SXSW: Day 2, Part 2

Here’s what I saw last night:

• No Age: Probably my favorite thing. Messy noise collages punctuated by sharp blasts of melodic punk. Or maybe reverse that.
• Baptist Generals: From Denton, but haven’t seen them in years. They set up on a carpet on the floor of the club with no mikes/amplifiers, and managed to get the crowd to shut up and listen. A rarity here.
• Red Red Meat: Reunion of this Chicago Sub Pop band delivered exactly what you’d expect; I expected solid.
• Al Kapone: Kind of an accident; meant to see another band from Memphis, River City Tanlines. But they moved everything back and I ended up here with Kapone, who did a lot of music for Hustle & Flow. Not bad. But I wasn’t really looking to get crunk.
• The Thermals: Other than some minor equipment trouble, they were excellent. Singer looks, and kind of acts, like Stephen Malkmus from Pavement fronting a pop-punk band.
• Fight Bite: More Denton folks. If you haven’t seen them around here, you should. Kind of fog-headed this morning, so I’ll just say they remind me of Twin Peaks.
• Wavves: Went to see these guys again. Still good.

Busy day today. Lots of the big day parties and such.