It was all about the Fever. Or at least, at the time it was--the moment being the closing night of Austin's SXSW marathon, the five-day music conference that attracts round-the-clock parties like the phrase "free BBQ" attracts even meat loathers, hungry for something to soak up tall cans of Lone Star. It was like a half rack past last call Sunday morning and the Fever were taking the stage at the Vice after-party, a blowout in an unfurnished house with an overgrown backyard spotted with beer-filled bathtubs. I'd had some sort of jackass conversation with Johnny Knoxville, but my sister was yet to tip over in a grease-covered shopping cart when the Fever took the outdoor stage like a syringe of adrenaline stabbed through the heart. The New York band had the perfect skinny-tie sound--guitar riffs so sharp you could razor an asymmetrical haircut with their edge, a hyper anxiousness to the vocals that was feral, snotty, and fun, and new wave punk funk beats that could compete for the attention of the disco queens grinding on the indoor dance floor. They were definitely the reigning highlight of the glam-flecked, keyboard-prominent rock that week, although bands like the Veils and the Killers--both of whom sounded vaguely Walkmen-esque--took close second. The Fever's frontman, Geremy Jasper, previously sporting a hot pink handkerchief around his neck like a trashy neon ascot, set the pace at a fashionable strut that landed him somewhere between Richard Hell and Electric Six's Dick Valentine, while his single-monikered bandmates (Pony, Achilles, J, and Sanchez) played like the show wasn't just one of the last of the morning--one of the last thanks in part to the cops, who busted some after-hours events way before their expiration time, if they weren't busy bogusly arresting bands like Ozomatli for "violating Austin's noise ordinance" by taking a conga line out into the streets--but more like a finale fitting for an end of the world. Which, in a way, it kind of was; the final debaucherous night in SXSW is always both a relief (finally, sleep, sobriety, and silence return to the world) and a painful separation from a blissful pseudo-reality where live music is crammed into every last corner of the day, from the time you roll out of bed after lunchtime until you crawl back to your hotel, a shell of a human with the sun on your heels and a list of the next 24 hours of shows crumpled in your pocket.

The underground performances that happened off the SXSW clock were just as eclectic as the official events: There were the big names like Grandmaster Flash spinning for Microsoft and Joan Jett taking the stage late night at a warehouse party--sounding just as fierce screaming out the lyrics to "I Love Rock and Roll" and "Crimson and Clover" as I imagine the butch ex-Runaway did in her prime. But then there were also the buzzed-about indie performers like singer Jesse Sykes, melting the room with her velvety croon at the acoustic stage at The Stranger's Seattle showcase. Next to the Vice party, though, the best off-the-radar event I went to included a performance by TV on the Radio, who brought their post-punk soul to an industrial wasteland of rusted machinery and vintage Coca-Cola signs housed between the train tracks and a dried-up riverbed in South Austin. (The band played after a good drums/bass/effects act called Parts and Labor, a trio who sounded at times like a more melodic Lightning Bolt on anxiety suppressants.) But really not even the haphazard firecrackers exploding during TVOTR's set could distract too much from the intertwined harmonies of Tunde Adebimpe and Kyp Malone, whose voices mingled gorgeously like a two-man gospel choir even as the lyrics spoke of broken hearts on a tenuous mend.

If San Francisco's Comets on Fire attempted any sort of love songs, I'd imagine their stories would be more about sloppy fumblings occurring when you're in such altered states you can't tell if you're fucking someone or high enough that you're hallucinating the heartbeat in bed beside you. Even more than the Fever, this was the SXSW band that drew me in more than once, playing music that sounded, at their clearest, like Zen Guerrilla being funneled underwater by a technician on acid, and at their brilliantly least cohesive like multiple bands playing Blue Cheer songs on different narcotics at the same time. Ethan Miller's unintelligible vocals and the guitars in the noise/space/psychedelic rock band oscillated through a machine called the Echoplex, which twisted and tortured the input into gales of delayed feedback, an instrument that Comets' Noel Harmonson rocked like he was soloing on lead guitar. All together, the band was heavier than getting steamrolled by God, and witnessing this psilocybin-spiked act was, for better or for worse, one of the few instances where one could truly talk about getting hammered in Austin without that word having anything to do with a hangover.

jennifer@thestranger.com