SXSW Day Three: Tobias Jesso Jr., the Meaning of Love, and Grime Music Being Cool in America (for Now)

Tobias Jesso Jr. All photos by the author.

Life is all about choices. Do you have that one last drink? Do you make that lunge for the lips? Do you press send on that Facebook flirt message with a loser you’ll never see again because your ego needs an inexplicable online stroke? Last night I had several choices: one of them involved Korean fried chicken; another involved going off in search of Kanye and Drake. Let me tell you now—the Korean fried chicken option is a much safer bet. But SXSW is an increasingly FOMO-centric festival. What if you make THE WRONG CHOICE? Exactly nothing, dude. You’ll probably get more sleep.

Yesterday was an amazing day for music. Tobias Jesso Jr. kicked it off at the Spotify House. He looks like a 15-year-old panty-creamer stretched out into the body of a basketball player, Jesso Jr. is in fact 29 (how?!) and he likes to play the piano, make piano faces, and sing earnestly about emotions. Noisey editor Kyle Kramer says Jesso Jr. and Noisey's managing editor Eric Sundermann are actually the same person because they crack goofy jokes and make grandiose statements about the meaning of love. You know that given the chance Jesso Jr. (and Sundermann for that matter) would spend at least seven minutes a day gazing deeply into the eyes of their lover. Oh bliss. Or as the dude standing behind me waiting for the following act, Ibeyi, noted: “This dude’s been playing the same song for 30 minutes!” [Ed. note: This is true.]

Ibeyi.

Ibeyi, on the other hand, mix it up. Lisa-Kaindé and Naomi Diaz are French-Cuban twins who harmonize in English and Yoruba—a Nigerian dialect—write songs that deliver both a fragile, folk-ish beauty and a slinky, R&B-angled sensuality. The daughters of an acclaimed Buena Vista Club percussionist, it’s clear rhythm is innate: Lisa plays the piano and sings lead, her mellifluous tones twisting with Naomi’s, who uses a cajon and her body to smack out accompanied beats. It’s tough to tear your eyes from live performance. XL really nailed it with this signing.

Next up was Skepta making his SXSW debut over at Fader Fort. How would the grime king and his songs about spliffs and dreaming of doggystyling Kate Winslet go down? Very well as it goes, particularly super new cut, “Shutdown.” Big in Britain, but maybe, with Konnichiwa imminent, this is his moment to smash it Stateside.

Skepta.

Bleachers.

Slightly later, incongruously sandwiched between Ghostface and Fader Fort headliner, Mike Will and his celebu-music cast of guest stars, is Bleachers. In the past 12 months Jack Antonoff has become so much more than just the guitarist in fun. He’s the frontman of Bleachers, he’s selling out tours, he’s co-writing with Taylor Swift, he’s Mr. Lena Dunham, he’s got a motherfucking sax player who gets on his goddamn knees and blows like he means it—now there’s an image—and he does. Bleachers mean it in the most brilliantly, unabashedly uncool way. Antonoff has got his guns out tonight and he’s fist-pumping and gesticulating, there’s a flashy light show and dry ice, and all of it is the pitch perfect accompaniment to songs that bluster like Bruce, but pack the rousing, jittery energy of peak-era Killers. I really didn’t expect to like Bleachers, but they won me over even before the keyboardist busted out a sax and started raising his brass to high heaven.

Next, I had a hot date with Kero Kero Bonito. The London-based trio of two pale beatmakers (who double up as skinny, sometime synchronized backing dancers), and singer Sarah Bonito are a confetti canon of cute. Bonito sing-speak-raps in Japanese, English, and French, sometimes delivering lyrics directly into the face of a Yoshi-like stuffed toy. Somehow she’s written a glitchy, electro-blog-pop tune about taking selfies (“Picture This”) without it being a barf-in-a-bag level of kitsch. At one point she tells a story about meeting a chicken in a forest and said chicken told her she wasn’t dancing enough, and that inspired the following composition. Kero Kero Bonito have a song called “Babies (Are So Strange).” They’re the ideal blend of Nintendo bleeps, Japanese cute, Yelle-like Parisian pop, and LDN cool. You didn’t know you needed this, but you do. Kero Kero Bonito.

Chastity Belt.

Fellow Seattle band Tacocat, tipped me to Chastity Belt (also signed to Hardly Art) this past summer. While I was stoked on their songs on record, tunes like “Cool Slut,” and just generally, their trim, restless, and melancholic take on indie-rock, I was less thrilled that the drummer packed all the power of a guppy out of water. If your whole purpose for living is to hit things, then actually hit them! Those aren’t twigs, they’re sticks, and you should be splintering them on the rim of that snare.

Next up: MORE GIRLS! Madrid quartet Hinds—formerly Deers—are already on their eighth SXSW show and we’re only three days in. They’re all ponytail flicks, clattering lo-fi indie, plinkety, plucked out guitar lines and (occasionally shouty) girl group goodness. Like La Luz’s sloppy little sister who drank one too many peach schnapps shots from mom’s secret liquor stash. “We have some good news!” squeaks singer. “The other band isn’t coming so we don’t have to rush!” Everyone applauds and inches a little closer.

Hinds.

I was still planning on seeing Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros play their forthcoming record, in full at a church at midnight, but then I got a text saying A$AP Rocky was playing some Samsung event. This was then followed by this exchange:

SXSW in a nutshell: too many options, too many rumors, and too much of a chance that you might end up just being stuck outside with your hands clinging to the chain-link fence looking thirsty. I’m ashamed to say that I ditched the hippy church vibes and Edward and co. and opted for the branded glitz of Samsung. What I actually opted for was a delicious free Korean fried chicken dinner that they were giving out in the picnic area before you entered the venue. In fact I was so distracted by these Asian delights (as a half-Asian who’d only ingested cheese, beans, and pulled pork for the past three days, rice and MSG was a very welcome and necessary change of taste), that I was halfway through my second helping before my friend and I realized my prom date A$AP Ferg was onstage.

Ferg.

I’m still trying to reconcile the sweetness of Ferg with the man who penned “Dump Dump,” but OK, I guess everyone has different sides to them. Like the straight-laced, tee-total, no smoking dude who has weekly dungeon sessions where he dons a gas mask and has a dom blow smoke down the a tube and into his encased face. Life’s full of little contradictions.

And then came the Choose Your Own Adventure moment: stay for Rocky or skip out to Illmore on a wish and a chance and a hope and rumor that Drake and Kanye would be performing. Together. Friends, I chose wrong. I abandoned the free food and drink, and my prom date and Rocky and went to an emptying-out warehouse where A-Trak was playing to a bunch of sloppy stragglers. And then Fame School hopped up onstage to shout all over “All Day” and, like, stage dive.

Fame School.

Kim Taylor Bennett loves a good rumormill. Follow her on Twitter.