You know, when I listened to all of the 2007 and 2008 SXSW torrents, I thought that was kind of hardcore.

I was wrong.

Paul Ford is hardcore. He listened to all of the 2008 songs, all the way through, and wrote six word reviews of each.

Such as:

No.	Artist	Song	Review
7	Adam Kesher	P-Katherine	Thin white men, tight black pants?
18	AM	Old Song	Someone’s been eating Hall and Oatesmeal.
79	Blue Rodeo & Friends	This Town	You’ll pay for this, Steve Perry.
184	The Deadbeat Poets	Ernest T.	“Dear Wes Anderson, here we are.”
258	Furthest Drive Home	Forget His Facade	Treacle. I want to stab dolphins.
274	Great Lakes Myth Society	Heydays	I call this genre “Dayjob Rock.”
332	Jon Mueller	Homeostatic	The drum solo has achieved singularity.
338	KaiserCartel	Season Song (live)	You know what audiences love? Whistling!
350	Kevin Shields	Muscle Hair	Like a dog fucking a blender.
382	Limbeck	Let’s Get Crazy	Where is the crazy you promised?
740	WIZ KHALIFA	SAY YEAH	Bitches AND money? In ONE song?
741	Wolff	Addition By Subtraction	Wizards of Gondor, unleash your tubas!

Plus digressions such as:

AWESOMENESS VS. CUTENESS

It's easy to quantify male vocalists: they are either douchebags, or, if they play guitar as well, double dog douchebags. But I also found myself dividing the female vocalists — and there are surprisingly many, which is a promising development — into two camps.

First, there are twee little things who will sing about forest sprites and make you collages when you have the flu. Then there are the tougher ones who wear glitter and make eye contact.

The question I asked myself, to divide between the awesome and cute, was: would this woman (1) help you to get an abortion? Or (2) just write a song about it? The ones who would drive you to the clinic without judging you, in my opinion, make better vocalists. I could be wrong but I think Martha Wainright, and the women from Creature, would go with you.