Actual warm weather showed up in Austin yesterday and the only humans complaining about it were some of the English bands at MTV's "Woodies Festival" (an warm-up to a possibly virtual awards show that will be airing this weekend) who had forgotten to bring "sun cream" and were strangely apologetic at wearing sunglasses on stage. I took advantage of the polar vortex's retreat, leaving my sweater and jacket in my overly climate controlled hotel room and spent most of the afternoon at a couple of outdoor day parties, both for the opportunity for direct sunlight and the likelihood of avoiding lines.

I started at IFC's party to catch a set from Typhoon in a city park that the cable channel had transformed into a rickety fairground, complete with carnival games and people sunbathing in a empty public pool. Because, why not? There, a guy overheating in a celery costume that sprung from a Steve Buscemi Portlandia episode wandered around the park to liven up people's "selfie shots" or accompany them on their treacherous rides down giant slide...

...Next door, and true to brand, the production at MTV's event was predictably slicker: large flashy stages, silent discos, enthusiastic hyped intros. I stopped in to see What The Kids Were Listening To These Days and stayed for the drinks and piles of free food. I'm notably terrible at even identifying the correct promotional hoops to jump through for free stuff at SXSW, so I somewhat shamefully admit that the presence of easy-to-understand drink and food tickets redeemable for my weight in fancy macaroni and cheese, Shiner, and fancy cocktails had some true appeal.

When I arrived London Grammar and Sam Smith (who you may know from Disclosure's "Latch") were playing introspective back-to-back moody sets, suggesting that The Kids are having a real case of the Feels. I stuck around long enough for an electro rock pick-me-up from Phantogram but before the sun set on event. Overhead, for at least an hour in the early evening, airplanes circled, writing the first hundred or so of Pi in the clear blue sky for an advertising purpose that I couldn't bring myself to uncover.

Later that evening, I went up to St. David's Episcopal Church, which felt like a grown-up youth group lock-in (complete with beer-and-brisket cafeteria), to sit in not entirely uncomfortable wooden pews for Perfume Genius and Christopher Owens (formerly of, and touring with former members of, Girls). The beautiful midcentury sanctuary suited their performances perfectly and the formal setting encouraged impeccable audience politeness. At the same complex, Timber Timbre played haunted ghost stories in the dark of a "creatively" lit rec center.

Though I was charmed by the relaxed church atmosphere, it felt a bit too conducive to an inadvertently early bedtime; so I walked down to the Rainey Street neighborhood to catch the end of the Anti Records showcase. There, BRONCHO spazzily burned through about forty songs in thirty minutes, Tinariwen played some mellow guitar jams from Mali, and, trying my hardest to capture the True Spirit of SXSW, I completed a taco truck trifecta by eating three different taco styles (breakfast, Korean fusion, and traditional) in a twenty-four hour period.

Appealing/Appalling Service of the Day

IFC Fairgrounds

MTV U Woodies Festival

St. David's Episcopal Church

Bungalow