AUSTIN, Texas -- South By Southwest is enormous, drawing tens of thousands of people to town, and it puts quite a strain on the city's infracstructure. The roads just weren't designed to handle this many vehicles trying to get into downtown all at once, and it doesn't help that there always seems to be some downtown road repair going on here every March. So Thursday commenced with a traffic jam. A big, big traffic jam, big enough to cause delays and missing things. All thoughts I had of catching any of Bob Geldof's keynote speech and press conference vanished in a miles-long column of red taillights. Oh well.

So I wasn't in the best of moods to start out, but I know what to do about that: the time-honored pop-in drill, where you just wander about going into clubs for a couple of songs to see if anything surprising jumps out. No next-big- thing discoveries, but it's always a fun exercise.

It was about lunchtime and I was walking down Fifth Street when I saw the magic sign -- FREE MUSIC FREE FOOD -- so I went on in and availed myself of their spread, downing a quite-passable pork burrito while listening to this mook-metal band with a tattooed woman in fishnets writhing about onstage as she sang. The cilantro was delicious.

At another club around the corner, I learned anew a truism: The band always sounds better from outside. An energetic thrashing was emanating from inside, and it turned out to be coming from a group of kids who all looked to be about 16. Didn't understand a word they sang (er, screamed), but I'm pretty sure they meant it. And like I said, from outside they could've passed for Nirvana. Two doors down from that, I walked in just in time to hear a group concluding their set by putting down their instruments to gather around the microphones in the old-school style, singing acoustic gospel. It was cool.

There was similar mojo later in the evening with our local boys Megafaun, who just flat killed it. They had a tough act to follow, a Minneapolis band called Leisure Birds, who had maybe the oddest-looking frontman I've ever seen. Dude had a thick beard, gimmie cap, denim vest -- and, despite the biker appearance, he sang in a high voice and did this little pixie-ish stomping dance at his keyboard while shaking tambourines and maracas. He even changed tambourines mid-song at one point, which cracked me up; guess he was after a particular tambourine sound. Meanwhile, the guitar-bass-drums underpinning was rock solid as they played sprawling interstellar grooves. It definitely got you to moving.

Megafaun's set was more stripped-down from the last few times I've seen the group, when they had the keyboard-and-laptop array for sound effects, which meant this was more acoustic and straightforward and less improvisational than usual. But it didn't lack a thing, building up an overpowering momentum over as perfect a 35 minutes of music as I've ever seen. There was heartbreakingly beautiful songcraft, a just-right amount of audience-sing-along on "Lazy Suicide," exuberant goofball antics (Brad and Phil Cook were rushing about head-butting each other) and a rousing gospel number led by drummer Joe Westerlund. Even giving a tambourine to the most rhythmically challenged audience member on earth (seriously, even I could've kept the better time than this guy) couldn't slow down their momentum. And "The Fade" was so drop-dead gorgeous and aching, I thought I was gonna cry.

Wish you could've seen it...

ADDENDUM (3/20/11): DeYarmond Edison reunion at SXSW.