Best of SXSW (is it part four already?)

My purpose-driven life this week is to try to get through all of this incredible music. I'm getting turned onto a lot of new bands but maybe the next chapter in my purpose-driven life (after getting pancakes made for me and hanging up some curtains for this lady I abducted) will be finding the scratch to buy records from all these bands I've discovered. OF course, the real question, pancakes or no, is will I be able to finish this quest before the incompetent Atlanta police come bashing down the door of the good Christian woman who has allowed me hole up here.

So without further ado...here's another batch - from the FRIDAY mix - this time with songs in alphabetical order. Great songs all:

"Alone and unaware, the landscape was transformed before our eyes" - Red Sparowes - I'm really enamored with this lengthy psyche rock instrumental - it was already available from their website and comes off their latest album - where the song names are all sentences which when put together form a coherent paragraph. Huh. I found it to be a great late night jam.

"Artificial Intelligence Agency" - Detholz! - A song that I almost clicked off after 30 seconds because the verse was somewhat of a rehash of '80's new wave but am glad I stuck around for the melodic hooky chorus. Give it a chance.

"Anonyme" - Samadha - You would think the Kenny G. sax that oversees this spacey instrumental jazz would be cause for turning all the 1's and 0's into neutrons but I was in the kitchen working on my pancakes so I couldn't turn it off. Like moss, it grew all over me until I just fell asleep in the forest surrounded by capricious critters wearing sunglasses and smoking magical white powder.

"Aye, Me" - Living Better Electrically - OK, I had put a ban on all songs that references "cracks in the ceiling" since I saw Jared Hendrickson perform but I'll make an exception for this piece. Ziggy Stardust writes a song for Queen and then sings it himself.

"Baaah-Sheep-Baaah" - Oh, Beast - A funny one especially when considering SXSW in general.

"Banging Everything in Sight" - Tomorrow's Friend - A kind of lo-fi answer to Fiery Furnaces. All-female (and growing) Brooklyn collective that is going to be on my watch list if only to protect myself when walking down the street.

"Banquet" - Bloc Party - Franz Ferdinand goes to bed with that bloke from Interpol that looks like Crispin Glover but wakes up in the morning to discover Andy Gill under the sheets. I'm not on the bandwagon but I'm walking covertly behind the bandwagon waiting for them to throw some remixes of this out hoping that no one notices.

"Bobbed Hair" - Titan's Go King - Puts the bop back into Shonen Knife if the bop were an inbred Japanese hillbilly.

"Bright Young Men" - The Arm - They are bright young men and you shall know them.

"Bring On Happiness" - L'altra - Gorked-up indie-pop full of little aural prizes that pop up here and there - like the little girl voice and the back and forth mix - stick in your headphone mixes.

"Curve That Byrd" - Head of Femur - Brit-style Orchestral rock as filtered through the Meat Puppets and then run through the Flaming Lips filter.

"Filthy Boy" - Punish the Atom - I'm on the fence about this one because it reminds me too much of the late unlamented Hooters and their reggae pop but then it reminds me of PiL, too so you can see how I'm torn.

"Fake French" - El Guapo aka Supersystem - Another headphone song that, not counting the sarcastic vocals, was probably made entirely on a computer. Plus its a Dischord band (now Touch and Go). First Edie Sedgewick and not this... I'm really becoming a wavo, aint?

"First We Must Meet the Elders" - Gorch Fock - If the new Dr. Who movie wants to be hip, they oughta have this avant-orchestral scorcher on the soundtrack. Great way to end the mix given what we started with.