Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. I know the headline for this says it’s my Final Day at SXSW, but that doesn’t mean it’s my final report.
I had a pretty crazy final day at SXSW. For the first time in about 11 years of attending this fest I crossed over to the music portion, so my final day of SXSW was a mixture of both music and movies… the combination that makes SXSW so special.
Pardon any ignorance you may read in my music opinions. My tastes haven’t really evolved beyond the mid-‘80s. I grew up with oldies and classic rock and I wouldn’t say I’ve grown much past that.
I was invited to the Bust Magazine party, which included four bands and DJing between sets by Elijah Wood, whose Simian Records label represented the final band of the run called Heloise & The Savior Faire.
It was a beautiful day. Austin has two and a half seasons. Winter, Summer and then Fall and Spring get about 2 weeks each. We had a nice spring day for these outdoor shows, warm with a nice cool breeze so you weren’t going crazy sweaty while rocking out.
A friend of mine, Zach, invited me to the show in the first place and told me I couldn’t miss the opening band, so I was there at the beginning to see GRAND OLE PARTY set-up. This band is led by a pretty cute and kick-ass chick drummer who is also the lead singer.
What was really surprising was hearing the lead singer, Kristin Gundred, wail. She has the voice of a forgotten Jazz-era star. I was really impressed, to the point where I sought out their MySpace page for more info on their band and bought a few tracks of theirs off of iTunes (I bought “Nasty Habits” and “Look Out Young Son”).
The band is rounded out by John Paul Labno on guitar and Michael Krechnyak on bass.
I’m not one to recommend indie rock, but this stuff really floated my boat.
Elijah Wood came out to DJ before the next set, by a twosome calling themselves YACHT. Wood focused mostly on contemporary foreign music… I heard French, English… maybe Russian or Czech…
Next up were Yacht. A young lady in very short shorts and a spandex top and a young guy named Jona Bechtolt took the stage and it couldn’t have been any more different than Grand Ole Party.
It was just those two on the stage, no instruments aside from a MacBook Pro. They plugged in and then grabbed two mics and went nucking futs.
It was very punk, repetitive lines to a loud beat… a little cynical, a little angry, but overall a lot of fun. This isn’t the type of band that you go out and buy CDs or download tracks on iTunes of, though. I don’t know if I can say I was taken with any of their actual music. Their energy and showmanship is what made them stand out.
The mics were swinging, Jona was doing crazy jumps, the girl was bouncing up and down (in a lot of ways) and then they both jumped down into the crowd and got the audience involved.
The energy was great. As a live show they were incredible. I’m not exactly a fan of this type of music, so I may be the wrong person to talk about whether or not Yacht makes for a good album, but I will say that they were great as a live show.
There was another round of DJing from Wood before the next group came up… I didn’t care for them. About as typical indie punk girl-powered band as you can get. Lots of noise with little underneath.
The final act of the party was Heloise & The Savior Faire. It’s an odd visual, that’s for sure. You have a drummer that is probably 7 feet tall, a short bald bearded bassist, two dancers that look like they just came out of an undergound German sex club and a lead singer that looks punk, but has the voice of a ‘70s chick rock band like Heart.
The two dancers went nuts. They had costume changes and everything. The lead singer belted out her lyrics as everybody settled into a groove. I liked these guys. They had a backbone to their music, an edge that wasn’t exactly hip, but not exactly old school. Check out their MySpace page here.
All in all it was a helluva fun afternoon. I had to bolt, though, because my last movie of SXSW was screening thirty minutes after the set ended.
DEAR ZACHARY: A LETTER TO A SON ABOUT HIS FATHER
I caught a lot of documentaries at SXSW this year for some reason. I know they always have a ton of docs, but this year the documentaries really appealed to me.
DEAR ZACHARY was one of the first documentaries that I put on my schedule, but I could only work out seeing it on the last day of the festival.
It’s about a well-liked man who is murdered by a jilted ex. A good friend of his is a filmmaker and they used to make movies on video together as kids, so this friend, Kurt Kuenne, decides to talk to everybody that knew Andrew as a way to make one last movie with his friend. He finds out things about his friend he never knew, like he was an amateur photographer, and he wondered if he didn’t know something like that about his good friend, what else didn’t he know?
Kurt also documents the run down of the murderer, who was born in Canada. She flees there after all the evidence points to her.
The doc takes a huge turn when she announces she’s pregnant with Andrew’s baby and suddenly the documentary has its through-line. It’ll be a showcase for this baby to tell him who his father was… and how crazy psycho his mother is.
The real heart of the film comes from Andrew’s parents, who suffer through the loss of their son. The thing that keeps them going at first is their desire to bring his killer to justice and then once they find out she’s pregnant they live for their grandson.
These guys are put through the ringer, having to put up with unbelievable situations as they wait for the Canadian justice system to get their son’s murderer back to the States. Once the kid is born they do everything in their power to become a part of his life so that when his mom inevitably is returned and convicted the transition to their home will be a smooth one.
In order to do this, they move to Canada in order to have scheduled visits, which means they have to put on a kind face with their son’s murderer for the sake of their grandson.
This documentary isn’t a happy one. I cried, I got extremely angry, I wanted to punch someone at certain points.
So, no matter what little gripes I have with the way the documentary unfolds it does work. I was involved.
I think the beginning needs a little work. There’s some really goofy shit in it and some really over-dramatic things later that tonally don’t work and take me out of the story being told.
Kuenne has powerful material here. My favorite documentaries are ones that make me angry for some reason, like the PARADISE LOST series by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky. DEAR ZACHARY fits in with those films in such as it’ll just really piss you off. You get emotionally involved, but the end isn’t going to be a good one and you know it.
DEAR ZACHARY is a powerful movie as is. It could be genius if they clean up a little bit of the more amateur aspects in the first half-hour. If you have a chance to see it at a local film festival or what have you, make sure to do it… just bring a box of Kleenexs.
Check out the website here. You can watch a trailer and read up on the background, but be warned of potential ruination of some of the bigger twists of the story.
That was my final day of SXSW. I have reviews in the works, so look for me to round out my coverage during the coarse of the week. Keep an eye out for that as well as a big set visit report going up tomorrow night.
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
| 
