The Best of SXSW Day Five: Friko, Chanel Beads, YHWH Nailgun, Greg Freeman, and More

Saturday was the last full day of music at SXSW 2024, and the exodus had begun by early afternoon, with many catching flights out of town just as large numbers of emerald-bedecked St. Patrick’s Day celebrants reclaimed the streets of Austin. But wait! Don’t go yet! There were still tons of brilliant, strange, surprising sounds coming from the venues that make Austin what it is. Here are the best things we saw on March 16.

Friko Get Emotional

With rain threatening in the sky in the early afternoon, Friko summoned a storm at Cheer Up Charlie’s. The Chicago-based band is a duo on record, but they performed here in the classic power-trio lineup of guitar, bass, and drums, and they wrung the most they could out of that equation. Singer-guitarist Niko Kapetan spilled his tender, vulnerable vocals over squalling electric strums; when the band slowed down and joined their voices for some ragged harmonies, they sounded even better. This was their final show of the week, and it felt like they were putting it all on the line (which is also pretty much how this band always sounds). They closed with “Get Numb to It!,” one of the most joyful explosions from their recent ATO Records debut. If this set reminded you of the indie sincerity of the 2000s, it was just proof that everything old can be new again if you do it with enough raw emotion. —S.V.L.

Chanel Beads Bring on the Magic

Chanel Beads is an experimental act with a growing reputation among in-the-know New Yorkers, which puts them right in line for a SXSW breakthrough. At Mohawk around 4 p.m., they showed why their shows have been getting enthusiastic word-of-mouth reviews all week. Shane Lavers sang melodic phrases over the thrum of his bandmates’ electric violin and guitar: “Will my instinct be good? Be good? Be good? Be good?” Noisy and serene at once, it was a fruitful contrast that yielded something oddly like pop. When Chanel Beads took the stage again hours later for a post-midnight set at the Creek and the Cave, they sounded looser, and the crowd responded in kind — dancing, waving hands in the air, and exchanging hugs like they were at a rave, which in a sense they were.  —S.V.L.

Cinema Hearts Make a Good First Impression

Washington, D.C. act Cinema Hearts were facing a sparse audience at a bar on Austin’s west side early on Saturday evening, but no DIY band worth its salt would let that stop them, and Cinema Hearts didn’t. Singer-songwriter Caroline Weinroth was determined to be an engaging presence at her first SXSW, talking about her backstory — “I used to compete in Miss America. I wanted to be Miss Virginia so damn bad that I devoted years of my life and art to it” — in between songs that paired retro-styled prom-queen vocals with pointed lyrics and garage-punk music, as heard on her EPs I Want You and Your Ideal. On the new song “Kinda High School,” she sounded something like if Lesley Gore had lived in Olympia, Washington, in the Nineties. Before another song, she announced: “This one is about how I paid the rent of my ex-boyfriend. Don’t do that!” She closed with a spirited cover of the Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog.” “Now you get to go home and tell your friends, I went to SXSW and saw this girl, she used to be in Miss America, and she did ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog,'” Weinroth told the audience wryly. —S.V.L.

YHWH Nailgun’s Unsettling, Unmissable Spectacle

With a name like YHWH Nailgun, you know you’re not going to be getting gentle acoustic music. At the Creek and the Cave on Saturday night, frontman Zack Borzone delivered on those hints of violence and sacrilege immediately, growling and shouting, his face contorted as if in pain, as the performance began just after 8 p.m. Over unpredictable darts of guitar, loud synth bass hits, and nervously rattling drumming from his three bandmates, he stretched his arms wide, did double-dutch with an invisible rope, and whipped his sweater off like it was burning him. (Dramatic, unpredictable movement was a big theme among buzz bands at this year’s SXSW.) The New York group, which probably won’t be unsigned for much longer, made music you could dance to, even if you wouldn’t always describe what their vocalist was doing as dancing. Songs stopped abruptly, with Borzone teetering unsteadily at the end of the stage, then just as suddenly resumed. You only knew one of them was over when he said “Thank you,” in a surprisingly mild tone, and smiled. —S.V.L.

Greg Freeman’s Heart of Gold

Some musicians make you wonder if what they’re doing is some sort of ironic mischief. Not Greg Freeman. He really means every word, bashing away on his electric guitar as bandmates on bass, drums, saxophone, and pedal steel guitar add rich colors to his visions. Freeman, who’s from Vermont (“We’re gonna drive there tomorrow. It’s too hot here”), is another act who won a lot of new fans at SXSW this year. He performed at the Creek and the Cave wearing a gray blazer over a button-down shirt, and he carried a harmonica around his neck for occasional emphasis. Add to this a high vocal register that makes comparisons to Neil Young inescapable (or to Jason Molina, depending on your frame of reference), and what you’ve got is a new artist who is basically making classic rock in 2024. If you’re into that, Freeman hits the spot.  —S.V.L.

Meet Birthday Girl 

The small back room at Empire Garage and Control Room is a good place to find an under-the-radar pick that melts your circuits. On Saturday afternoon, that was Birthday Girl, an unsigned Brooklyn alt-rock band that has the elements of downtown cool nailed. Singer Eva Smittle stalked the stage in a distressed Death Row Records T-shirt, mini-skirt, and fishnets while her bandmates hammered out heavy riffs. “So sick, dude, must feel so good to be you right now,” she needled on a memorably catchy new one called “Rupert!” The performance gained steam and got noisier as they went along, and by the end the band was drawing impressed cheers.  —S.V.L.

