Black Lips

The hardest working band at SXSW had about a dozen gigs set up for the fest and seemed to have made an impression at every last one, be they pissing and/or vomiting on themselves and the crowd, making out with each other or simply kicking out jams like the world might explode tomorrow. The surprisingly well-crafted songs can sound almost 1950s-ish, if there were toque-wearing indie punks back then, but the band’s sheer enthusiasm is enough to sell their sound — even though their bass player somehow got lost during a brief sojourn south of the border and had yet to return from Mexico. But they’re all like, whatever — the rock must go on.