
As South by SouthWest kicks into high gear for the 20th time, I find myself looking over an utterly recockulous listing of bands who are playing and wondering “what the fuck am i doing not in austin?”
Also, oddly enough, I came across a band from Austin tonight called Voxtrot and they are definitely worth pointing out. Their sound is three parts belle&sebastian pop sensibility, one part humbled vocals irking to bust out. Either way, it’s catchy stuff. Now, I dispise the neo-geocities monstrosity that is myspace but it does redeem itself with the pile of new music it has to sample. This includes four track by voxtrot, but since you can’t download them I’ve taken it upon myself to post my by-a-mile favorite of the pack…
voxtrot – the start of something MP3

And since sxsw is all about lots of bands, I may as well through in another for good measure. Turns out voxtrot is playing with another austin-based band called Shearwater who have managed to describe themselves as indie experimental folk. And as stupid as that sounds, it pretty accurate and is surely better than anything my lazy ass would have come up with. Kind of a “what would happen if bowie didn’t think he was a member of Arcade Fire but instead the leader of Sufjan Steven’s band”-sound. I think my main concern with this band is that I’ll probably forever call them “uhhh, it’s something like Stillwater”. None the less, they too have a god-foresaken myspace which is even more redeemed than the last since it has no gaudy modifications and you can download all their sample mp3s. But just incase you want to skip the entire myspace experience and get the best of the four tracks, here ya go…
shearwater – whipping boy MP3 [seems you can't out link to myspace]
I saw Shearwater open for The Mountain Goats in May 2005. They also impressed me — with the drummer Thor being the most entertaining individual based entirely on name and appearance.
damnit! voxtrot was in town last week and were on kexp this mornin. playing sneaky disease in TO in april though.
tyler, check out okkervil river (black sheep boy) , a “sister” band to shearwater (they share a bunch of members)
I can second Shearwater being good. They have this one song, called “I Can’t Wait”, which is worth checking out. Though it sounds better live than on the EP I bought.
i realize i wrote this at 2am but damn there was a lot of typos