Pick Your Poison: Monday 3-11-13

Sooo we’ve hit the week that many hardcore music fans know as SXSW Week. If you’re not a hardcore music fan, let me give you a very quick overview of what that’s all about. See, there’s this big conference happening in Austin, Texas. It’s called South By Southwest, and features a few different sectors, including Film and Interactive. But for music geeks, the Music portion is the one where all the focus is at. In addition to the many speaking panels with musician and music industry guests talking about various aspects of the industry, there’s also hundreds upon hundreds of showcases that occur all across the streets of downtown Austin. Empty warehouses, open fields, parking garages and everything in between suddenly become concert venues, and almost every conceivable band descends on the town to perform in the hopes of either getting discovered or praised for new music they’re playing. Bands like Green Day, Tegan & Sara, Best Coast and a whole lot more established names will pop up at a show or two, but mostly there’s a lot of small bands working hard, playing a half dozen or more shows over the course of 3-5 days, and wearing themselves out in the process. There’s rumors that Prince will play a secret show this year, and maybe even Daft Punk too. When I went for the first time last year, I had a blast and made memories that will last for a lifetime. The big names performing then were Jack White, who was just establishing himself as a solo artist, and Bruce Springsteen, who was the keynote speaker at the conference and later put on a 3+ hour show at a small venue that blew some minds. I was unable to get into either of those shows, but will never forget standing front and center for a big Sleigh Bells set or seeing Grimes perform 3 times in a couple days and watching as she progressively lost her voice. There was the time I saw Best Coast and Frankie Rose play on top of a parking garage where there were only a handful of people for some reason and all the free alcohol you could drink. How about when I saw Fiona Apple perform her first live show in a few years, during which she performed a couple new songs off her then-forthcoming album The Idler Wheel…? There were a bunch more great moments similar to those that I don’t want to get into right now, except to say that you can read through those many memories and all my SXSW coverage from 2012 right here. For 2013, I’m spending SXSW at home, unable to get to Texas this year. I miss it and want to go back. Perhaps in 2014? I think almost definitely. If you’re in Austin this week, I hope you have a blast. If not, I strongly advise you to make it out there if you have the financial means of doing so. Now then, let’s get to today’s Pick Your Poison. I’ll recommend tracks from 1939 Ensemble, All Tiny Creatures, Liam Singer, Radiation City and Suburban Living. In the Soundcloud section after the jump, stream songs from The Appleseed Cast, Austra, James Blake, Merchandise, and Ryan Hemsworth’s remix of Lana Del Rey’s “Summertime Sadness”.