SXSW 2015 Tuesday Rock Highlights: Unlocking the Truth, Catfish & the Bottlemen, Mew & More

The Music portion of Austin, Texas’s South By Southwest 2015 festival got underway Tuesday, bringing with it the usual assortment of spring-breakers, expense-account industry revelers, and approximately 2,000 bands. We only saw six of ‘em, but of course, we must pace ourselves; it’s only day one, after all. These were the Tuesday highlights:

Unlocking the Truth Brought New Meaning to the Term “Kid Rock”

Brooklyn thrash-metal teens and former Times Square buskers Unlocking the Truth (that’s UTT, for those in the know) made headlines in 2014 for signing to Sony for a reported $1.8 million. This week at SXSW Film, they made headlines again at the premiere of their documentary Breaking a Monster, when they revealed that they are “working on [their] exit” from Sony before even releasing a single, let alone a full album. No further details were given, but clearly Sony’s loss will eventually be some other TBD label’s gain. Childhood friends Malcolm Brickhouse, Alec Atkins, and Jarad Dawkins rocked the Dirty Dog bar at the past-their-bedtime hour of 10 p.m., and they proved they could hold their own their own with the big boys and live up to their hype — melting the eardrums and faces of oldsters, youngsters, punks, hippies, metalheads, and lookie-loos alike with their unique brand of groovy/funky/grungy/shreddy hard rock. Here are a couple Vines of them doing just that:

Tunde Adebimpe Was Upstaged By His Own Left Hand

Playing Rolling Stone's daytime soiree in the middle of a bicycle shop (an unofficial warm-up show for their SXSW Interactive closing party showcase later that night at Stubb's), TV On the Radio were in their usual fine form — thrilling the crowd with “Golden Age,” “Wolf Like Me,” and “Happy Idiot” (but sadly, no “Staring at the Sun”). All of the band members gave it their all, but everyone should really give a big hand for the hardest-working left hand in rock, which belongs to TVOTR frontman Tunde Adebimpe. Watching that southpaw flutter, undulate, and flap around like a particularly graceful hand-puppet was truly fascinating. Seriously, does Tunde's left hand have its own Twitter account yet?

Mew Played the Best Song About Giraffes Since This One

Mew is a huge band in Denmark. It wouldn’t be surprising if their singer became a judge on Danish Idol or The X Factor Denmark someday. But these indie-prog great Danes haven’t enjoyed the Stateside superstardom they so richly deserve. Maybe that will change with the forthcoming release of + -, their first album in a whopping six years. When the band returned to the U.S. this week and played Tuesday’s opening-night party for hipster hangout the Fader Fort, their ethereal new tracks like “Water Slides” went over extremely well. However, 2006’s classic “The Zookeeper’s Boy” was the true standout moment. The song has lyrics like “You’re tall, just like a giraffe/You have to climb to find its head/But if there’s a glitch, you’re an ostrich/You’ve got your head in the sand.” You don’t hear American bands coming up with couplets as awesome as that.

Passion (Pit) Sprang Eternal

Another comeback band of sorts gracing the Fader Fort stage was indie-pop outfit Passion Pit, who next month will release their first album since 2012. To celebrate, their set was introduced by Entourage star Adrian Grenier. Then everyone hugged it out to Passion Pit’s effervescent new feelgood single, “Lifted Up (1985).” As frontman Michael Angelakos sang, “1985 was a good year,” it was clear that 2015 is going to be pretty fantastic for Passion Pit as well.

Catfish & the Bottlemen Packed Them in Like Sardines

The British Music Embassy at Latitude 30 was brimming with Anglophiles and actual Anglos (including tastemaking BBC Radio DJ Steve Lamacq) for this Zane Lowe-championed, up-and-coming Welsh indie-rock combo. C&TB ticked all the hipster boxes (impossibly skinny legs sheathed in impossibly tight skinny jeans, striped shirts, shaggy haircuts and swaggy attitudes) to be 2015 NME posterboys, but nothing about them seemed derivative. They just seemed cool. C’mon, Lamacq and Lowe are rarely wrong about this sort of thing.

Milky Chance Earned Bravos at Brazos

Kicking off Yahoo’s five-night SXSW Music run at Brazos Hall, aka the “Yodel House,” were these headliners, German psych-folksters whose jamtronica vibes had the at-capacity club buzzing and bopping. Many a clubgoer enjoyed a “Stolen Dance” during the group’s high-energy set. And Randy Jackson was even in the house, dawg!

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And that’s just day one, folks. For full SXSW coverage, download our app, and come back later this week for more daily reports.

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