SXSW 2023

Pearl & The Oysters: “Evening Sun” (Live at Scholz Garten)

We’ve got just one more SXSW 2023 recap track for y’all, and it’s a real gem in a clam. It comes courtesy of the Gainesville-cradled jazz-space-pop project Pearl & The Oysters. Multi-instrumentalist-songwriters Juliette Pearl Davis and Joachim Polack are at the core of this classic kitsch-imbued bivalve, who now perform live as a five-piece. The migration of Davis and Polack’s musical mollusk to Los Angeles at the start of the pandemic seems to have introduced an extra breezy element to Pearl & The Oysters’ daytime disco-adjacency, which we’ll hear more of on their upcoming full-length Coast 2 Coast, out April 21st.

That of course means that Pearl & The Oysters are about to shell up and clamp their gear shut for a month-long North American tour, including a gig here in Austin at The Mohawk in late May. For our live broadcast, Pearl & The Oysters perused some of the new stuff off Coast 2 Coast, 2021’s Flowerland, 2018’s Canned Music, and even their 2017 eponymous debut. And despite the fact that their Scholz Garten set last Saturday wasn’t too long after dawn, the midpoint prize from Flowerland, “Evening Sun”, glistened with the morning crowd, sure to shimmer through plenty more memories and horizons.

Obongjayar: “Message in a Hammer” (Live at Scholz Garten)

Somehow six whole years have already slipped by since London rapper Little Simz played as part of our annual SXSW live morning broadcast. Of course, Simz has blown up exponentially since her 2017 Four Seasons performance, to the extent that we probably couldn’t have booked her now even if we wanted to. But in an impressive display of “small world” kismet, KUTX at Scholz Garden showcased another Londoner with direct ties to Nigeria, Obongjayar. On top of that, it happened the same week that Obongjayar and Simz’ “Point and Kill” played as part of IMDb Pro’s music video competition during SXSW film. When it comes to classifying Obongjayar’s style, there’s not a whole lot of consensus. Best we can say is it’s a politically-and-spiritually-inspired balance between rapping, chanting, and singing over Afrobeat-adjacent electronic soul. But there’s also something surprisingly unobtrusive about Obongjayar’s in-your-face aura that makes his outrageous originals so damn accessible. Which is doubly impressive when he’s got his live five-piece competing for a piece of the crowd’s energy. Obongjayar was still lucid off his debut full-length Some Nights I Dream of Doors when he obliterated the Scholz Garten scene with high-octane tunes like “Message In A Hammer”. Here’s hoping we don’t have to wake up either.

Girl Ultra: “Llama” (Live at Scholz Garden)

As mentioned on Monday, our Scholz Garten guest Son Rompe Pera did an outstanding job of representing Mexico City’s diverse scene for our live morning broadcast last week. And while SRP made an impression that’ll surely have folks talking til next SXSW, they weren’t the only ones bridging capitals; we were also fortunate enough to have M.C. native Nan de Miguel on deck, better known as Girl Ultra. Seven years after she first got signed, Girl Ultra’s grip on undulating melodies and bilingual verbal abilities have escalated her into the upper caliber of Latin R&B rockstars like Kali Uchis and Nathy Peluso. By building on an already-rich reputation for adaptability and sonic variety (including an appearance on Adrian Quesada’s Boleros Psicodélicos), last April, Girl Ultra branched out to genres like U.K. two-step, indie pop, alt-rock, and even orchestral Bossa nova on her latest studio release, EL SUR. Well, last week Girl Ultra brought some of EL SUR, Nuevos Aires (2019) and Adiós (2018) north of the border and into our city limits. On Friday morning Girl Ultra got up onstage at Scholz Garten and gave it her all with hybrid arrangements that beautifully blended backing track samples with live instrumentation. The set certainly attracted a pack of new listeners like everyone’s favorite camelids (sorry, alpacas) thanks to lush renditions that included the album opener from Girl Ultra’s 2018 sophomore EP Adiós, “Llama”.

Geto Gala: “Sumn’ to Say” (Live at Scholz Garten)

After years of supporting Deezie Brown and Jake Lloyd individually, it’s beautiful watching them both earn exponential exposure with this hip-hop/R&B phenomenon that is Geto Gala. The latest phase of a fruitful friendship, Brown and Lloyd had already shared a fair amount of stages together pre-pandemic before capitalizing on their bar-trading chemistry with their eponymous February 2021 studio debut. Alongside its delightfully-southern Chopped and Slowed counterpart, The Geto Gala EP probably played a part in Brown and Lloyd separately scoring their first official ACL Fest sets last October, where informal versions of the full Geto Gala band ended up backing each solo performer.

Between then and now, the Geto Gala gang’s apparently upped their game for a whole gauntlet of live gigs, at least based off the applause they garnered last Thursday morning when they transfigured our Scholz SXSW space into the Geto Garten. With a set that’d make Big Pokey proud, and a crowd that was happy to “fifth wheel” alongside the band, Geto Gala sure as hell had “Sumn’ to Say” at SXSW. We’re just hoping our invitation’s still good for the next Gala.