CITY SLANG PRESENTS ☞ “Let's Mess With Texas" Showcase ☜
CITY SLANG PRESENTS
“LET’S MESS WITH TEXAS” SHOWCASE
AT SXSW IN AUSTIN TX ON MARCH 18TH
LINEUP: POM POM SQUAD – LOS BITCHOS – KAINA – KING HANNAH – SOPHIA KENNEDY – ANNA B SAVAGE
IN PARTNERSHIP WITH FUND TEXAS CHOICE
City Slang is thrilled to announce its official 2022 SXSW showcase in Austin, Texas. After two years of wrestling with the annoying COVID realities, we really needed this! SOMETHING to look forward to! So here it goes: City Slang will host an evening during this year’s convention that not only features a lineup of all female lead bands and artists, but celebrates a new generation of exciting musicians as the label enters its fourth decade. It’s all happening on Friday March 18th at Augustine and it promises to be one hell of Texas hoedown. The evening will celebrate album releases from the label’s eclectic roster from this year as well as last year, highlighting the new squad of artists representing the future of the label: Anna B Savage (UK), Sophia Kennedy (DE), King Hannah (UK), KAINA (US), Los Bitchos (UK) and Pom Pom Squad (US). Listen to all artists on our official party playlist here: Let’s Mess With Texas
The showcase’s title, “Let’s Mess With Texas,” is our warm encouragement to let loose and to challenge the status quo. In an effort to support the local community of Austin and the state of Texas, we have partnered with Texas non-profit Fund Texas Choice (https://fundtexaschoice.org/) on a fundraising effort at the event. Profits from limited edition shirts and posters will be available at the show, featuring the artwork of Berlin-illustrator Karolin Nusa (https://www.instagram.com/karo...)
City Slang has been a European outpost for quality indie music from around the world since 1990. A home away from home for innovative and pioneering artists ranging from the Flaming Lips and Yo La Tengo to Hole, Tortoise, Superchunk and Built To Spill in the 90ies, the label reinvented itself time and time again and currently counts a.o. Jessica Pratt, Caribou, Roosevelt, Calexico, Lambchop, Tindersticks, Sinkane, Gold Panda and Noga Erez to its roster. More importantly, at the start of its fourth decade, the label now boasts offices in Berlin, New York, London, and Paris and has recently been able to create a wave of excitement with new signings like KAINA, Boy Harsher, Pom Pom Squad, King Hannah, Sophia Kennedy, Anna B Savage and Los Bitchos.
CITY SLANG PRESENTS
LET’S MESS WITH TEXAS
Friday, March 18, 7PM-2AM
Augustine, 86 Rainey St. Austin, TX
POM POM SQUAD – LOS BITCHOS – KAINA – KING HANNAH – SOPHIA KENNEDY – ANNA B SAVAGE
IN PARTNERSHIP WITH FUND TEXAS CHOICE
Pom Pom Squad (US)
“Rarely does an artist land in a creative sweet spot like Berrin has, deftly matching sight and sound to illustrate the record’s two sides — the saturated landscape where punk, glam and camp coexist, and the uncanny underbelly of Americana.” – NPR
Pom Pom Squad and their debut album Death Of A Cheerleader recently made numerous year-end lists over at Rolling Stone, NPR, Consequence, Paste, and more. Equal parts grimy garage rock authenticity and swirling cinematic flourishes, Death Of a Cheerleader (produced by Sarah Tudzin of Illuminati Hotties and co-produced by Berrin herself) explores the terrifying yet liberating topics of independent self-acceptance, smashing the white male patriarchy, being okay with not being okay, and fully embracing your own skin for the first time in your life — in a way, learning to become your own special kind of cheerleader. With Berrin at the creative helm, Death Of a Cheerleader is a record for those struggling to find themselves and then shouting from the rooftops when they finally do.
KAINA (US)
“KAINA gift-wraps that emotional generosity within a silky collection of songs that commingle pop, soul, R&B, and salsa.” – Pitchfork
Venezuelan/Guatemalan-American singer-songwriter KAINA announces her new album titled ‘It Was A Home’ that is slated for release on March 4 via City Slang. Born in Chicago to immigrant parents, KAINA creates generational music that surpasses borders and speaks to a far-reaching community of people that grew up in between languages, cultures, regions, and genres. KAINA has been catapulted to the forefront of a new wave of artists transforming the music landscape through deep representation. ‘It Was A Home’ will showcase KAINA’s stunning new artistic direction, the result of her own personal evolution and newly found sense of self, while maintaining roots in her signature sound. The album will include features from beloved artists including Sleater-Kinney, Helado Negro and Sen Morimoto.
