SXSW 2009: The Heartless Bastards, Micachu and more rock SXSW lady-style

Even though dude-y bands are apparently on the rise at SXSW 2009, I've managed not to see a single one of them yet. In fact, the majority of the acts I've been able to take in since arriving in Austin Wednesday have involved totally badass women. Too many for my BBQ'd out brain to write about them all, actually, so here are some of my very favorites.

The first, The Heartless Bastards, was a great surprise at our Wednesday day party at Radio Room. This is kind of shameful, but it always happens-- I'll know and love most of the artists playing our things but then there will be a few that I've somehow overlooked, but that totally win me over when I finally see them play. Like, totally and completely. You may not expect a woman to front a band with that name, but there she is, Erika Wennerstrom, who has a badass enough name on her own, but has chosen to call herself and her rotating, alt-country garage-rocking band of musicians The Heartless Bastards. She has this swingy haircut that flails everywhere as she bobs and sways, pounding away at her guitar and howling from the back of her guts. Her guys are great too, but it's hard to not watch her-- and I was happy to see them again later at the NPR showcase at Stubb's.

Before that, though, I finally got to see Janelle Monae do her crazy tuxedo robot thing. She's from Atlanta but I've managed to miss her live shows more times than should be acceptable, so I was among the many in the Stubb's crowd that only had a slight inkling of what was to come. Steve summed the show up quite nicely and I'm sure you'll be hearing more about her performance tonight at the Afropunk showcase, but let me add that it's been a while since felt so fully enraptured and bemused and awed as I did when she was on stage. Not to dwell too much on hair here, but Monae wears hers in this incredibly coiffed pouf at the front of her head that invariably tumbles loose while she's thrashing around doing her ecstatic robot dance, only to be refashioned all prim and proper between songs. Her music treads along these lines, too-- like James Brown meets Judy Garland. If you get a chance to see her this week, do it.

Next up at Stubb's was Ladyhawke. Unfortunately, I think Flight of the Conchords has just completely ruined the "New Zealanders playing synths" thing for me, in that I now expect anyone else doing that to also be very very hilarious, which she wasn't. But "Magic" still makes me want to possibly consider dancing, which is saying a lot, so all was not lost.

Later, those murderous Decemberists took the stage to perform their new album The Hazards of Love in full sequence for the first time live-- an exciting treat, if not a little nerve-wracking, since I've had the album for a bit now and knew well the feeling of unsettlement and confusion that many of unwitting listeners present were probably feeling. (Keep listening, yous. It's a grower.) Becky Stark was lovely in her role as Margaret, her voice every bit as achingly crystalline as on the album, but it was Shara Worden who nearly stole the show as the evil forest queen. This time last year, I was pondering the possibility of her releasing a whole album of Roy Orbison covers, but scrap that. Make it Black Sabbath, please.

And tonight, I joined the small crowd at Emo's Annex to see Micachu & the Shapes, a group out of the UK lead by 20-something mop-headed pixie Mica Levi. In all the press photos I'd seen leading up to this week, her hair was a mess of sausage curls drooping over her face, but she's apparently been shorn since then. In her jeans and oversized t-shirt and short hair, she resembled like an adolescent tomboy fronting a noisy three-piece sampling plunks and clinks and clanks and shredding on a taped-up toy guitar. Paste's intrepid man-on-the-ground Reed Fischer will have more from Levi and her crew in the coming days. Til then, how's about you just listen to "Golden Phone" on repeat?