The Best of SXSW Day Three: Black Keys, Godcaster, May Rio, and More
The blues-rock stars play a rare club gig, but there was plenty more to be found if you couldn't get in
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SXSW 2024 is in full swing, complete with a new next-to-impossible ticket. The Black Keys continued the promo run they began Thursday afternoon with a keynote Q&A with Rolling Stone‘s Angie Martoccio by heading to Mohawk, a downtown club whose capacity is just a shade smaller than the arenas and festival stages they normally play. Accordingly, many fans got turned away at the door when the fire-code capacity for the Keys’ set of blues covers was reached, well before their midnight start time. But there were tons of other great shows happening all day and night, many of them at the kind of out-of-the-way unofficial venues that provide some of the best experiences in Austin. Here are the best things we saw.
Mei Semones Floats in a Jazzy Way
If you’re looking to grab a vegan, gluten-free muffin at the excellent north Austin bakery Zucchini Kill, you’ll have to walk through the backyard of a bar called Tweedy’s. And if you were there on Thursday afternoon, you were in luck, because that back Tweedy’s yard was hosting an off-the-radar showcase with one of the day’s best lineups. Around 5 p.m., people milled around as Brooklyn singer-songwriter Mei Semones played delicate bossa nova/jazz ballads from her new Kabutomushi EP. She and her band — a sweet three-person string section, plus a lightly swinging drummer — had to fight to be heard at times over the murmur of the crowd and the noise of a neighboring bar. But when Semones began strumming her guitar more emphatically, it all connected and drew impressed applause. —S.V.L.
Godcaster Cast Their Spell
Next door at the Ballroom, another dive with a stage in the backyard, New York six-piece Godcaster were summoning an unholy racket. There were doomy, crashing chords, relentless drumming, a pounding keyboard, and some vigorous tambourine. At the center of it all was their lead singer, Judson Kolk, an honest-to-god rock frontman in the mode best described as “possibly possessed.” Stretching his body skyward, hunching down, leaping up, vibrating in place, he was noise in human form. A couple of songs later, the band fell quiet while Von Kolk, who’d been shaking that tambourine before, stepped to the mic for a high, unsettling vocal wail that tilted toward performance art when she hopped off the stage and walked deliberately into the crowd. Later still, keyboardist David McFaul took a turn on vocals, showing off his own snake-dance moves and DIY-Jim Morrison vocals on a long, feedback-drenched song called “Didactic Flashing Antidote,” and it was Judson Kolk’s turn to leap offstage and confront members of the audience while brandishing a guitar. (This is clearly a band from the same scene as Model/Actriz, the buzziest band at last year’s SXSW.) Godcaster are shapeshifters. Who knows where they’ll go next? —S.V.L.
Softee Serves Some Pop for a Good Cause
Nina Grollman, the pop mind behind Softee, arrived onstage at Elysium for the City Slang label showcase in a Working Girl-esque blazer. (This is Rolling Stone’s second time referencing the 1988 Mike Nichols film in our SXSW 2024 coverage. We stand by it.) Accompanied by a guitarist, a drummer, a laptop, and one hell of a voice, Grollman performed tracks from last year’s Natural, her excellent “cash cow” single “Oh No,” and a handful of new material. Above all, the Juilliard-trained Broadway actor delivered queer psych-pop magic at a time when SXSW needs it most. “We’re really happy to be here,” she told the crowd. “Obviously this festival, we all know at this point — I mean, I hope the people in this room at least know — how fucking problematic and weird it is as artists. Like, what are we supposed to do? It’s really fucking crazy. And we just want to say we do not support the war-mongering and the U.S. military funding of this festival. But we are here to raise money for abortions and abortion access in Texas, and we are all very passionate about that cause, and that’s why we’re here tonight. Because we really believe this is amplifying that.” This is the second year in a row that Softee has made our Best of SXSW list — don’t sleep on her music. —A.M.
Flo Milli Came to Party
Flo Milli took the crowd at Rolling Stone’s Future of Music showcase at a pivotal moment — not just because she was the night’s headliner. “This night is so special to me,” she told the crowd, “ ’cause the album is dropping in a few minutes.” It’s true: The Alabama rapper’s second LP, Fine Ho, Stay, literally came out while she was onstage in Austin. It’s a more vulnerable set of songs from the rapper, but tonight Flo mostly displayed her preternatural self-confidence. Wearing cutoffs and knee-high boots, hair extending beyond her waist, she dived into anthems such as “Like That Bitch,” which rides boasts like, “Her boyfriend in my DMs saying, ‘Oh, I need your fine ass’.” Milli has been a rapper to watch — and wildly fun to listen to — since her breakthrough hit “Beef FloMix,” released when she was still a college student. But this year she scored a chart hit with “Never Lose Me,” a more chill love song. Tonight she introduced it as a song “for all my lover girls,” then delivered a spirited performances to close out her set — or so it seemed. Then, she said, “I got a little treat for y’all,” and played the brand-new remix — featuring Cardi B and SZA — while hopping offstage and taking photos with fans for several minutes. —C.H.
