I’m not sure I can adequately describe how much I loved watching Walter Sickert & the Army of Broken Toys perform. The music hints at some kind darkly lit industrial folk tale ala the real Brothers Grimm’ The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids where the wolf eats all but one. But their songs are backlit with a perverse joy and it comes out sparkling and LOUD during their live performance. You have band members weaving through the audience playing their instruments. You have funky costumes – some ironic, some wayward – and as a band, they wander the stage like a traveling circus. Through it all, Walter Sickert anchors the performance pounding out strong melodies and baying these fierce, fuming lyrics and damn if it doesn’t come off as revelry.

The songs during the thirty-minute set were taken from SteamShipKillers released in 2010. Although Sea Song was their ode to love and opposition to hatred and bigotry, it was Feathers, (with the gorgeous vocals of Jaggery’s Mali Sastri) that really struck home to me. It was a haunting and visceral performance. They closed the set with a fantastic call and answer Off With Her Head. Half the audience shouts “Off” and the other half shouts “Head” and behind the cacophony, the band plays on. Utterly brilliant. Utterly captivating.

Walter Sickert & the Army of Broken Toys setlist
No Room
A Friend in Goddamn
Sea Song/Love and Marriage
Feathers (with Mali Sastri)
Off With Her Head

Bitter Ruin is the reason I go to concerts. To have a musical duo blow you off your feet from the first note and keep you suspended in time until the last strum of the guitar is why I go to live shows. To do that as complete unknowns is a minor miracle.

From the heavenly harmonies between Ben Richards and Georgia Train to the haunting melodies, their songs transcend the music two people should seem capable of achieving. Even with a certain amount of theatricality, songs like Relief and Soldier shone in their right. The best of the night was the simple A Brand New Me which had the strength of stirring musical number and kept the audience hushed until Georgia sang the last note.

Referred to somewhat obliquely as just Georgia and Ben, the former has a voice that is out of this world, the latter is a pretty stellar vocalist and guitarist. Together, they make an outstanding duo. Georgia is the kind of person that could sing the ingredients on a shampoo bottle and people would perk up. But the fact is that Ben kept up with his harmonies all the while turning his guitar into a one man serenade. The opening act was a rare one that felt like their time on stage was too short.

Side bar, however Amanda Palmer keeps finding these exquisite musical acts to open her shows, she needs to keep it going forever and ever. In fact, she should start a circus and invite all her former opening acts to take part.

Austin\”s own Man Man. I came specifically to see this band, whom I\”d always remembered from a chance sighting at an Eastside art show years ago. And they\”ve grown from a ramshackle three-man band to an organized orchestrated eight-member-band (accordion, washboard, guitar, drums, upright bass, trumpet, clarinet, and violin). A motley crue in a good way. Definitive gypsy punk with some touches of Irish bar ballads. Irresistibly danceable. Their energy and showmanship is coupled with genuine musical talent – the music was accompanied by yells, yodels and jigs from the band members. The best moments were the clarinet player tooting an upswung clarinet with left hand while pumping his right hand, the washboard solo, covering a The Bike Band song when half of the members of The Bike Band were in this band, and the accordion player calling out some scientific word to describe them playing a new song they hadn\”t played before. They have the potential to be an Austin favorite for me if they don\”t disband because of other interests.

I was annoyed at first with their youthful self-important casual-hipster postering. They were basically gypsy-punk-lite with a folky-campfire bent. If they were being serious, they started the band when they were biking to Mexico and Canada together and “are still friends.” The vocalizing and music was intentionally messy but the 8-band-member choruses were engaging. I was especially charmed that their second song was “Daisy, daisy, give me your answer true.” Some of the band members were of questionable talent (spoon guy), but some had former band geek potential.

this band was my favorite from a wealth of SXSW fantastics and I was even more impressed this time, some bands strike the personal chord and this band is one of them for me, the singer\”s voice is a tremendous creening wail and the fiddler fiddles like a mad genius and the whole band has the fierce energy that sets a crowd to dancing without their full consent, the drummer was on top of his drumset several times, they paint traditional bluegrass/country-type-songs black and then hype them up with a gypsy punk undertone, inspiring as recordings and even moreso live

the favorite show of the year the first time we saw them but they were a little messy today, instead of white suits they had on white t-shirts because it was hot, they know how to put on a show: they started off with a drum circle of their band members, then it all got kind of crazy and our accompaniers wanted to move on, still think they\”re better punk-gypsters than Gogol Bordello

the fantasmous band, all hoppy and Charlestony with the 7 foot man in short pants as their lead singer, they\”re not meant to play outside – better in an old bar with wooden floors!

this is not who played (Carousel Lounge!), was a lone middle-aged cowboy with a posse of three young girls and more of a moody rock aura than country, struck me as a singer/songwriter whose songs you know are good if only he had a band backing him and somebody who could sing except that he could sing, he had an unimposing scruffy whining voice, especially liked him because he incorporated so many sounds: jazz, country, swing, rock, gypsy, surf, his rebel songs were kind of embarrassing because I just didn’t buy it

Luminescent Orchestrii gypsy rock music with international influences. Four performers guitar, violins and bass that rocked out to mostly foreign-language tunes that ranged from a Yiddish waltz to old French folktale. Sxip Shirey, who jammed a variety of guitar parts, also acted as the MC for the night. Their performance was part jam band, part Bar Mitzvah band, a touch of tango, beat boxing and a heck of a punk attitude. All four took vocal duties at various times. The two ladies, Rima Fand and Sarah Alden, handled most of the harmonies and bassist Benjy Fox Rosen only lead on the mic was on in Yiddish. The energy level was otherworldly.

The band brought out Dresden Doll Brian Viglione for two numbers, and Meow Meow and Lance Horne could be seen waltzing in the background.