Perhaps not since the ‘80s double-bill of “Puppet Show with Spinal Tap” — or at least since Dr. Teeth & The Mayhem played San Francisco’s Outside Lands festival last year — has there been as monumentally felt-tastic a live music event as the South by Southwest debut by the brilliantly named puppet emo band Fragile Rock.
The hyper-emotional, Austin-based collective — featuring tantrum-tossing, guyliner-sporting frontman Milo S.; blue-haired feminist/rumored Elijah Wood paramour/bassist Nic Hole; wild-eyed drummer Coco Bangs; laid-back, workmanlike guitarist Kyle Danko; and coquettish backup singers the Cocteau Triplets (not to be confused with the Cocteau Twins, of course) — brought their unique brand of #puppetpain to SXSW this week, with a show at the Sidewinder club featuring a David Bowie tribute, puppet crowd-surfing to Joy Division’s “Transmission,” and heart-on-felt-sleeve songs like “My Journal Is Blank,” “Stay Felt,” “I Am Sad And So Am I,” and the boldly political rallying cry “Socks Are Murder.”
Puppet crowd-surfing to Joy Division!! #sxsw #fragilerock
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Yahoo Music met up at SXSW with two of the flame-coiffed Cocteaus (Briex and “Girl Who Has No Name”) in one of the Highball bar’s private karaoke rooms to discuss this milestone in the band’s career, that persistent Elijah Wood gossip, the important message behind “Socks Are Murder,” Fragile Rock’s disastrous 2016 audition for America’s Got Talent, and the feminist slant of Fragile Rock’s new Yoko Ono-inspired single, “Girlfriend Is the Enemy of Rock ‘n’ Roll.”
Stay felt, everyone. #StayFelt.
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This article originally ran on Yahoo Music.
