing cover of the Velvet Underground's "Run, Run, Run."
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