Stella Donnelly, Shame and more of the best things we saw at SXSW 2018

Across seven days, in the balmy heat of Austin and with the Beast from the East a distant bad dream, SXSW offers up an almost entirely overwhelming selection of music coming out of every venue, bar, road side and student block available.

Don’t get us wrong, not everyone here is set to be the next Lorde. From novelty-outfitted rappers on street corners, to a hipster with a typewriter professing himself to be a ‘poet for hire’ and a group of old men playing very aggressive violins that we happen to stumble upon whilst having a wee, there’s a lot of nonsense nestled among the hype. But oh lordy, is there hype too. Stumble down the main stretch of 6th Street – which remains barricaded off for the whole week because this place is far too crowd for such trivialities as cars – and you’ll find 14 solid hours of non-stop bands a day. From the unofficial daytime showcases to the super-buzzy evening hot tips, SXSW is a constant barrage of people and noise.

On the Monday night, DIY teamed up with the British Music Embassy to bring some of the best sounds from our shores over for a big, sweaty showcase at Latitude 30 featuring LIFE, Our Girl, Catholic Action and more. On Wednesday, meanwhile, we headed over to new venue Seven Grand for a party all of our own, bringing homegrown talent (Goat Girl, Suzi Wu) and our Transatlantic chums (Public Access TV, The Britanys and more) together for one intercontinental love in.

But apparently, there’s more to life than our own showcases. And so, in that spirit, here’s the best of everything else we saw at last week’s Texas knees up.

Stella Donnelly

If there was an award for the festival’s Most Charming, then Australia’s Stella Donnelly would be lapping almost all the competition. Solo and armed only with a guitar, her dry humour – both in song and off – dispels any risk of sombre singer-songwriter-dom, instead imbuing the whole thing with an easy, affable appeal. Whether she’s sassing a man who told her she swears too much in the run up to ‘Mechanical Bull’ - “I’m gonna keep on fucking doing it,” she twinkles by way of a punchline – or closing the set with the honeyed, ’50s lilt of ‘Mean To Me’, the sweetest song around about someone being an asshole, Stella is the kind of warm narrator that has the crowd in the palm of her hands. There are weighty moments too – not least in recent single ‘Boys Will Be Boys’, a dissection around the culture of victim blaming. But, deftly veering between these pillars with a flawless pair of pipes and an endearing amount of chutzpah, Stella’s already challenging fellow Aussie Courtney Barnett for the witty social commentary crown.

Anemone

Depending on your natural levels of cynicism, Montreal’s Anemone could go one of two ways. For those of the “fucking hippies” school of thought, the psych-pop quintet’s free-loving schtick (featuring some Rainbow Rhythms level dance moves from singer Chloe Soldevila) will have your eyes rolling to the back of your neck. On a sun-dappled Austin afternoon, however, you can’t help but be sucked in. Channelling a Flaming Lips-esque level of weirdo good vibes, they pepper songs with French and finish by dishing out tambourines and inviting the crowd to dance with them on stage. Grab a flower garland and give in.

Sunflower Bean

Heading into second album ‘TwentyTwo In Blue’, New Yorkers Sunflower Bean now have a formidable arsenal of material at their disposal. Where cuts from debut ‘Human Ceremony’ proved them to be a band capable of disparate pleasures - the razor-edged ‘Wall Watcher’ a sonic mile away from the lilting sweetness of ‘Easier Said’ - their second goes some way to filling in the gaps. Dishing up semi-title track ‘TwentyTwo’ and its Fleetwood Mac gauzy softness alongside the classic rock stomp of ‘Crisis Fest’, the trio’s canon continues to take new side streets, while simultaneously connecting the roadmap into one superior whole.