Good lord, is it that time already? 2009 still has many miles to go, but already spring in Texas seems just around the corner. SXSW, that ginormous music-biz orgy from which buzz can come rumbling like rolling thunder, has announced its first slate of acts. The roll-call reads roughly 300 bands long, but a fraction of thousands who'll eventually make the trek to Austin for four days of musical mania.

Though it's too soon to nail down a definitive list of the picks of the fest (à la my 2009 formguide (and, hey, that Grizzly Bear band turned out to have a pretty good year)), there's plenty of interesting names already on the 2010 cards, many of whom can be heartily recommended. Like...

• Ólöf Arnalds: Arnalds' achingly brittle folksongs —reminiscent of warbly freak-folk dames like Joanna Newsom and Josephine Foster— are barely known outside of Iceland, even though her 2007 debut LP, Við Og Við is, truly, one of the most beautiful albums of the decade.
• The Brunettes: Though not quite as funny-ha-ha as Flight of the Conchords, this button-cute Auckland duo did once record a cut called "I Miss My Coochie-Coo"; a mocking ode to bubblegum breakup ballads built on baby-talk.
• Fanfarlo: Articulate London indie-poppers turned down music-biz overtures and imminent English-press hype to 'self-release' (AKA: essentially give away) their debut LP. The ploy worked, the buzz built, and soon Fanfarlo will be everywhere.
• Frightened Rabbit: Emotionally-wraught Scottish guitar-rockers recently released the really great single "Swim Until You Can't See Land," and have apparently finished up their follow-up to 2008's great The Midnight Organ Fight.
• Japandroids: Their great debut LP made them one of this year's breakout acts even before they tore it up at CMJ 2009. What's left to say?
• The Middle East: Hailing not from Arabian deserts but, instead, the sweaty tropics of the Australian Far North, this moody, melancholy combo are cut from a similar cloth to 2009 breakout heroes The Antlers: their epic power-ballads drawing using post-rock methods to go from tiny to towering.
• Mountain Man: One of my favorite new bands: three girls from Vermont caroling Appalachian-folk-music-inspired songs in scratchy, Smithsonian Folkways-ish fidelity. Their magical music glows with both ancient wisdom and nascent promise.
• Princeton: L.A. pop fops whose doo-woppin' debut disc, Cocoon of Love, has proved more persistent, to me, than expected; demanding and receiving repeat plays.
• Trembling Bells: Great Scottish folk-rock combo summon the spirit of folk-revival acts like Pentangle and the Invisible String Band on their criminally overlooked Carbeth LP.
• Warpaint: Handsome Los Angeles dames whose delay-draped slowcore-psych-pop is generating some slowburnin' buzz. They're going to have a huge 2010.

Much more on SXSW in the coming months, I'm sure...

Barcelona's Primavera Sound Festival has, in its decade of existence, established itself as one of the most impressive music fests on the European calendar. Of course, being in Barcelona, in May, makes it a favored 'destination' festival for sun-starved music enthusiasts; and, well, if you were contemplating your vacation plans for 2010, maybe keep May 27-29 open.

Co-headlining the 10th Primavera Sound shindig are a pair of recently-reunited rockbands you may have heard of: Pavement and The Pixies. But that's just the beginning.

Also set to grace the stages at the Parc Del Fòrum on the Primavera bill are The XX, Wild Beasts, Panda Bear, Dum Dum Girls, Wilco, The Antlers, The Fall, Ganglians, Here We Go Magic, and Hope Sandoval and the Warm Inventions.

Scores more bands'll be added between now and the new year, including a stage curated by the Pitchfork empire. And no matter who's playing, spring on the Catalan coast has its own particular charms...

Name: Brilliant Colors
From: San Francisco, California
Story: Slumberland Records' latest signing
Sound: Twee revival, ho!

Cosmic coincidence: the title of Brilliant Colors' debut album is Introducing, and its front-cover is type set in the same way as this blog post heading. Woah!

As introduced by Introducing, the colors Brilliant Colors' summon aren't so brilliant; more muted, bleeding, and dulled. Recording in such low fidelity that guitar shorts out into fuzzy static, the San Franciscan trio make music employing 'poor' audio quality as a form of time-travel; the record's washed-out shades hoping to evoke an aged quality, as if we're listening to a document from a distant day.

In the mind of Brilliant Colors mastermind Jess Scott, the distant day is some lost summer eve of an imaginary, mythologized 1986, and her band is playing a fantasy bill alongside Talulah Gosh and the Shop Assistants. At its best, Introducing captures the spirit of the mythical summer's night, in which anything —any dizzy daydream— seems possible.

Photo © David Armstrong

The Year: 1969
The Album: Alexander 'Skip' Spence, Oar
Who It Influenced: Beck, Wilco, Tom Waits, Giant Sand, Cat Power, Sandro Perri

This year, Scientologist song-and-dance-man Beck started up an online 'Record Club,' in which he and his pals —brother-in-law Giovanni Ribisi, producer Nigel Godrich, Devendra Banhart, Little Joy, MGMT— would get together to cover an entire album, all in a single day.

The first two LPs done in their entirety, The Velvet Underground's The Velvet Underground and Nico and Leonard Cohen's Songs of Leonard Cohen, are perennial classics, records already known and loved by, like, everyone. Beck threw a curve, this week, with the unveiling of the third Club work: hooking up with Wilco, Feist, and Jamie Lidell to tackle Alexander 'Skip' Spence's strange, psychedelic, lonesome Oar, an album whose audience could only be described as 'cult.'

Beck had publicly professed his Spence affection before, in 1999, when he appeared on a tribute record, More Oar, which also recreated this cult LP in its entirety. The others on the tribute? Robyn Hitchcock, Tom Waits, Mudhoney, Flying Saucer Attack, and, um, Robert Plant.

This roll-call of famous fans proved, once more, that it's not how many people hear your record, but who hears it. Which is lucky, given that, on its release, Oar was supposedly the lowest-selling release in the history of Columbia Records.

These days, Spence just sounds ahead-of-his-time; his insular, self-styled, half-finished tunes having all the hallmarks of the songwriters who'd spring up in the lo-fi movement. And, with near-mythical tales of dropped acid, schizophrenic panic, and axe attacks in its back-story, you can only imagine the cult of Oar will continue to grow.

• Full review: Alexander 'Skip' Spence, Oar