Let me just assure you, right off, that after this, I promise never, ever, to talk to you about this year’s SXSW again, but check it out: so a couple of weeks ago, we’re at SXSW, coming around the bend of Red River and Sixth Street — right in the middle of the afternoon, and right in the thick of the opening day shitshow. Imagine the sound of it: a whole street teeming with people and lined with bars on either side, every room and rooftop exploding with the sound of a thousand random bands. Storms of unsynchronized drum fills, unleashed bass lines, wild solos, and lost vocals stray from the safety of their songs into the street, making us all really want beer.In one sense, this violent mess of sound was the perfect expression of what we were all doing there: forging together a vast communal effort to schedule some abandon, letting the sound we love spread and roar out of control like some citywide bonfire (that stops burning around 4 am every night). In another sense, it was just really fucking loud everywhere.
Having just arrived and not having had any tequila or Tecate yet, I was feeling it in the latter way. We passed by a tossed-up tent-and-chain-link venue with a long line jutting into the street, and from between the portajohns came one of the lowest frequencies I’d ever heard — you could hear their plastic locks rattle and feel it on the surface of your shirt. I couldn’t see who was on stage, but the sound was suddenly overtaken by a galloping synth line that jumped the fence like a charge of horses. So, either Pink Floyd were covering Bear in Heaven — I recognized the song right off as my B-in-H fave, “You Do You” — or Bear in Heaven (who come to the Middle East next Thursday) were not only playing but, holy shit, sounded a lot more massive than I thought they would.
We stood and listened for a while, and once the set was done, we walked off to find tacos, and despite my never actually seeing them, that one song was a highlight of the trip. The Bear in Heaven sound stands out from the crowd: their penchant for epic elegance recalls the best moments of Talk Talk, and their post-industrial tribal vibes conjure This Heat. But like the street outside, their songs are as energized by utter chaos as they are controlled by precise organization. Their latest, Beast Rest Forth Mouth (Hometapes), is like a chance encounter between prog and humility — there are no guitar solos, its vast sonic scope is kept in four-minute pop-song check, and its catchiest moments double as its most adventurous.
Related:
Ghost stories, Winged migration, Injustice for all, More 
- Ghost stories
For all of the excitement that surrounded Wilco on the Maine State Pier or Sufjan Stevens at Port City Music Hall or the various sold-out Ray LaMontagne shows of the past year, there is no question that last Sunday's Phish show at the Cumberland County Civic Center was the biggest thing to hit our fair city in a very long time.
- Winged migration
Since their start in the middle of the decade, Brown Bird have been one of the region's go-to chamber-folk outfits, with a couple of dark and stormy albums earning them a following in various nooks of New England. The release of their latest album, The Devil Dancing , feels like both an ending and a new beginning.
- Injustice for all
Scott Sturgeon loses his train of thought a couple of times during this interview. He's loopy from jet lag — which is unavoidable after a 20-hour flight from New Zealand (halfway around the planet from his non-residency at a squatted apartment building in New York City), where he's just finished a tour with his claim-to-fame band, Leftover Crack.
- Wanting more
After its triumphant traversal of the complete Béla Bartók string quartets at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Borromeo Quartet was back for a free 20th- and 21st-century program at Jordan Hall, leading off with an accomplished recent piece by the 24-year-old Egyptian composer Mohammed Fairuz, Lamentation and Satire.
- Group hug
Things aren’t always what they’re called — we know that flying fish don’t fly and starfish aren’t even fish.
- Local heroes, ’09 edition
The Rhode Island music community flourished in 2009, with new full-lengths from the Coming Weak, California Smile, and the pride of Cranston West and official big-leaguers Monty Are I, who released Break Through the Silence in September.
- Local flavor
Local journalist and acclaimed hip-hop scribe Andrew Martin has corralled a flavorful roster of Rhody-based rap talent on the Ocean State Sampler , 10 exclusive tracks available for free download.
- Beyond Dilla and Dipset
With a semi-sober face I'll claim that hip-hop in 2010 might deliver more than just posthumous Dilla discs, Dipset mixtapes, and a new ignoramus coke rapper whom critics pretend rhymes in triple-entendres.
- John Harbison plus 10
Classical music in Boston is so rich, having to pick 10 special events for this winter preview is more like one-tenth of the performances I'm actually looking forward to.
- Shout it out!
Sharks Come Cruisin' founder Mark Lambert is a Warwick native with a penchant for reworking and penning sea shanties from centuries past, often revised with rollicking punk flare — all thanks to the golden pipes of Quint, the shark-obsessed skipper in Jaws .
- Punk wreck
Guitar punk rock has a long and, frankly, dull history.
- Review: In Search of Beethoven
Phil Grabsky's exhaustive documentary doesn't exactly dispel any stereotypes about Beethoven's being a shaggy genius prone to rages.
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