What The Hell Am I Listening To?!?

Two albums from artists I just saw at SXSW:

DM Stith

David Michael Stith was discovered by Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond) and signed to Asthmatic Kitty, and he fits right into what you would expect from an artist on this label. It is lovely music utilizing modern pop sensibilities with a more classical ethos, and a slight touch of psychedelia. While I enjoy listening to modern singer/songwriters like M Ward and Andrew Bird, I always feel like their stuff is just a little too vanilla and plain to really dig into. DM Stith adds just enough spice to make this sort of thing alluring to me:

DM Stith : Thanksgiving Moon

DM Stith : Morning Glory Cloud

Buy Heavy Ghost

DM Stith myspace




Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band

This band is an interesting test case in an attempt to find something new that can be both successful in mainstream radioland and everyone-is-a-critic blogland. It straddles the line between the two well, relying on a heavy dose of steady driving, upbeat melodies broken up by some weirder, riskier moments to catch your breath, like ending the record with their longest, quietest, slowest piece. It’s sort of like if The Strokes didn’t suck or Bloc Party before they sucked. Of course, this exercise in trying to make everyone happy will probably result in more backlash than hype in this day and age, as evidenced by P4K’s thumbs down earlier this week, but regardless, I think it is a great record, and their live show was just as striking. Bonus, the drummer is like 13 years old or something:

Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band : Albatross, Albatross, Albatross

Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band : En Fuego

Buy Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band

Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band myspace

SXSW Day 3 (Friday): School Of Seven Bands


All photos by Clint Miller

The three of us that embarked on this road trip a week ago have been hitting it hard everyday and after staying up until nearly dawn Thursday night, we had to catch up a little it on sleep. So unfortunately we almost completely missed Friday’s day parties. We did, though, make it to the Asthmatic Kitty showcase just in enough time to catch DM Stith. This day party was very much in the peripheral of the where the main SXSW action was, and there was only a small, comfortable crowd for this one. They played in a garage of some art center, and the vibe reminded me of WonderRoot. I have been listening to DM Stith‘s full-length, Heavy Ghost, like crazy for the last week so this was a show I was very excited about. The album seems to possess a lot of instrumentation and production tricks, so I was skeptical as to how good he could reproduce the songs live, but with a fairly minimalistic 3-piece setup, he played his stuff beautifully.

After that I walked around the area near that day party and checked out a few others nearby. I caught a little bit of The Mae Shi at some interesting venue that had an outdoor roller skating rink and while they were playing, the crowd surrounded them with a big parachute looking thing that the band played under. It was a cool scene, and I think I’m coming back to this venue for something again later today.

After that we headed to the Radio Room where our choice of showcase for the night. First up we caught Micah P. Hinson. I listened to one of his albums one the way to Texas and it was pretty cool. He seemed to have a ton of technical difficulties for this show, and while it didn’t really match up to what i heard of his studio work, I did enjoy the set. His clothing was a hodgepodge of clashing styles, and it paralleled his music. He would go from a Texas sort of country to loud noise jams at the drop of a hat.


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