May Rio‘s Pop Dreamworld
A concrete and corrugated-steel space directly facing a parking lot on the outskirts of town isn’t necessarily the most auspicious setting for a show, but New York singer May Rio didn’t let that stop her from conjuring her own dreamworld cabaret in the early evening. “You ask me if I know how beautiful I am/If I say yes, does that mean I’m a bad woman?” Rio, who grew up in Austin, sang on a song called “Monkey Do.” When it was released on her album French Bath last year, it was a spiky electro-pop banger, but she performed it here accompanied only by a cellist and an understated keyboard part, giving the song an unexpected, elegiac tone that lifted it to new heights. “Monkey Do” will appear in that same stripped-down chamber-pop form, along with 12 other reworked songs from her catalog, on her upcoming album, Elegant Ensemble. It’s a format that works for her, spotlighting her vocals to spellbinding effect. Even on the concrete, Rio sounded like a star. —S.V.L.
Voyeur’s Whirl of Noise
Next up at the same austere space (which, it turned out, was a local artists’ studio and gallery complex) were Voyeur, a New York quartet whose well-dressed appearance and calm demeanor gave no hint of the fantastic waves of noise they were about to unleash. Guitarist Jake Lazovick, bass player Joe Kerwin, and drummer Max Freedberg played with savage power alongside lead singer Sharleen Chidiac, a trained dancer and choreographer whose movement elevated the whole band’s sense of tautly controlled chaos. If Voyeur’s wild, thrashing music recalled Sonic Youth, that was something to celebrate as you let the rising tide of feedback move you. —S.V.L.
Uncle Waffles Brings the Beat
Uncle Waffles, a Swazi-born DJ and record producer based in South Africa, came on at Rolling Stone‘s showcase and changed the vibe in a cool way. Waffles, born Lungelihle Zwane, has become a big name in amapiano, the South African style of dance music that’s exploded in recent years, and on Thursday night she kept the crowd moving with a hypnotic, free-flowing set. A hype man interjected here and there — “Go Waffles, go Waffles go!” — but mostly this was about grooves that felt like they could extend forever. Waffles did mix things up by coming out from behind her DJ setup to bust some loose-limbed moves for the crowd. Since she was making everyone else dance, she may as well, too. —C.H.
Early James Eases Into the Evening
“You guys are being too polite,” Early James admonished an early-evening crowd at the Mohawk, many of whom were ensconced to check out the Black Keys later. Journeymen like James don’t skimp on a show, even when they’re not feeling an appropriate interaction from the crowd. Steeped in midcentury Americana, he can fingerpick like Jerry Reed and shred like he has a hellhound on his trail, which in a way makes him the ideal opener for the first of two Easy Eye Sound showcases at SXSW: He loves the past so much that he knows it’s not a sacred text. —S.T.E.
Robert Finley Keeps It Tight
Robert Finley spent the first six decades of his life on the sidelines, playing music without amassing a tangible audience until 2016, when he finally delivered a full-length debut. Cheekily titled Age Don’t Mean a Thing, the record showcased the dynamic performer who prowled the Mohawk stage late on Thursday night. Wiley and lively, Finley isn’t so much legendary as worthy, a sharp and dynamic performer determined to convert every last member of the audience. Finley’s enthusiasm is infectious: He’s a ringleader, intent on papering over differences in taste with energy, an attitude that gives his set a tangible momentum. He’s not playing a set, he’s delivering a show. —S.T.E.
The Black Keys Play a Club Show
If any act dominates SXSW 2024, it’s the Black Keys. The Akron, Ohio, duo headlined the showcase at the Mohawk on Thursday night, capping off an evening of blues rock that operated at a high level of intensity. All the artists on the bill were affiliated in some fashion with Easy Eye Sound, a Nashville recording studio helmed by Dan Auerbach, the guitarist-singer who has fronted the Black Keys since their inception in 2001. Over two decades into their career, they are now humming along at optimal speed, delivering new albums with such regularity it takes some time for the band to catch up to themselves. At the Mohawk on Thursday night, Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney devoted themselves to the grimy, trippy blues-rock they essayed on Delta Kream, a covers record they released early in 2021. Primarily anchored on the blues of their idol Junior Kimbrough — they’ve been recording his songs since 2002’s The Big Come Up — Delta Kream benefitted from the duo’s nonchalance, a quality that extended to their performance at the Mohawk. Deliberately avoiding flash, the Black Keys kept their head down and delivered hearty, muscular music that illustrated how, at its best, blues rock shifts with the times. —S.T.E.
Grupo Fantasma Get Out the Vote
Before finding even more fame with Black Pumas, Adrian Quesada spent time in Grupo Fantasma, an ever-shifting collective that closed the Just Fucking Vote showcase at Stubb’s well after 1 a.m. (The showcase was put on by an activist organization by that name that encourages electoral participation, not allegiance to a particular side.) But Quesada didn’t pop up onstage at the end of a lengthy, varied showcase at Stubb’s, maybe because Grupo Fantasma doesn’t need him: They’re a living, breathing collective, contracting and exhaling according to its members. At Stubb’s as Thursday turned into Friday, the group was bold, colorful, and lively, gaining momentum from the reaction they got from a concentrated but appreciative crowd. It was perhaps the best testament to activism: If you choose to rally the vote, you get a chance to participate in a party as boisterous as this. —S.T.E.
(Full disclosure: In 2021, Rolling Stone’s parent company, P-MRC, acquired a 50 percent stake in the SXSW festival.)