Thao & The Get Down Stay Down were an alternative rock band that had been around since the early 2000s. While they put out an album, Temple, during the early months of the pandemic, even making quite a splash with a Zoom-based official music video for the single “Phenom”, they decided to dissolve and go their separate ways in 2021.
Fast forward to 2023, this night at the Central Presbyterian, Thao played a selection from that album for a select but discerning crowd. In hindsight, this was the better venue at which to see them, as opposed to the Thursday night show at the Austin Convention Center. Which in turn was still a bit better than that show’s original location – a Lady Bird Lake Community Concert that was beset by lightning and torrential rain.
Thao was everything that a veteran performer should be – energetic yet gracious, sharing the stage very generously with not only her bandmates but also some guests. But that belies the fact that the performance itself was ferocious and thoroughly enjoyable even if one discounts the unavoidable moments of catharsis from the very act of playing a three year old album after being so suppressed by the pandemic.
To be honest, I am reaching for the digital album for a re-listen as I write – not so I can reminisce to compose a proper review, but to delight in discovering something that I wouldn’t have thought was my cup-of-tea. Frankly, you should too.
By the way – how are there so many t-shirts on earth?
I mean, let’s say on average everyone has 15
You times that by billions of people
How is there enough raw materials?
I wear the same 3 of them
I’ve got 124 too many
And they just keep coming
The words above, taken from the title track of Ron Gallo’s latest album Foreground Music, stuck out to me during his set at Cheer Up Charlies as part of the Kill Rock Stars showcase. Coming near the end of a week where massive amounts of free swag, including many, many t-shirts, were being given out to SXSW attendees, I couldn’t help but think, “Yeah, how are there enough raw materials? What am I supposed to do with all these t-shirts? And do I really need this Raising Cane’s keychain?” No, no I do not.
It turns out that what I did need, however, was to take in a Ron Gallo show. While I was familiar with his music, I had never seen Gallo live before, but after seeing him live, I now consider myself a fan. Gallo impressed with his clever lyrics and a garage meets art-rock sound, with tunes like “Entitled Man” and the aforementioned “Foreground Music” standing out as highlights.
The absolute standout of Gallo’s set though was the Jonathan Richman-eque “I Love Someone Buried Deep Inside Of You,” a moving portrait of someone who sees that a person they love is too far gone and no longer the person they once were, but the love for them is still there. Check it out below.
Bringing choreographed movements to their synthy, lo-fi, dreamy, soft pop melodies, Barrie (aka Barrie Lindsay and friends) charmed the afternoon crowd at Cheer up Charlies. Their songs were catchy and the harmonizing reminded me of Au Revoir Simone. Very pleasant.
Barrie’s new EP 5K is out on March 31st.
Model/Actriz, March 14, Cheer Up Charlies
Pounding bass, disco beats and distant lyrics – the electrifying Model/Actriz show brought everyone back to a Brooklyn warehouse in 2004 with a sound that would be fitting of any DFA party that must have gone on since then. I miss this type of music and judging by the crowd, they did too.
I’m looking forward to diving into Model/Actriz’s new music, including the recently released Dogsbody, which got an 8.2 on Pitchfork.
Blondshell, March 16, Radio Day Stage
With songs like “Veronica Mars” and musical influences from bands like Hole and Alanis Morrissette, Blondshell sounds straight out of the mid-’90s. Lead singer Sabrina Teitelbaum delivers her songs and stage banter (“here’s a song about salad”) with a confident charisma that delighted the small crowd in the cavernous Ballroom A. Definitely a band on the rise.
Blondshell’s self-titled debut comes out April 7th.
Doug Tompkins, his wife Kris, and their close circles of nature-loving extreme athletes (climbers, surfers, skiers, kayakers… you name it, they’ve got it) rode the wave of entrepreneurship and popularized their ’70s free-spirit lifestyle into products that are still going strong today. This exulted C-level cast may bring people to this documentary to romanticize about dinner-con-night-walk along the Seine and all the other million things that seemed so easy to go right when the stakes are low. Yet, in reality, were the stakes all that low?
From Doug and Kris Tompkins’ point of view, they certainly were not. An extractive philosophy from both industry and governments held captive many other, more harmonious ways to give value to natural resource wealth. In developing and developed countries alike, the adjectives merely distinguished whether resources have been sufficiently depleted. Our society was happily re-opening the industrial wounds on the natural world, which had never fully healed since the 18th century. While the Tompkins cannot hope to sway the forces that be in the United States, they may yet do so for less entrenched nations and save them from dire straits.
Their plan was to simply buy land, to preserve and conserve through direct ownership. Unfortunately, their push for land acquisition in Chile and Argentina ran into bad timing of a significant proportion. Barely two decades after the tumult of the Pinochet dictatorship and that of the military junta, respectively, suspicions abound as to the true intent of these foreigners. After long hardships, Chileans and Argentines also had few reasons to give up their immediate prosperity for long-term ecosystem stability.
And so, as the stage opened and home videos of Doug Tompkin’s funeral rolled, this seemed destined to remain just another impossible American Dream. Instead of being just a touching memorial, however, the main thrust of Wild Life is to document the journey of Kris Tompkins as she completes the dream for her late husband. She would consolidate their land into practices and policies, and eventually establish functioning national parks there. Being mostly a documentary about nature conservancy, there are obligatory wide and stunning landscapes from both the ’90s and more recent times. It is also filled with interviews from the Tompkins’ close friends and allies in both government and civilian roles, but obviously only the positive influences. On the other hand, to fulfill the vicarious thirst to see people push themselves in needlessly harsh circumstances, it is also stuffed with tales enshrining how “hardcore” these early pioneers were.
A cynical take on the motivation here could be that of a brand-building exercise for North Face and Patagonia et al. But I’d like to think that is far from the truth. I believe the film was more about legacy building – by way of introducing one such, albeit giant, legacy, send a call-to-arms for all of us to build the same, multi-millionaires or not. Logical long-term thinking from any number of angles will inevitably favor “not destroying ourselves for the sake of some arbitrary definition of progress” as the all-time best practice. Sadly, while one can convince people to mime their love for nature via puffy jackets and carabiners, it is not easy to entice the uninitiated to live that nature-loving lifestyle. Yes, even with lots of money.
