the Coathangers, photo via their myspace

The Coathangers are kind of like if the Black Lips if the Black Lips were all ladies. Like that band, the Coathangers hail from Atlanta, Georgia; also like that band, they play a fairly garagey brand of punk rock'n'roll. All of the band members sing, but the drummer handled singing/screaming duties on at least a couple songs, and hers were probably the most impressive. They joked that they were going to do a Papa Roach cover at one point, and that they were available for weddings; one of them did that "ooh aah aah" that dude in Staind or Kornknot or whatever did on that one song. Take note: The Coathangers are among Ari Spool's Top 3 Bands to See at SXSW, and not without good reason. They played the Suicide Squeeze showcase last night, as the Seattle will be releasing the band's forthcoming album.

I missed Berlin producer Boys Noize at last year's SXSW, and also in Seattle, but I had heard nothing but good things about his performances. Maybe I'm missing something, or maybe last night's 10pm slot was just kind of off, but it was not the greatest DJ set, despite his engaging high energy. He started off with a typically buzzing, bit-crushed, synth-heavy jam, but after that first track he brought things down with what seemed like an interminable series of breakdowns marked by old school analog drum machines and lots and lots of open space between the beats. For several songs, each time it seemed like he was about to build to another big riff, he just dropped another relatively low key beat. He broke out of this pattern a couple times, once with a track that featured a great, housey clavinet, but for too much of the set it was all faux drops and plateaud momentum. The other problem is that when he did drop one of his big synth riffs, it was pretty indistinct, that is: fine for the dance floor, but nothing that would stick in your head afterwards. He wrapped things up with his excellent remix of Feist's "My Moon My Man," and it was unfortunately an exception—catchy, with plenty of payoff. It's weird, because I like dude's remixes and productions, but I just wasn't into that set last night.

Yoni Wolf of Why? played a rare solo set last night in the small back room of Mohawk, where it was so crowded that it was impossible to see the musician seated at his piano. But it was still a pleasure to listen to him. He played spare versions of "The Vowells Pt. 2" and " These Few Presidents" off of 2007's soul-crushingly good album Alopecia. Then he made some joke about the Middle East whose punchline was "blame it on Bahrain"—a Milli Vanilli pun, ladies and gentlemen. After that he played some new songs, off of a Why? album that he said would be out in September (!). Because he was playing all the songs on just a solo piano, and because Why? as a band have such layered, nuanced arrangements and production, you didn't get more than a sketch of each song's sound, but you did get Wolf's lyrics, which are always the highlight anyway. (I got in another voice vs lyrics argument, not about Why? so much as the Hold Steady, but I will repeat here my steadfast belief that killer lyrics beat a singing voice any damn day.) One song had a lyric about "habitually rubbing the sleep from my eyes," another had him worrying if he would grow old and get fat and when would "someone swing a scythe against me," another had a chorus about January 20-something, his last one I just have written down the line "I'm still here."

I only caught a couple of songs of Past Lives (back at the Suicide Squeeze showcase), so I can't really judge their whole set, but from what I saw the Austin crowd wasn't really feeling them too much. They sounded about like always—dubby, wobbly bass lines, hard and sharp drumming, Devin Welch's wiry, strangulated guitar scratches, and Jordan Blillie's alternately shrieked and low-sung vocals—but the audience was nonplussed. Maybe you just have to have the context of growing up with the Blood Brothers, like Seattle did, to really feel these guys?

Shout Out Out Out Out, drunk, ca. 2008 by Kelly O

At last year's SXSW Edmonton, Alberta electro-rock sextet Shout Out Out Out Out handily won the title for Most Wasted Band at SXSW—probably not an easy feat: One of their member toppled into his keyboards, knocking them offline for a song, and Cadence Weapon had to come up and do a freestyle number to kill the time while the roadies got his gear set back up. So, of course, I was eager to see them again. And not just for the potential drunkenness—I have a very soft spot in my heart for these guys. They're kind of like United State of Electronica, if that band were snarky and dark and bitter instead of lovey and huggy and cartoonishly nice in an almost cultish way. SOOOO have songs about the perils of consumer debt ("Forever Indebted"—released presciently on 2006's Not Saying/Just Saying), the twin benefits of healthy artistic competition ("Inspiration Competition") and low self-esteem ("Self Loathing Rulez"), impaired decision makin ("Bad Choices"), and how your friends will fuck you over ("In the End It's Your Friends"). They're also a little less poppy and a lot more track-y than are USE, regularly stretching songs out to eight minutes or so. Live, they have two drummers (one of which twirls his sticks and hams it up in a terribly endearing way) providing meaty backbeats and the odd cowbell, and four guys alternately playing racks of synthesizers and bass guitars (on on song, all four of them were playing bass guitars). The vocals are all vocodered, so they might be tough to pick out at first, but they're also simple—uncomplicated and earnest—enough to get down after a couple listens. Anyway, their songs are great fun, and their new album, Reintigration Time, which I've been listening to a promo of for the last couple weeks, is well worth getting when it comes out in May (oh, and it's already out in Canada/the Internets, I guess)—its song "Guilt Trips Sink Ships" and the above mentioned "Bad Choices" are my new jams. More about this album soon. Also, their set this year went off more or less without a hitch—all the synths cut out for a second on one song, but it wasn't entirely clear if this was intentional or not, and anyway the band recovered just fine.

At the perfectly ridiculous Red Bull afterparty, I finally saw Monotonix for the first time after missing them again and again and again in Seattle, and it was kind of exactly what I expected after hearing about them again and again and again. Which is to say: it's a fun show, the band playing on the floor and in the crowd, with sweat and mustaches and hair and drum thump and guitar fire and vocals nowhere in the mix whatsoever. Nothing on fire that I saw, but the crowd doused the band and each other in plenty of sticky drinks just in case—I came home with more energy drink on me than in me. But all that aside, the music just seems like such unimpressive garage rock to me—I couldn't hum you a riff of theirs if I tried, and I can't imagine ever feeling like listening to them outside of a live show. All of which, in my mind, buts them in a tier below those live bands who put on a spectacle while also turning out killer songs, a la Les Savy Fav. With the vocals effectively eliminated, it just kind of seemed like Lightning Bolt For Dummies. (Before y'all jump down my throat, know that the band has many fans here at the Stranger, and that I don't speak for everyone here.)