We took the good vibes from Thumpers set and went out into the afternoon sun to walk over to the Mohawk. The goal was to see Angel Olson and then stick around for Deap Vally, who I hadn’t listened to but had gotten some good words from Operation Every Band. We spent a lot of time at the Mohawk last year and had always been able to walk right in and enjoy either the relatively spacious outdoor stage or squeeze into the small indoor stage.
This year we were met with a rather long line. Dang. Our only hope was that there had been enough delays during the day that we’d make it through the line before Angel went on. In my haste to get into the line I got too close to a palm tree, which cleanly sliced the sleeve of my shirt and my shoulder. First blood of SXSW drawn!
As the minutes ticked by and we did not move, we resigned ourselves to not seeing Angel Olson. But we decided to stay to see if we could get in for Deap Vally. Finally people started leaving (probably from Angel’s set) and we were in. We grabbed a beer and slid into the back of the indoor stage. The two women of Deap Vally were doing their soundcheck. Lindsey Troy sings and play guitar, Julie Edwards drums and also has some vocal duties. The soundcheck was relatively tame and didn’t prepare me for the rocking I was about to receive.
Donned in a sequined halter top and matching short shorts, Troy played fast and loud and her singing reminded me of Janis Joplin,
if she had made it in life to punk rock. And Edwards, also bedazzled, bashed the drums and kept pushing the songs faster. They had portions of the crowd headbanging along with them as they moved from song to song with minimal crowd talk and maximum riffing. My reaction was this was a mix of Rubber Factory-era Black Keys and Black Sabbath because of the heaviness of their sound. Which means I liked it a lot.
Having found that they are from the San Fernando Valley and met in Silver Lake, I was stoked to know we could be seeing them again in the future in LA. I had already forgotten about missing Angel Olson. We were almost done with our Wednesday day sessions, but we had one very short walk to see our last band before dinner.
Nothing to Write Home About 