Peter Bjorn & John

There are always a few acts at SXSW that attract a lot of buzz. It was Arctic Monkeys last year, and Franz Ferdinand a couple years before that.

This year, Peter Bjorn & John is one of those bands. The Swedish trio is also said to be the group playing the most shows at the festival this year. One of those came Thursday afternoon at a party hosted by the online music service Rhapsody.

The band performed songs from its recent album "Writer's Block," and the catchy pop tunes took on a retro, almost psychedelic feel live. The musician's vocals were drenched in reverb, which sounded especially good on "Young Folks" when singer/guitarist Peter Moren (at right, with bassist Bjorn Yttling) whistled the melody line. The album is a study in atmospherics, with plenty of rhythmic texture, but the musicians demonstrated an impressive amount of skill in concert.

The group took forever to start playing, but once they got going, they became part of a perfect Austin day: Sunny skies, warm temperatures and a fabulous musical soundtrack. (Well, almost perfect: a group of women pushed their way up through the crowd to stand right in front of us, talking non-stop and smoking cigarette after cigarette. One of them danced like a chicken getting electrocuted. They were standing right next to a guy who singed his fingers with a lighter while trying to fire up the miniscule remnants of a joint, while his friend bent and folded a CD into a makeshift roach clip. Maybe those Above the Influence ads aren't so dumb after all ...)

Comments

[Fritz McPadden]

Have you actually even seen a chicken electrocuted? That sounds awesome.