Pitchfork

Mika Miko [Flaming Cantina; 8 p.m.]

Mika Miko were either the first or second band I stuck into South by Southwest's showcase search engine deal. I have been turning Mika Miko's C.Y.S.L.A.B.F. over quite a bit in the last few weeks, I'm convinced the music coming out of the L.A. underground right now is among the best in the world, and I've never seen 'em before, so I had big plans to head down to the Flamingo and let 'em punk rock me for a while. A while, mind. Not six minutes.



Mika Miko were on first at the Panache/Lovepump showcase, and all five of 'em rolled into the club just about the time the Flamingo staff started admitting those of us in the small line that'd formed along 6th Street. They must've soundchecked beforehand, cuz they were raring to go, and I reckon I should've mentally prepared myself for a brief little blast when red phone-wielding singer Jennifer "Victor Fandgore" Clavin nonchalantly told the 50 or so folks in the crowd "we're going to play five songs."

The thing is, C.Y.S.L.A.B.F. jams 13 songs into just over 20 minutes, so five Mika Miko songs is, well, not a real long time. In their short stint onstage, they were good-- they hurried a bit too much to really be great, though it's there-- and they looked to be having a hell of a good time doing what they did. Hard to say just what this was a showcase for excepting perhaps brevity, but I sure hope they played a little more of the 45 minutes they were allotted at the Kill Rock Stars shebang later on in the evening. I was pretty bummed, but a minute later, I saw Bushwick Bill being interviewed in the middle of 6th Street, and that kinda made up for it.



Herman Dune [Stephen's F Bar; 9 p.m.]



I caught Herman Dune in a posh hotel lounge a block or so away from the downtown mobocracy, the kind of spot where they serve neon cocktails in all manner of fruit flavors and you feel kind of weird being all unshowered and covered in handstamps. It turned out to be a fine setting for Dune's sweet, silly Jonathan Richman-inspired, country-tinged American pastorals, made all the more charming by the fact that Dune is both French and seemingly the nicest man walking the earth at this moment. Dune's peppy little numbers about love and driving in cars are perfect mixtape fodder, and Dune knows how to work the crowd, alternating between a showy Chuck Berry duck-walk and a meek "thank you veddy much" to close every tune. "I don't know if you have had a chance to be puppetized," Dune muttered, "but I have." He then brought out a friend who manned a Dune puppet through "1-2-3 Apple Tree" to pretty amusing effect. The set occasionally threatened to veer towards the precious-- especially with the puppet, and especially in this pristine setting where even the appletini set were chuckling at his punchlines-- but the songs are just a bit too strong for that, and Dune curses just a tad too much for them to get too cute.



Telepathe [Emo's IV Lounge; 10 p.m.]

I took the kind of risk with Telepathe you're supposed to down here, I think: I went to see the Brooklyn trio having heard precisely one of their songs in my life: "I Can't Stand It", a swirly thing from the Rare Book Room's just-released Living Bridge compilation. "I Can't Stand It" is the jam, one of the best tracks on one of the better compilations in recent memory, pushing a big melody all over the place. And I was pretty jazzed to get a shot at seeing them play a few more tunes not unlike it and writing a nice thing about how we should maybe watch out for Telepathe.

And, in fact, you should watch out for Telepathe. They're not very good.



Live, Telepathe feature uncoordinated, awkward dancing, inaudible chatting, the occasional tuneless singing and some sorta spacey, minimal beats. That's really and truly about it. As a bit of confrontational theatre, it's interesting enough for maybe one "song," and then you get to wondering when the hell they're gonna stop swiveling and play something that resembles music. I scooted in a few minutes after they started and may have missed "I Can't Stand It", but believe me when I tell you nothing else they played is even in the same ballpark. This, I imagine, is what people who don't think much of the spare, shimmering High Places think of High Places, but at least those two put some tune in their tunes. This was just formless, dull, and, eventually, grating. Maybe I'm missing something.

Panther [Emo's IV Lounge; 11 p.m.]



Just shy of a year ago, I saw Panther play in this weird converted autoshop in Chicago. Armed only with an iPod full of spasmodic funk of his own design and some fleet footwork, Charlie Salas-Humara gave one of the only good performances I've ever seen using the generally dubious (or, I've noticed, generally electroclash) iPod-as-backing band setup. I was really into the satisfyingly strange Secret Lawns at that point, which I'd say is a lot closer to the record Beck should've made after Midnite Vultures than anything he's done since.

