Andre will always be a little less than excited with my SXSW pop fanaticism—don’t even ask him about last year’s Pipettes show—and this year he didn’t quite share the enthusiasm when I texted him to immediately come check out the Explorers Club. Their sound is derivative to the extreme, obviously aping the Beach Boys and the Association. But after falling in love with their EP I was thrilled to stumble upon them on Mohawk’s inside stage. Reconfigured from last year to facilitate a wider, shallower viewing area, the space is intimate to the extreme. With the five of them spread out across the stage, the four-part harmonies and “ooh shoo bop-bops” had all of our heads bobbing. So when they announced that they were playing the last song and burst into the mellow title track from their forthcoming Secretly Canadian debut, I was kind of “meh.” But then they ripped into a cover of “Johnny B. Good,” an audacious and awesome choice, since it is generally a whole decade earlier than most of their influences. They did it all, including playing guitars just like ringing a bell, and their sound took on a ferocity that wasn’t shown by their earlier lovesick balladry. Tell the Teeth their cover of “High School Confidential” has competition as “best rock ’50s cover by an indie band.” I think that should be a category at the PLUG Awards, actually.

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