Illenium Drops the Big Beats

You couldn’t quite call Illenium’s set at Billboard’s the Stage at Moody Amphitheater the official closing party for SXSW, but in some respects, it felt like the conference’s last hurrah. The last of three evenings of entertainment at the Stage — the first featured R&B from PartyNextDoor, the second was headlined by Latin star Christian Nodal — this Saturday was dedicated to dance. Facing a busy but not dense crowd as an opener, DJ Sober served up oversized remixes of millennial favorites and prompted the audience to sing along to George W. Bush-era oldies — which they did, shouting out the chorus to Fall Out Boy’s “Sugar, We’re Goin Down” with gusto. 

Illenium doesn’t indulge in such overt gestures to the masses, but he certainly isn’t above crowd-pleasing theatrics, triggering confetti cannons almost as often as lighting great big balls of fire. The pyrotechnics simultaneously serve as punctuation and motivation for his relentless set, and he generated a lot of the action himself. A vigorous presence onstage, Illenium is in constant movement, bopping and dancing behind his gear, twiddling buttons then grabbing a mic to shout at the audience. Bobbing heads, jumping and waving glow sticks, the crowd didn’t get hyped up, per se. They weren’t just there to dance, they were there to marvel at the spectacle, soaking in the cavalcade of sci-fi, fantasy, and video game imagery that adds context to the ominous bass rumble and skittering rhythms, and also meaning. —S.T.E.

Jon Langford Is Everywhere

Jon Langford may have been the hardest-working musician at SXSW, at least as far as the conference’s final day was concerned. The leader of the punk institutions the Mekons was here with the Waco Brothers, the group he formed in the early 1990s so he could explore his love of country music and Americana with ease. The Waco Brothers crammed three separate shows into a marathon Saturday, opening their day with a spot at Mojo’s Final Mayhem — a blowout celebration of the recently departed Mojo Nixon, the rock & roll wildman who was a mainstay of SXSW since its earliest days — then shut down the night with their own bash at the Carousel Lounge, a celebrated dive far off SX’s campus. In between these two extremes came the Waco Brothers’ official showcase at the Palm Door on Sixth, not to mention Langford’s solo showcase at the Seven Grand, arriving less than an hour after the Wacos departed the Palm Door.

Arriving between two raucous parties, the Palm Door set seemed casual in comparison. Initially intended to be part of a family-friendly showcase at Auditorium Shores but moved indoors due to the possibility of inclement weather, the gig retained a warm, intimate feel enhanced by the thinning crowd of a late Saturday afternoon. There was room to breathe and to relax with a crack rock & roll band. Even if there was a casual air to the proceedings, the group wasn’t blowing off the gig. They played with muscle and vigor, pounding out sharp and flinty country-rockers where Jean Cook’s fiddle was as likely to scrape as it was to sigh. That slight trace of poignancy didn’t overwhelm the set, not when it was balanced by covers of the Undertones’ punk classic “Teenage Kicks” and Johnny Cash’s “Big River.” It was the kind of effortlessly rousing, loose and soulful afternoon show that has defined SXSW since its inception and remains a rollicking good time. —S.T.E.

Diana DeMuth Sings Clear and True

Early evening on SXSW can be a tough time for an artist. It’s the moment when the festival is in flux, with the day parties still being ushered away as the evening lurches into gear. The Parish fits in that netherworld. Once located in the thick of things on Dirty Six, now tucked away on a side street just east of I-35, it’s not quite off the beaten path but if the moment hits just right, it can seem quiet and intimate, which meant that the timing and location happened to be just right for Diana DeMuth, a singer-songwriter anchored in Americana but distinguished by a powerful voice that soars over her strumming. The revelation that she competed on The X Factor doesn’t quite come as a surprise; her clear, commanding voice demands attention, relegating her gentle fingerpicking to an afterthought. Despite this bold natural instrument, the starkness of the Parish setting showed Demuth’s affinity for such modern troubadours as Zach Bryan; she doesn’t quite favor his diaristic emotional bloodletting, yet she’s within the same ballpark. DeMuth sings sweeter than Bryan, which helps emphasize her true forebear: With her clarion voice and crystalline melodies, DeMuth suggests Joan Baez. —S.T.E.

Victoria Canal Keeps It Real

A longtime SXSW institution, the British Music Embassy set up shop for eight straight days at SXSW 2024, making it one of the few events to run through almost the entirety of the festival. Victoria Canal commenced the BME’s final party on Saturday evening and, in some respects, she seemed like a curious choice for the event. Lacking any strong tie to the United Kingdom — the same could not be said of KiLLOWEN, a quintessentially British hip-hop act that followed her on an adjacent stage at the Embassy set up at the Sheraton — Canal was born In Germany to an American mother and Spanish father, being raised in cities across the world. She shared a fair amount of this biography onstage during her gregarious stage patter, chatter she dismissed with a quip of “This all the result of the PMS, I don’t normally talk this much.” Nevertheless, the lovely, lyrical songs she shared during her set also tend to be quite candid; she’ll introduce a tune saying it’s about feeling uncomfortable in her body due to a congenital disorder, then play a song that lays out her dysmorphia quite plainly itself. That forthright emotion is ingratiating, yet happily, these same skills also are evident in lighter material, such as a new song about her fervent desire that her ex be murdered by his new girlfriend. With its lithe, swinging melody providing a sugarpill for the tune’s dark humor, the number suggested Canal is starting to hit her stride as a songwriter. —S.T.E.

(Full disclosure: In 2021, Rolling Stone’s parent company, P-MRC, acquired a 50 percent stake in the SXSW festival.)