After three years of hoping, wishing, and stocking a slowly growing pile of envy, 2014 was the year I finally made it down to Austin, TX for SXSW. Maybe I had spent too many months dealing with pent up buzz and maybe I got too few hours of sleep on the car ride down, but I don’t think the festival is quite all it’s cracked up to be. And I can’t really speak of how South By used to operate, but I assumed it to be chock-full of kids geekily getting down to tunes and bands matching glass slippers in attempts at playing Cinderella.
Instead, I witnessed a lot of corporate claptrap; the mid-size and big-name shows were all brimming with badge-holders sipping drinks and chatting in the back — filling obligations instead of taking note of the notes being played in front of their faces. There were a lot of lines that either led to nowhere or to another line, even for showcases with the caliber of bands that wouldn’t sell out in Madison on any given night. Don’t get me wrong; I had a pretty good time down in Austin. I witnessed killer sets courtesy of Against Me!, Wye Oak, Speedy Ortiz, Future Islands, and a few others. But even by Thursday, bands started to seem bogged down by their multiple-sets-per-day schedules. To me, it looked like hauling around gear and simply showing up was more important for the bands than delivering the hits.
Each morning as I plotted out my day’s map, I would browse the web and read about the big star-fueled showcase that had happened the night prior. These are the sets that the non-SXSW-goers read about, but these aren’t the sets that most South By goers are getting into. Not even close. As a mere wristband-wearer (a sort-of second class citizen), access into the big events was nearly impossible unless I wanted to wait in a line from sunup till sundown.
South By did have a saving grace, however, and it came — for me — from a pretty unlikely source: St. David’s Historic Sanctuary.
We made the hike up to St. David’s on Thursday night, and the closer we got to the church the quieter our surroundings became. As we opened the side door, the noiselessness felt eerie. And as we passed the silent receptionist, I swear to the big man that we were in the wrong place. But as we cautiously took the steps to the second floor, the SXSW banners and workers greeted us. And after we sipped a brew in the gathering area, we headed curiously into the sanctuary.
Wow. The first thing I noticed was the air conditioning. The second was that everyone was sitting. The third was that everyone was sitting in silence. The “bouncers” were only letting fans inside in-between songs, so we scurried down the right aisle and plopped down in a pew as Perfume Genius began his second track of the night, “Take Me Home.”
Mike Hadreas, a.k.a. Perfume Genius, is two records deep into his career and aiming to release his third sometime this fall. His albums are full of drugs, sex, and a lot of pain; he’s gone through a lot of deadly shit in the short span he’s spent on this earth. His songs, for the most part, are quiet cathartic bursts presented entirely by his quivering, delicate voice and an equally fragile piano. I’ve never heard another artist who has the ability to transmute his or her desperation into music the way that Hadreas does, and I can’t imagine his breathtaking, meager music translating that well onto most live stages — mostly because of how breakable it all sounds.
Yet Hadreas crept through 14 or 15 songs in St. David’s safe-haven-like sanctuary with elegance and showmanship to spare; seriously, that was the venue to see him in. Backed by a synth-player and some sparse drums, his tales of survival and hope resonated truer than ever. Even the unfamiliar new material (which was darker and more experimental than I expected) was heartbreaking. The most harrowing tracks of the night, however, were those off of his first record, Learning. I hadn’t heard “Mr. Peterson,” “Look Out,” or “Perry” in probably a year and a half, but from their first notes a lot of memories I’d tucked away came flooding back, pretty hard and pretty fast.
Hadreas oddly ended the set with a new song, or at least a song I’d never heard before. But as he struck the last little chord on his synth, the congregation erupted into a euphoric applause as if they’d heard the track 100 times over. When the lights came on in the sanctuary, I got the first glance of what my surroundings actually looked like. If I’m being honest they weren’t all that clear, mostly due to the tears in my eyes (probably from a dang bug getting stuck in them or something).
For a few minutes we all mouthed wows at one another and let the silence wash over us. It wasn’t until we were outside of the sanctuary doors that it felt appropriate to speak, but we eventually became chatty as we maneuvered our way back down 7th Street, where the noise, the lights, and SXSW greeted us. We got into the back of the line at Empire Control Room, and waited patiently for a MØ set we never got into.