The Levi's Fader Fort is one of the bigger, most-hyped Unofficial SXSW Day Parties, but it never sucked me in till this year. Located east of I-35 along the Metro train tracks on the outskirts of downtown, it's a narrow band of huts and shacks and tents and open bars without any lines in the early afternoon. As mega-branded marketing events go, it's sick. Glasgow, Scotland's We Were Promised Jet Packs were the featured attraction under the big tent. The band ripped through a seamless, Brit-rocked-out set, pausing only to howl, "Fuck you! Asshole!" at a heckler who repeated, "We were promised what?!?" The band is inventing nothing; they don't need to with that much sweat and guitar-wave commitment.
Next up was beach-combing rockers Real Estate at Red 7 downtown. Buzz doesn't get much more mellow and surprisingly polished, nor more lovely. The New Jersey band suspended, sustained and smoothly sent out drum fills, a steady eddy of sound that reminded me of early Pink Floyd on pot brownies. That fine set, though, was easily topped by Jason Collett backed up by the band Zeus at Peckerheads (one of many Sixth Street bars that seems to change names every other year). Collett's 2010 album, Rat a Tat Tat, trumps even the best of his work with Broken Social Scene, though you wouldn't have guessed it from the bored kids crowded around the second floor stage. With an R&B-ready rhythm section, nifty Wurlitzer and Rhodes fills, and his own understated but still stately delivery (he's graying a bit at the side burns), he's got all cylinders firing, and even honored a request for "Hangover Days."