Music

10 acts to have on your SXSW radar

by AUX staff

SXSW! You know it’s happening because you are a person reading a music site with eyes and a brain. Soon, AUX will be settling in to our palatial Austin homestead (read: four of us will be in one room in the cheapest hotel we can find) to bring you all the highs and lows from a week of non-stop barbeque and free beer and music sometimes. But before we plug in our laptops and crack the energy drinks to fuel our 2am blogging, we wanted to offer our picks for 10 bands worth keeping an eye out for during the week’s festivities. You already know that you have to see Grimes, Sharon Van Etten, and A$AP Rocky, so here are ten acts that might have missed your initial scroll through the billion bands descending on Texas this week.

Pilgrim In February, we anointed this band’s debut, Misery Wizard, as one of the best metal releases of the month. They’re more than that, though — they’re a massively heavy and promising new doom metal band that kicks out Sabbath-style riffs with the weight of Sleep’s Dopesmoker. Bring earplugs.

Action Bronson Dr. Lector, the debut album from this Queens-based rapper, came out a year ago this SXSW (March 15, 2011). Over the past 12 months, the former chef has won accolades from everyone from Pitchfork to Statik Selektah, who paired with Bronson on the late 2011 release, Well-Done.

Emperor X On record, veteran noise-pop weirdo C.R. Matheny can be, you know… a weird noise-pop artist. Matheny has made a career out of his ample talents inside this particular niche, but the band’s live show is an even more exciting and inclusive spectacle, with effortless improvisation and a blurred fourth wall all rooted in a fine collection of what might sound like folk standards if everyone on stage wasn’t playing a floor tom while a guy roams around the room singing with no microphone. Sometimes it sounds like super freaky Mountain Goats. Which is great.

The Airplane Boys On the heels of their AUX-approved second release, Alignment, this Toronto duo is prepping for their upcoming Coachella appearance with a blast of SXSW shows. They utilize hooks in a creative way that could position them for some big love in the coming year without alienating the heads who got hooked on their debut, Where’ve You Been.

Ninjasonik They write unabashed party jams that aren’t embarrassing to listen to, which is praise enough. But there’s nuance to Ninkasonik’s music that can be easily missed by their peers, both on the punk and hip-hop sides of their omnivorous sounds. They cite GG Allin alongside ODB as influences, and the mark of both worlds is present in their tunes, which are likely to sound just as anthemic at one in the afternoon as three in the morning.

The Sidekicks Like Weezer but more punk but not too punk! The song here is a Replacements cover recorded over the phone, but you get the idea. They’ve got perfect harmonies and great songs and they’re from Ohio and put on house shows. You will love them for sure.

Cannon Bros. If you dig lo-fi ’90s jams but you hate irony or deliberate homage, Winnipeg’s Cannon Bros. will just make you weep and smile and then everyone on the train will look at you. The jubilant innocence conveyed on the band’s debut, Firecracker/Cloudglow, is so great and real and catchy and life-affirming that if they can’t pull this off live I’ll stop believing in the joy of music and probably eat a gun.

Narrows Bands hate when lazy journalists use their former musical pursuits as shorthand for a description of the new group’s sound. Well, fuck it — Botch! Unbroken! These Arms Are Snakes! Bullet Union! You do not need to know anything else but you probably want to listen to the song below.

Kendrick Lamar With a list of collaborators that includes Drake, Snoop Dog, and Dr. Dre, Kendrick Lamar might not be exactly under the radar — his Section.80 topped our best-of 2011 list — but he has less than 50 000 fans on Facebook, so, whatever. His next record is coming out on Interscope, so check him out now, brag forever.

Dessa Part of the acclaimed midwestern Doomtree crew, Dessa’s solo output is amongst the collective’s best. Her unique approach to contemporary hip-hop and R&B is difficult to describe, a restrained and lush sound that gives her vocal and lyrical talents ample room to stretch without falling into a pit of vocal braggadocio. It’s best to stream a few of her songs, buy all her records, and then catch a show, either solo, or with the whole Doomtree team, who seem poised to knock Austin on its ass following the success of their latest full-length, No Kings.