Panther recently became a duo, Salas-Humara recently enlisted Joe Kelly, late of 31Knots, to sit behind the drums both live and on record, and recent MySpace bulletins would suggest they're looking for a third. Yeah, the drums add a nice kick to the room, and the more streamlined funk explorations of the recent 14 kt God do sound better live than on record. But compared to Secret Lawns, which hit you at all angles at all times with its buzzing synths and Brainiac rhythms, the tunes are just a little dumb and more than a little too simplistic, and that's also made a bit clearer when it's just a dude chanting over a guy smacking the snare. And, since Salas-Humara now has an electronics rig and, eventually, a guitar to attend to, his dancing-- a sight to behold, as you can see here-- is broken up every few seconds by another knob to turn. It was a thoroughly okay performance, but I miss the dude with the jambox holding out his palm and blowing invisible pixie dust all over everything. Now that I would've liked to've seen again.



Kid Sister [Emo's Main Room; 12:10 a.m.]



I wrangled my way into the capacity crowd at Emo's specifically to catch Kid Sister and Clipse, but was told by the friendly young lady working the door that they were running "impossibly late." So, poor me, I had to catch the Cool Kids' last couple songs and then power through DJ A-Trak's cavalcade of remixes. The Cool Kids were live as ever, and I'm a little biased towards anybody who shouts out the Chi so often, but I was too far back to really engage with it. I muscled up a little close for A-Trak's jerky set, who threw out roughly as many bangers as he did pleas for the crowd to shout out his label, Fool's Gold, in an "are you ready to rumble?" voice. If they were trying to get me amped for what was coming-- and they were, cuz they told me-- mission accomplished.



And then, to the strains of the "Monday Night Football" theme, out popped Kid Sister. I know we cover Kid Sis and the whole Chicago scene on display here a lot in these diary things, but there's a reason for it: Live and in the flesh, Kid Sister is a sexy beast and a party monster, drawing all eyes to her even as those Chromeo goofballs mugged in the background. Kid Sis doesn't have a whole lot of songs to her credit at this point-- though that'll change soon-- so they're all familiar favorites to anybody with an ear to the hype machine. But the set was tempered by mic issues, and a lyrical gal like Kid Sister had to work extra hard to impress a crowd who couldn't make out a damn word she was saying. With her guy A-Trak on the boards and baby bro/Flosstradamus party-starter J2K echoing her lines, Kid Sister goofed with the crowd, juked and switchboarded and all that, and basically just got awesome all over the spot. And that's Kid Sister minus her best quality: all that glorious mess she's always talking.

Clipse [Emo's Main Room; 12:50 a.m.]



Kid Sister is a party, but Clipse is some contemplative head-nod shit. Sure, they bring the heat, and there's probably not a better live hip-hop act out there (though the one right before 'em is up there), but the incongruity of a bunch of soused indie rockers dry-humping to a bunch of songs about yayo makes me think not everybody there was really listening. Clipse, it probably goes without saying at this point, are absolutely at the top of their lyrical game right now, and their Re-Up Gang's recent third volume of their We Got It for Cheap mixtape series finds the foursome pruning some of their ill-fated commercial tendencies and honing their masterful craft even further. Still, there was a party going on right before Clipse showed, and a party it remained, which seemed to add fuel to Malice and particularly Pusha T's fire. Maybe dancing to Clipse isn't such a bad idea after all.

It was, in many ways, just your typical Clipse show: They came out, knocked every last line out of the park, bemoaned their recent commercial failings, asked if anybody had actually paid money for Hell Hath No Fury (how could you not buy that record?), and barely gave themselves a moment to breathe for the better part of an hour. The energy those two bring to the stage, disconsonant dancing from the crowd notwithstanding, is bigger than two dudes and a handful of great rap songs, and they're right to think they should be near the top of everyone's list. Not surprisingly, they eventually brought out Ab-Liva and, later, Sandman, and, with the Re-Up Gang assembled, tore through a good chunk of the new mixtape. Bringing out more folks at a rap show, as you probably know, is almost never a good idea, but Sandman and particularly Liva are operating on a level not that far from Clipse's, and it was a pretty great moment to be laughing right along with Pusha T at Liva's line in "Ride Around Shining" about how he'll "make Oliver Twist like Dickens". "No radio play, no video play," Pusha once again pointed out. "Ya'll the motherfuckers who kept us alive." Man, you are so welcome.