Last Week Around the -ISTs
Schieffer's Out of Gov Race
![True Stories Can Be Stranger Than Fiction [Extra Extra ]](http://austinist.com/assets_c/2009/01/nightskyline-thumb-110x110-53663.jpg)
True Stories Can Be Stranger Than Fiction [Extra Extra ]
Cheers to solid shows at the Parish! An ample bar stretches across the length of the East wall providing easily accessible drink-receipt stations, making transactions painless, even if you're as drunk as Lucinda Williams at jury duty. Moreover, the sound is spot-on and the woman behind the board is a complete mensch. If you're lucky enough to nail down a good lineup, you're sittin' pretty ATX-style. Just such a lineup happened to grace the stage on Saturday, and while all the electro-hipstaz made with the fluorescent trucker hats like wannabe Hackers at the Dan Deacon show, we sipped the sweet nectar of Austin rock out of a suede Chuck Taylor for four hours.
If you can't view the Flash slideshow above, an alternate version appears after the jump. Photos courtesy Nash Cook.
Ume, opening, immediately began their 25 minute process of melting all the boys-and probably some girls'-hearts and minds. Not necessarily because frontsuccubus Lauren Larson's frenetic hair-thrash so satisfyingly compliments her Daydream Nation freak-outs, but because of the silent, unanimous realization that we were witnessing a Next Big Thing at the top of their game. Corto Maltese, unashamed to challenge audience eardrums to three-guitar Thunderdomes, hammered out their set with perennial professionalism, nailing the B-string hammer-ons in audience favorite "Providence" like they be butterin' toast and watchin' PGA in the breakfast nook. Making sure the dogged and dark hooks of their new material were front-and-center, those without copies of Corto's new EP surely felt like clueless lepers.
'Round midnight, those White Denim boys showed up and lawdy… Always on top and inside of things, the percussive section (read: two-thirds of the band) played tireless foil to the hippie-crack bender wah-wah schitz of the guitar breaks. Song after song, a mini Rock Odyssey unfolded through the blithe fingerstyle of "Heart From Us All" into the shuddering basslines of "Shake Shake Shake." After withstanding the tsunamis of ably controlled time-based effects within and between tunes, there was little left when the waters receded except the stunned, spent crowds they must be used to by now. Well met, Parish.
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
Really good show.