Listen Up: Battling Belligerent Newness at SXSW

South by Southwest (which wraps up its film and interactive portions early this week and rings in its music festival on Tuesday night) ruins feet and livers; it mocks carefully-orchestrated schedules. It wants you to be never satisfied, to be always on the move, always on the way to the next better thing, afraid of missing out—on what? You aren’t sure; you haven’t found it yet. But when you get there, you will know. And you will get there, because you must get there. You must!

Because what’s the point, really, of seeing a band you already know you love when there are easily a hundred others playing within ten blocks of you at the exact same time? What’s the point of seeing a band you just saw in your hometown last week here again for the second time (third, fourth time?), when you could be seeing that other band that everyone’s telling you you should see? And when you’ve seen that band, what’s the point of seeing that other band you’re also being told you should see when there are endless bands that you know no one else has heard of because no one is telling you to see them but that you could maybe later be the one telling people to see?

The festival is a cruel glut of belligerent newness, and you have never done enough.

And so it’s tempting, really, to swing in the opposite direction: To while away four days in Austin, Tex., by wandering the streets and seeing not a single new band of note but instead just stuffing your belly with free BBQ and your complimentary tote bag full of free earplugs and energy supplement samples and tracts from crazy street-walkers. To see only bands who will play songs that you know by heart, to curl up in the blissful comfort of familiarity in whatever small, distant corners it may be found. To reconnect with and reaffirm what you already know.

The dangerous fact is that you could probably do a whole SXSW that way; it would be easier, to be sure, than giving yourself over to the manic pressure that consumes so many attendees. It is exactly what I’ve been tempted to do on my two previous trips to the festival, and it’s a desire that I’m sure I’ll have to fight off when I head back down to Texas again this week.

In my everyday life, I like to eat the same thing for breakfast every day, I tend to use the exact same stall at public restrooms time and time again whenever I can manage and I like to watch the local nightly news not because I particularly care about school board scandals or apartment fires but because it’s comforting to know I can get told about those things every night at 6 and 7 PM on the dot. And this tendency towards predictability and comfortable routine is only magnified in times of duress and/or large amounts of free booze and/or large amounts of strangers that I am expected to talk with and/or bands that I am expected to weigh in on in some way by the end of the week. It can be fun to go-go-go along, but for the most part I’m just not suited for that kind of physical and mental obliteration.

Thank God, then, for the crop of—well, what shall we call them? They’re not supergroups exactly, but they’re bands that you might know most or all of the members of from other projects, none of which are very huge in their own right, but widely beloved and chopped up and recombined in these new acts in a way that is pretty exciting. They’re familiar but not too familiar; they’re new but not too new. I feel absolutely no guilt and quite a lot of confidence in blocking out several half-hours of my frenzied life for them this week. And the two I’m most excited about are luckily playing at one of Paste’s day parties, so I’ll be checking them out with the option to use the same bathroom stall over and over again. (You call it a neurosis; I call it a survival tactic.)

At our Thursday party (and so many other times and places this week) there is Black Prairie, which I’ve been itching to see live for well over a year. I spent a not inconsiderable amount of time late last winter researching The Decemberists, in part just trying to get my head around the band members’ approximately seven hundred and ninety three side projects. Black Prairie is one of those, featuring bassist Nate Query, guitarist Chris Funk and organist Jenny Conlee, plus fellow Portlanders Jon Neufeld and Annalisa Tornfelt. When I first came upon the band’s MySpace site last year, there were just a couple of spooky, rootsy wordless tracks posted; given the name and the tone of it all, it seemed entirely possible that it was some kind of Americana-styled Black Mountain tribute act (!!!). We aren’t so lucky, but what we did get is pretty great in its own way—some dark, lovely instrumental bluegrass and folk with a bit of an experimental bent that shifts time and place even within the same song. Tornfelt provides vocals and doesn’t sing much but when she does it’s eerie and bleary-eyed and sounds so sad.

Later that day there’s The Living Sisters (pictured above), the a threesome of singer/songwriter Eleni Mandell, Inara George of The Bird & the Bee and Lavender Diamond’s Becky Stark. They’re all from L.A., they’ve all got exceedingly lovely voices and are singular songwriters on their own; together, they’re huge fans of the 60s girl-group sound and that defines almost every moment of their debut Love to Live. It’s shimmery-sweet, full of songs about boyfriends and lots of ebullient “ooohs!” and three-part harmonies, and it’s just darling—which would be a real insult if I didn’t get the feeling that’s exactly what they were going for. I can’t wait for Thursday afternoon when I’ll doubtlessly be sunburned and reeling from my ill-advised day-drinking and they’ll be shimmying and crooning on the Galaxy Room stage.

If I’m still awake at 1 AM on Saturday morning, I’ll likely be at the Ale House to see MG&V, the three lead singers of Dawes, Delta Spirit and Deer Tick, who met up over the last few years and decided it would be best for everyone if they started making music together. I haven’t heard a single song by these guys, but my love for Dawes has stayed steady since I first heard them last summer, and while I’ve never really gotten into the other two bands I figure this is as good a time as any to make an effort.

Just like my other two SXSWs, I’m sure my favorite moments of the week will be entirely unscheduled and unpremeditated—they probably won’t even happen on a stage. I’ll get down there and fall into the whole chaotic rhythm of the festival and my head will be spinning and my feet aching and a dozen unheard-of bands ringing in my ears at once. Maybe this will be the year I stop trying to wrangle any sense or order out of the experience (it sure will be the year I finally wear walkable shoes). Regardless, here’s to the new; may it treat us all kindly, and may it be worth the trip.

Rachael Maddux is Paste’s associate editor. Her column appears at PasteMagazine.com every Monday.