Broken Social Scene

SXSW Diary: My Dud Recommendation

by Colin Medley

March 19, 2010

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In this latest post, Colin Medley find himself utterly disappointing by Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson, bumps into old friends The Wooden Sky and eventually heads to check out Broken Social Scene (pictured).

All day on Thursday, I was looking forward to seeing Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson, a Saddle Creek artist whose record Summer of Fear really took me by surprise late last year. While I was waiting for his midnight start time at Maggie Mae’s, I headed across the street to the M for Montreal showcase. As soon as I got there, I ran in to my friends from The Wooden Sky, who had arrived in Austin a few hours prior but had already played two shows. It was good to see some familiar faces, but the band that was playing was so loud and abrasive, we couldn’t really chat for long. All I heard could hear was the singer screaming, it was actually kind of a scary. I decided to take a closer look, and I found a the singer to be this possessed looking girl flailing around, climbing onto people, rolling around on the floor and generally being weird. I must say, I got pretty into it. The name of the band was Duchess Says, and while I don’t remember any songs, the show was definitely memorable.

As soon as they were done, I went back across the street to catch Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson, and found that a lot of my friends has come too, based on my recommendation. Now, I couldn’t have predicted MBAR wouldn’t be good live. I really don’t know much about him, I just found his promo CD at work and really enjoyed what I heard. It’s a confident, fleshed out album with enough great songs to keep me interested. Live, he played solo, with just a keyboard and guitar, and while others have mastered the stripped down approach, MBAR seemed befuddled at his own setup. Playing a set full of songs that I didn’t recognize (including a few covers I later found out), I couldn’t believe that this was the same person that made that great record I enjoy so much. Except, it was definitely him, he had his own name printed on his t-shirt. Will his 45-minute set was mostly hard to watch, there were glimmers of the greatness I heard on Summer of Fear (most apparent when he played the songs from that album). Still, quite unfortunate since all my friends were coming up to me after his set saying it was, “the worst thing they’d ever seen.” Ouch.

The Rural Albert Advantage were up next, but I only stayed for a few tunes because I wasn’t digging the venue (it had really bad noise bleed from the adjacent venues) and I’ve seen them a billion times, including last year’s SXSW. I love them, but you know, time is precious down here. So I went and saw Broken Social Scene (pictured above). The end.

Tags: Music, News, broken social scene, Colin Medley, SXSW, SXSW 2010, The Wooden Sky

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