SXSW 2015 Saturday Rock Highlights: Ivy Levan, Elle King, Ting Tings, Greg Holden & More

Austin’s South By Southwest musicfest is over. Finally. We flew all the way to Texas, and boy, are our arms/eardrums/feet/livers tired. But we packed a lot of rocking into SXSW’s final day. Here’s what went down.

Greg Holden Went From “Home” to the “Street”

Afternoons at official Yahoo venue Brazos Hall, aka the “Yodel House,” featured filmed acoustic sets by various buzz artists like Dylan Gardner and Hiatus Kaiyote, and one of the week’s best on-camera sessions was by this rising British singer-songwriter. Oh, you may think you don’t know Greg’s music, but trust us, you’re familar with one of his compositions: He co-wrote Phillip Phillips’s “Home,” the most successful American Idol single of all time. (Five million copies sold, with practically as many TV and film placements!) But now Greg is about to make a name for himself with his Warner Bros. debut, Chase the Sun, and one of the album’s standout tracks is “Boys in the Street,” a heartbreaking song about a homosexual man ostracized by his conservative family. Greg wrote the ballad last year for an Everyone Is Gay charity album, and he touchingly revealed to Yahoo Music, during his Yodel House interview, that one fan decided not to commit suicide after hearing it. Even the little preview snippet below shows why the song is so compelling, and why Greg Holden is an idol in his own right.

Carl Barat Was the Lad Most Likely to Succeed

Any fans wondering what became of likely lad Carl Barat, Pete Doherty’s other, mellower half in the brilliant but infamous Libertines, were surely impressed when Carl and his new band, the Jackals, played a raw and rollicking acoustic session at Brazos. Sauntering into the venue wearing a leather jacket, Carl apologized for sporting sunglasses indoors (to hide his bloodshot, post-partying eyes) and for his roughed-up voice. But the raggedness in his throat just made him sound more like Ian Hunter, and the shades just made him look like the coolest guy in Texas. (Which he was.) The Libertines recently reunited and will be headlining massive U.K. festivals Glastonbury and Reading/Leeds this year, but seeing Carl and his Jackals in such an intimate space, doing their new single “Glory Days,” was glorious indeed. We hope he keeps his new killer band of likely lads going strong.

There Was No Place We’d Rather Be Than the Perez Party

Say what you will about Perez Hilton (and there’s plenty to say), but the controversial and click-baity blogger does have great taste in music, as evidenced every year by his anticipated “One Night in Austin” bash at SXSW. (Who could forget the very first Perez party, at SXSW 2008, featuring Katy Perry, N.E.R.D., Robyn, and Chester French?) This year’s “One Night” lineup was impressive, and fiercely female, starting with Voice star Melanie Martinez. Newly signed to Atlantic Records and exuding a confidence she didn’t display on that show when she was only 16, the “unafraid to be different” Goth-pop chanteuse pranced out in a voluminous Zsa Zsa Gabor/Endora-from-Bewitched peignoir covered with stuffed animals, a plastic skirt affixed with Day-Glo diaper pins, and a metallic bib emblazoned with her song title “Cry Baby.” This of course made her the best-dressed girl at SXSW, and made the Perez soiree seem like the coolest slumber party ever. We’ll certainly have Melanie’s Atlantic debut on repeat at our own parties, slumber or otherwise, when it comes out this summer.

Next up, “swamp-hop” diva Ivy Levan somehow evoked Ronnie Spector, Portishead’s Beth Gibbons, and the mighty-piped Jessie J during her all-too-brief set — which featured a cameo by the head of her Cherrytree Records label, Martin Kierszenbaum, on bass. It’s no wonder Ivy has such support from the label brass. This phenomenally talented woman is about to blow up.

Badass blues-rock powerhouse Elle King was a real crowd-pleaser as well, especially with her twangy, hilarious cover of rapper Khia’s “My Neck, My Back.” We know Elle didn’t mean this when she sang the NSFW oral anthem, but man, our backs and necks were sure hurting after a week of hiking around SXSW. Elle’s humor was downright healing!

British dance collective Clean Bandit kept the party going, bringing back the everything-old-is-new-again house music sound of the 1990s also recently popularized by SXSW breakout artist Years & Years. Y&Ys singer Olly Alexander was backstage at the Perez show and got a shoutout from Clean Bandit, but sadly, a hoped-for duet never materialized this evening. Still, there was no place we would have rather been when Clean Bandit and guest vocalist Jesse Glynne played their life-affirming, Grammy-winning smash, “Rather Be.”

The Ting Tings are SXSW veterans at this point (they made their Austin debut in 2008, which clearly was a very good year for South By Southwest), but the U.K. post-punk popsters still sounded fresh this Saturday night. And tomboy-chic frontlady Katie White was still a total rock star. How could anyone ever actually forget her name?

SXSW 2015 Ended With a “Bang,” But It Was More Like a Whimper

Ousted Stone Temple Pilots frontman Scott Weiland, who’s kind of the Pete Doherty of U.S. rock, surprisingly looked no worse for the wear during his late-night set at the Parish with his new band of rock ‘n’ roll troublemakers, the Wildabouts. The man was looking sharp, and like the rock star he truly is. But his voice was another matter. When he sang familiar STP favorites like “Big Bang Baby” and “Vasoline,” it was cringeworthy. (“I wanna cry but I gotta laugh,” indeed. Actually, we just wanted to cry.) Whether Scott’s vocal cords were ravaged from days of SXSW gigs or years of self-abuse was unclear, but his sandpaper-throated sound just didn’t sound as cool as Carl Barat’s. It’s a good thing Scott didn’t sing STP’s “Creep.” That “half the man I used to be” line would have been just too sad.

And that’s a wrap! Let’s do it all again next year, shall we? In the meantime, for full SXSW 2015 coverage, download our app.

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