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March 15, 2006
Equal opportunity rock
 I always forget how tired of watching a band of skinny, skanky boys in their girlfriends' jeans rockin' out till I pop across a co-ed group. (I forget, I should add, because bands of skinny, skanky boys in their girlfriends' jeans often actually do rock out as advertised.) I always feel old and nostalgic and cranky when I notice it, but there do seem to be fewer gender-integrated combos these days than there were a dozen or so years ago. But tonight, I've happily run across several boy-girl combos. Such a set-up works best for me when the band doesn't make too much of it, as was the case with Envelopes, who I mentioned last week. They played with the offhanded camaraderie their songs required, and I wasn't disappointed. The Chalets, however, didn't quite snare me. Maybe it was the kitty ears one of the two women singers was sporting, but something in their winking sexiness didn't gel for me. But I am happy to report my first serendipitous SXSW find. I'd heard nothing about the Grates prior to tonight (well, maybe I'd heard the name, or maybe it's just so similar to so many others. Their myspace page describes the Australian band as "3 best friends that play music for 1/2 an hour," and aside from the fact that the addition of a keyboard player (and perhaps mere aquaintance rather than old chum?) made them four, that pretty much sums them up. Except it doesn't give you a sense of what a star Patience Hodgson is. In red dress and striped socks, the singer bounced and bounded with crazy energy, grinning the whole while. Her between-song banter was excited, engaging, and often not entirely possible to follow--though she had a funny bit about how she was going to stop drinking water between each song, because that was evidence a band is nervous. Drummer Alana Skyring--meticulous yet hard-hitting--also stood out. And I should add, whoever handles sound at the Parish sure knows how to mike a bass drum so it kicks you square in the gut, the way it should. Posted by Keith Harris at 11:45 PM



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