Under the Radar and Team Clermont Presents:
The Official SXSW College Party
The Flamingo Cantina, Austin, TX
March 15, 2007

The Official SXSW College Party, presented by Under the Radar and Team Clermont, began with the spectacle of 18-piece Athens, Georgia band Dark Meat marching down the street. Fueled by their horn and drum sections, the ensemble passed out beads and advanced right into the Flamingo Cantina and onto the stage to immediately begin their set. Those who showed up early to claim their free pair of Saucony shoes were treated to Dark Meat’s mantra of, “Well fuck you then!”

Most of Gruff Rhys’ instruments had been lost at the airport, so the Welsh singer and Super Furry Animals frontman played songs from his sophomore solo record Candylion with only the accompaniment of an out of tune acoustic guitar and Lisa Jen’s lovely voice. In fact, his set’s first few songs were played near a capella while Rhys tuned his guitar. By song three Rhys admitted, “I think we’ve run out of our songs that we can do without instruments.”

Headlights rocked an accordion on “Owl Eyes” and got the party jumping again with their energetic orchestral-shoegaze-pop. Sweden’s Loney, Dear were incredibly humble, with frontman Emil Svanängen apologizing multiple times: “We’re doing our best.” Svanängen had a wonderful tone to his voice, the band’s Beach Boys-inspired melodies soared in a live setting, and the drummer even drummed with a beer bottle at one point.

Polka-dot dress wearing girl-group trio The Pipettes were one of the most buzzed about bands at SXSW 2007 and they did not disappoint at our party. It’s hard to go wrong when you have three foxy British women doing cute synchronized dances (such as “the finger wag”), displaying great audience interaction, and performing the wry and catchy songs off their debut We Are The Pipettes. They also played the new song “True Love Waits Patiently for a Miracle,” which Gwenno introduced as such: “This next song is about when I was younger and I used to go out with a lot of arseholes and my friends all told me they were dicks.”

The event ended on a high with funky Aussies Architecture in Helsinki, who had an admirable quest to get any and all to dance. “If I’m going to faint up here, you’re gonna faint down there,” proclaimed AIH’s Kellie Sutherland.

Thanks are due to Team Clermont, SXSW, Polyvinyl Records, MPress Records, Danger Village, Liquid Generation, Saucony Shoes, and all the artists for helping to make it such a memorable and packed event!

Words by Mark Redfern
Photos by Wendy Lynch

www.sxsw.com
www.teamclermont.com
www.polyvinylrecords.com
www.mpressrecords.com
www.liquidgeneration.com
www.saucony.com

4/2007