Music

SuperGlu and Magic Island helped kickstart the first day of SXSW Music Festival 2017 in Austin, Texas.

Tethered by her witty, idiosyncratic lyrics and scratchy, sweet vocals, Macy Gray's "Sexual Revolution" may have been too frothy for American radio at the time of its release, but it remains one of the finest singles released from the 2000s.

Chieko Honda offers something new to the Brazilian samba spectrum that is both melodious and uniquely her own.

'In a game, the focus is of course on game play, but the music seeps into the unconscious also – and is instantly recognizable if later heard.'

Taken together the tracks on Stuart's 18th studio album form not quite a concept album but a contiguous tapestry of engagement with and love for the idealized West, from the Native American chants on the "Desert Prayer" prologue and the laid-back mariachi flavor and slide guitar licks of the tasty instrumental "El Fantasmo Del Toro" to the mellow-catchy Johnny Cash cloak of "Old Mexico" and the drugged-out haze of the title track.

Traces of cabaret and swing music can be found in the smooth texture of her register and the enchanting way she sings a lyric, emphasizing the underlying emotions and creating an intimate atmosphere.

Garth Brooks and Zane Lowe are featured keynotes for SXSW Music Festival 2017 from March 13-19. 2017 in Austin, Texas.

Her new album matches the blues-rock-soul singer's honeyed voice with a varied batch of songs by top talents ranging from Mississippi John Hurt to The Weepies' Deb Talan to Black Sabbath.

SXSW began as a music festival in 1987 and is now the world’s largest. In addition, it has grown into a festival of festivals, including film, technology, ecology, medicine, and education. The festivals feature educational, networking and promotional activities as well as relevant trade shows. If that sounds kind of serious, don’t worry, there are parties, gaming, COSPLAY, and things that cannot be categorized.

Like crushed train cars telescoping into one another, these seven tracks fuse song and soundtrack-style music, contemporary newspaper accounts and musique concrète, into a gumbo of "you are there" tone poems about real-life train crashes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.