By Cool Kel

As a local Austinite, I’ve been attending SXSW for 25 years. This year, I’m embarking on a weeklong journey of reviewing only musical acts I know nothing about.

Andrea Daniela (Houston, TX) @ Tacos N Maiz

My third day of SXSW was all about star power on small stages. The emcee on the tiny stage at Tacos N Maiz introduced Andrea Daniela as “La Reina de Houston”–a moniker that fits. Andrea Daniela told the audience she quit her real estate job two years ago because being a singer had always been her dream. I for one am glad she quit her day job–even, it was clear we weren’t watching a star-in-the-making–Andrea Daniela is a star fully formed at the height of her craft as a singer, violinist, bandleader, dancer, and stage performer.

Daniela sings and plays violin and is backed by a five-piece band consisting of trumpet, keyboards, bass, drums, and vihuela a little guitar that is Mexican in origin. She has dubbed their sound Mariachi Alternativo and you can hear Tejano, country, R&B, and rap laced throughout to wonderful effect.  I heard influences as far ranging as Lucero and Curtis Mayfield, and even Lil Troy’s “Wanna Be a Baller” became an original mariachi tune.  In lesser hands this might not work, but Andrea has the charisma and confidence to make it sound natural. None of this would matter, however, if Andrea fit a mold that had already been cast. She does not. Hers is a sound that is completely her own.

Pär Hagström and Charlatans of Love (Goteborg, Sweden) @ The 13th Floor

It took nearly three nights for me to see a “traditional” rock act at this year’s SXSW and the wait paid off with dividends. Pär Hagström and Charlatans of Love are a band whose rock-heroism is only surpassed by their eccentricities. Pär Hagström mesmerizes the audience as a psychedelic preacher delivering a sermon of absurdities. This is hardly a metaphor–the man is really preaching! Like any good tent-revivalist, he brought his tambourine with him.  

Pär’s band, Charlatans of Love, play their own take on a style of rock chronologically between the heavier blues-rock of bands like Vanilla Fudge and the proto-metal sound of early Deep Purple. It is hard rock, but from that brief period when hard rock had not yet shed its soul influence. As with muchSwedish rock, listeners can be sure a wider breadth of English vocabulary than most of our music in the U.S., and that the musicians are all virtuosos.

A band like this couldn’t possibly have less-than-spectacular guitar player, and Pär Hagström has a certified guitar hero wailing to his left who shreds with a heavy blues sound, but often veered into funk riffs and avant-garde noisiness without losing the audience. I heard influences as broad as David Gilmour, Tommy Bolin, and Fred Frith. I have to mention that the guitarist has one of the most unorthodox playing techniques I’ve ever witnessed–he played without a pick, instead using his middle and ring fingers. How does he do it? Given Charlatans of Love’s penchant for the religious, perhaps it’s a miracle.