Welcome to the latest in a week-long series of spotlights profiling the bands and artists performing at the Boston & Beyond party at SXSW, a collaborative effort between Berklee College of Music and Vanyaland. Our second-annual event — and Berklee’s 10th SXSW party overall — goes down Thursday, March 19 at Austin’s Brush Square Park, 409 East 5th St., next to the Convention Center. The party is co-presented by Berklee Alumni, The Red Room @ Cafe 939, and Heavy Rotation Records, and is all ages and open to SXSW badge holders. The public can email sxswrsvp@berklee.edu to attend free of charge. An oyster bar will be provided by Island Creek Oysters, and VanyaRadio will be streaming all the performances. More info and music links can be found here.
Yellerkin, 6:15 p.m. set time
Whenever assembling a party for SXSW, there’s an underlying attempt to craft a lineup that caters to a wide range of eclectic tastes. Usually that’s achieved by pig-piling various bands from a diverse swath of sounds and genres. With our Boston & Beyond party, we achieved this simply by enlisting Yellerkin.
The New York-based duo of Adrian Galvin and Luca Buccellati are tough to pin down into any genre, but usually “experimental pop” keeps appearing in fawning press reviews. Vice’s Noisey blog called 2013 standout “Solar Laws” an “absurdly addictive, occasionally heartbreaking single,” and about “Tools,” Stereogum writes that the pair of songwriters/producers “have ingested Animal Collective and Passion Pit in equal measure.”
VanyaRadio favorite “Tools” just showed up on the KEXP Music That Matters podcast alongside Father John Misty and Django Django, so you know shit is getting real on the national front.
And it’s reflected in Yellerkin’s SXSW swing. With appearances at parties by NoiseTrade, the Wild Honey Pie, and Quantum Collective (check here for their full schedule), Yellerkin should have a big spring, solidifying their place alongside fellow New Torch Entertainment pop tastemakers Betty Who and Verite.
For our event at Brush Square Park on March 19, Yellerkin are in the middle of the party’s V:Music swing, which also features Night Lights (4:45 p.m.), Radclyffe Hall (5:30 p.m.), and St. Nothing (7 p.m.). Sounds good to us, in any classification.
Follow Yellerkin on Twitter @yellerkin
