Reaching For The Brass Ring: Philly Bands at South By Southwest
What’s that you say? You’re going to be in Austin later this week to witness the spectacle of South By Southwest in all of its Makin’-It-In-The-Music-Biz glory? What a coincidence! So are a bunch of bands from Philadelphia. Today (and tomorrow), we take a quick look at a handful of the local acts we hope don’t come back to town with horror stories of being herded around the Lone Star State like sheep to the slaughter.
Grandchildren
From early October to mid-November, it felt like we couldn’t go more than a few days without posting about Grandchildren. That could be because the experimental-rock band’s debut full-length, Everlasting, was released in late September—just before many of the other local albums we would gush over in the second half of 2010. But it probably has more to do with the fact that the record is amazing. Either way, our Grandchildren-related posting has considerably cooled since then. But our enthusiasm for the band has not; in fact, we’re hoping that anyone who catches the band during its Wednesday-night performance at Malverde is as impressed as we were.
When you spend the majority of your workdays singing the praises of local bands, it’s easy to feel like the Philadelphia music scene occasionally gets unfairly overlooked by the national press. (Particularly when, say, not a single Philly-based band manages to land a song on a widely recognized website’s “Top 100 Tracks of 2010″ list.) Thankfully, there are acts like Strand Of Oaks bringing in plenty of out-of-town attention. In the last year or so, Strand Of Oaks (aka Tim Showalter) released Pope Killdragon to critical acclaim, recorded a Daytrotter session, launched a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign (to fund Killdragon‘s vinyl release), and even dropped by the WXPN studios for a Key Studio Session; more recently, the band made headlines for its cover of the Phosphorescent track “Wolves.” We expect Showalter to keep turning heads when he performs Wednesday night at Central Presbyterian Church.
Hoots And Hellmouth
With a new EP called Face First In The Dirt out today, Hoots And Hellmouth are bringing their roots-rock revival to Austin for six shows (including a Folk Alliance showcase at Threadgill’s on Saturday, March 19th). You can download a new song, “Picked By The Root” from the band’s EP here.
Right now, it looks like the hardest working Philly band at SXSW is going to be Creepoid, which recently released its fantastic debut album, Horse Heaven. They’ve got at least eight shows booked—including our SXSWPHILLY 2011 on Thursday, March 18, at The Broken Neck (along with many of our favorite Philly bands). Below, Creepoid’s new video for “Grave Blanket.”