Friday, April 07, 2006

RS: SXSW Big Guns

I'm going to give you a rundown of the five bands that made the biggest splash at SXSW according to Rolling Stone. They are, in order of how excited I am about them:

Riverboat Gamblers
The sound: Very accessible punk. 4 good songs streaming on the MySpace page. The frontman gets pretty hot at the show: in the crowd, hanging from rafters, all in all getting after it. RS calls them "the best band without a major label deal at SXSW '06." I would laugh this off and investigate further, but David Fricke is writing it. And I tend to agree with him. I like the fact that they have the best line from JAWS in one of their songs: "I think we're gonna need a bigger boat."
Official Site
MySpace
Band blog
Insound
Upcoming East Coast shows:
April 29th @ Masquerade Downstairs - Atlanta, GA
April 30th @ Casbah - Charlottle, NC
May 3rd @ Northstar Bar - Philadelphia, PA
May 5th @ Ottobar - Baltimore, MD
May 7th @ Bamboozle - East Rutherford, NJ
May 28th @ HFStival - Columbia, MD

The Sword
The sound: Metal at its best. You can't help but feel and hear Iommi's influence. SPIN noted: "the best band I saw [at SXSW 2005] was called THE SWORD, this metal band from Austin. They're sort of like BLACK SABBATH Vol. 4, sort of like early PRONG, sort of like IRON MAIDEN...like a bunch of bison being pushed over a cliff." Hmmm. I am definitely checking these guys out. They are signed to the same record label as Elefant and Danava (don't even get me started on the band that is Danava), Kemado records, and have opened for pipe-hitting acts like ...TRAIL OF DEAD and MASTODON.
Kemado Records site
Official Site
Press links
MySpace
Insound
Upcoming East Coast shows:
Apr 7 2006 8:00P @ Maxwell's Hoboken, NJ
Apr 8 2006 8:00P @ The Living Room Providence, RI
Apr 9 2006 8:00P @ CBGB New York, NY
Apr 11 2006 8:00P @ Icon Buffalo, NY

Len Price 3
The sound: Garage rock. A self-proclaimed "mix of Stooges' rawness and Ramones-y pop suss." Fricke throws The Kinks and Dr. Feelgood into that pot and I have to admit there is a lot to like on the MySpace sampler and the tracks on the Rolling Stone article. I will definitely keep an ear out.
Official Site
MySpace
Insound
No upcoming shows.

The Octopus Project
The sound: Fricke calls it "instrumental space-dance" and I will have to agree. While I am not going to run out and listen to a CD full of this stuff, I am going to give a college effort to bump into their set at Coachella. The sound is catchy and while there are no words, it rocks a little bit. Actually, as each song progresses, they rock a lot. Interesting.
Official Site
MySpace
Insound
April 30th 12:00PM @ Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival Indio, CA

Jakobinarina
The sound: I'm sorry. The intro to every song sounds like a loop behind a 1980s videogame. I'm not buying it. Maybe these teeny-boppers from Iceland bring the pain in a live setting, I don't know. I just don't have the patience for it right now. But, I will give them another chance,...later. No album to date, but Ken Thomas of Sigur Ros is producing the debut single. Check it out for yourself.
MySpace (Official site)
No upcoming shows.

3 comments:

JK said...

damn, great post. hadn't heard of any of these bands aside from riverboat gamblers. good shit to check out here.

Bryan said...

octopus project are going to be huge. i actually didn't get to see them even though they played in the same little day festival thing on south 1st that we (Man in Gray) played (but a couple hours later) but i got their cd and heard great things about their shows from lots of people.

NF said...

Sounds great. We will def. check them out at Coachella. Love your band's stuff on FreeIndie.com. Hope you get more fans from our link. Looking forward to you guys heading down to DC for a show.