About Last Night – SXSW Friday

We are still standing after a full week of tunes with one, maybe two, more days left to go amongst the craziness in Austin. The ATH crew was once again spread out all over town yesterday and into the night, so expect a huge variety of bands on our highlight’s list. Hopefully we will catch ya’ll out there today if we’ve missed you so far! Full highlights, thoughts and fancy photos from Friday can be found after the jump.

RayRay’s Top Friday Bands: Free Range started me early at Hole in the Wall and I really can’t praise the songwriting of Sofia Jensen. They are one of the best and brightest songwriters currently coming up in that genre. Things kicked up a notch with Last Waltzon at Victory Lap over in West campus. The college nerds at the venue were uber lame, but the band still brought that garage meets thrash joy to the stage.

Tweedy’s was a thing last night. TVOD destroyed on the tiny inside stage with their brand of Idles post-punk mixed with math rock. Truck Violence also brought the place down and should be a must see band for you today if you haven’t caught them yet. Also lovely lads who gave us a rundown on the current scene in Montreal. They’ve taken what Austin veterans East Cameron Folkcore started and turned it into a screaming, bloody mess.

BGray’s Top Friday Bands: Too much. Catching Night Drive (at night) always fixes the mood. PAL and STEEF both added to the quirky quotient; each band had their own brand of oddity backed by great musicianship, especially in the rhythm sections. But the day was kind of all about Gurriers. First thing I saw, caught them again in a tiny space and it was mental.

Nathan”s Top Friday Bands: At the risk of just mimicking Brian, Gurriers are the band of the fest for me. There’s a lot of bands with stage presence, but for me, the music can sometimes be lacking. But, in my opinion, this Irish lot had both…and not sure I saw many better this week, save for Gloin. Living Hour had a late night set inside Mohawk that was a perfect little night cap, gentle and biting where it needed to be. PAL‘s take on a modern Devo performance was spot on too, just as Brian said. Basically…what those guys above said!

Big gallery…