oh god help me i am buried in all this ice the polar vortex has swallowed me up the only cure is a weekend of great shows…what’s that you say? you know of some bills that will warm these frozen bones? be a good lad, give me a hand, point me towards these mythical shows you speak of…

Friday

This is a Friday night with a lot of options but our pick for where you should be is easy: at TasZ from BLXPLTN’s birthday party at Hotel Vegas. Though BLXPLTN itself isn’t present on the bill (at least not officially?), TasZ and his co-conspirator Dizzi are growing another year older with style, joined by Black Angels spinoff Christian Bland & the Revelators as well as Trail of Dead spinoff Midnight Masses, masked lunatics Tear Dungeon and ’90s indie aficionados Carl Sagan’s Skate Shoes. The whole line-up is exciting, but we’ve been big proponents of Carl Sagan’s Skate Shoes for quite some time and we’re thrilled to see them on a bill filled with so many big Austin names. We already new TasZ had great taste but this just proves it once and for all. Go buy the dude a birthday beer and enjoy some of the best talent in the city at the same time.

Saturday

For International Women’s Day Spider House and 101X Homegrown Live have joined forces to present a femme friendly bill, with A Giant Dog, The Sour Notes and Panoramas all representing different spots of the indie spectrum. Panoramas might be the upstarts here, with their shoegazey indie pop serving as a chill contrast to the more up tempo styles of their bookending bill partners but their warm wall of sound might just be the best fit for Spider House’s newly renovated outdoor stage. That said, A Giant Dog are ferocious veterans of the Austin live circuit and their ramped up local dates might be a hint that we’ll be seeing some new recorded material from them before long (their new album is due out on the dreaded TBA 2015) and The Sour Notes of course had a solid 2014 with Do What May, an album that, not coincidentally, featured vocal contributions by A Giant Dog’s Sabrina Ellis. This is undoubtedly where you’ll want to be Saturday night. And did we mention it’s free?

Sunday

Thank fuck for a notable show beyond the confines of Red River and E. 6th. I don’t regret moving to Austin, not by any stretch, but the lack of discernible neighborhoods in this city is depressing as hell and one major, fixable issue holding back the growth of music in the city. So good on Hundred Visions for taking their Sunday festivities to the Grand, a pool hall all the way up on Airport Blvd, which is conveniently within walking distance of my humble abode. It’s free, the pool is free too and they’ve got grimy post-punkers Nameless Frames and chimier faux-Mancunians The Dead Space in tow. Branch out. Avoid the idiot streets of downtown. Head north. Welcome change.

Nick Hanover got his degree from Disneyland, but he’s the last of the secret agents and he’s your man. Which is to say you can find his particular style of espionage here at Ovrld as well as Loser City, where he mostly writes about comics. You can also flip through his archives at  Comics Bulletin, which he is formerly the Co-Managing Editor of, and Spectrum Culture, where he contributed literally hundreds of pieces for a few years. Or if you feel particularly adventurous, you can always witness his odd .gif battles with his friends and enemies on twitter: @Nick_Hanover