Los Bitchos (UK)
“Their enthusiasm for experimentation and creative freedom is intoxicating...their pan-continental upbringings that invites a concoction of psych-punk goodness.” - NME
The London-based, pan-continental female instrumental four-piece, Los Bitchos, released their debut album, Let The Festivities Begin!, on February 4 this year via City Slang Records. Produced by Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand in Gallery Studios, London. The album has received global critical acclaim with 4* reviews in MOJO, Uncut, Dork and more. Serra Petale (guitar), Agustina Ruiz (keytar), Josefine Jonsson (bass) and Nic Crawshaw (drums) hail from different parts of the world but met via all-night house parties, or through friends. Their unique sound binds them together, taking in a retro-futuristic blend of Peruvian chicha, Argentine cumbia, Turkish psych and surf guitars. Let The Festivities Begin! is a maximal, Technicolour strut of an album of hallucinatory surf-exotica, with a celebratory title, something you might say as you toast with your shot glass, signalling the end of the pandemic era and ushering in a bright new dawn of wild abandon.
King Hannah (UK)
“Sometimes the music stretches out into post-rock expansiveness, while elsewhere it feels like Springsteen took a wrong turn down a dingy side-street from his highway to freedom.” – Stereogum
King Hannah’s debut full length album, I’m Not Sorry, I Was Just Being Me – an inspired melding of American influences from Mazzy Star to Smog with more British sources like PJ Harvey and Portishead – offers a stunning showcase of the Liverpool duo’s talent, its dozen songs full of darkness and wit, mesmerising and thrilling in equal measures. Indeed, titles are rarely more impeccably chosen than the one Wales-born Hannah Merrick and local Craig Whittle have chosen. At once a humble clarification and a stubborn challenge, it not only sums up the duo’s single-minded vision and their determination to remain true to themselves, but also offers a glimpse of the wry, knowing humour lurking in the shadows of the record. From the energy surrounding their debut EP, which received a loving endorsement from Sharon Van Etten, the duo have created a beautiful world to step into on their debut album.
Sophia Kennedy (DE / US)
“Born in Baltimore and raised in Germany, the artist processes both cultures seamlessly, undercutting hints of a European chill with a big American attitude.” - The New Yorker
Sophia Kennedy’s music sometimes sounds like a soundtrack to a world disintegrating, hanging on by a thread of memories, it combines the glamour and the morbid charm of tin pan alley show tunes from the 1960s or 70s and yet it fully embraces the deconstructed modernism of club music. Immersed in Hamburg’s dance music scene she met Mense Reents (Egoexpress, Die Vögel). The pair formed a writing and production partnership, and would make Sophia’s debut record together in 2017 which was released through DJ Koze’s label Pampa.
Her latest album Monsters (City Slang 2021), is full of plot twists, moments of prettiness dashed with paranoia. The title itself is a self-ironic, comic-like commentary of being an artist trying to tame own creations like “monsters” gone wild but also a nod to a generally threatening tension in the world. Monsters is pop music teetering on the verge of ruin.
Anna B Savage (UK)
“This is a gem of an album. Personal, honest and highly emotive, it tackles big questions; but most of all, it dares to be vulnerable. A Common Turn is undoubtedly one of the most notable releases of the year.” – CLASH
Anna B Savage’s debut album A Common Turn followed the success of Anna B Savage’s 2015 debut EP, which was praised by press internationally including NPR and The Guardian, and quickly caught the attention of Father John Misty and later Jenny Hval, both of whom took Savage under their wing and brought Savage out on tours. A Common Turn is deeply vulnerable but without submission. Savage lays claim to her own fragility, and the stories she tells are of taking up space, finding connections, and owning the power in not knowing all the answers. Since the release of A Common Turn, Anna has released an EP of outtakes from the record, a gorgeous NPR Tiny Desk filmed in seaside Ireland, and a short film called Baby Grand, that serves as a companion piece to A Common Turn.
About Fund Texas Choice:
Fund Texas Choice (formerly Fund Texas Women) is a non-profit organization that pays for Texans’ travel to abortion clinics. We were formed in response to the passage of Texas House Bill 2, which closed nearly 75% of over 40 Texan clinics in 2013 and 2014. The closures were primarily in rural and low-income areas of the state, necessitating cost-prohibitive, time-wasting, and geographically-difficult travel for groups already facing financial obstacles to abortion.
In the summer of 2016, the Supreme Court dismantled HB2. This legislation did its damage; most of the clinics closed by HB2 have not reopened. For some friends in West Texas, the closest abortion clinic is a 5-hour drive away. East-Texans near Louisiana and North-Texans near Oklahoma have clinics closer to them but public transit in these regions is extremely sparse.
Since HB2, the Texas legislature has passed more laws restricting abortions and making it difficult to get one. For example, there is a mandatory 24-hour waiting period between an initial consultation with an abortion provider and the abortion. That means it takes a minimum of 2 days, but sometimes even a week! That's why we provide both transportation and accommodation.
Another law - a 6 week abortion ban - the so-called the heartbeat bill - went into effect September 1, 2021. This law puts abortion providers and ANYONE WHO ASSISTS a person at risk. Literally ANYONE can bring a civil suit against them with a minimum award of $10,000. Thankfully, the pregnant person is not liable, either criminally or civilly.
Nevertheless, Fund Texas Choice continues to serve pregnant people who are seeking abortion-related services and information. We do so in compliance with the law to the best of our understanding.
contact: texasistheriesling@cityslang.com