If there was any next big thing at this year's annual South by Southwest music confab of the musically hip and happening, it was that there is no next big thing. In a festival that featured everything from soca to singer-songwriters, it was individual artists rather than any one all encompassing trend that grabbed the limelight.

It was also telling that at a festival that prides itself on exposing the new and novel, it was the performance of veteran Tom Waits, playing his first live gig in years, that was by far the most anticipated event of the festival. Ignoring the festival's 40-minute show time max (the lights were actually turned on to end some bands' sets), Waits played over two hours.

Still the festival remains a magnet for unsigned bands, hoping that their precious 40-minute set will spark media and industry buzz. Cornelius' recent Interview magazine cover, one year after his SXSW debut, brought full circle the last year's media hype about Japanese music. Japanese bands, looking to repeat his success, were so numerous at this year's festival that Japan Nite, the festival's special showcase devoted to Japanese music, seemed almost superfluous.

This is perhaps a triumph in itself. The success of Guitarwolf, Cornelius and, more recently, Takako Minekawa whose latest album, "Cloudy Cloud Calculator," which sits atop the College Music Journal charts, has made the incidence of Japanese bands into the U.S./European circuit almost commonplace. Sheer number has removed the culturally laden "Japanese" moniker and allowed groups to rise or fall on their own merits rather than the quirky novelty of hailing from Japan.

The Japanese showing at SXSW was as much defined by who didn't show as by who did. Sugarplant, seemingly on a run of bad luck, inexplicably failed to appear for their scheduled showcase with fellow Tokyo group Orange Kandy. Asian Mushroom, a DJ unit, also didn't show, while massive promotion for Thee Michelle Gun Elephant was all for naught when one member required emergency surgery.

But it wasn't only established Japanese stars that received the major label push. Both Toshiba EMI and Sony, finally showing a realization that the American market isn't only interested in the majority of pop that makes the charts in Japan, promoted smaller groups that, for the most part, haven't surpassed cult status at home.

Demi Semi Quaver, featuring the chanteuse/carny singer Emi Emeanola, played their second SXSW appearance to an enthusiastic Austin crowd. Fellow Sony Records artists Boom Boom Satellites also put on an inspired performance, but after the sheer inventiveness of Demi Semi's theatrical punk, Boom Boom's reshaping of the basic Chemical Brothers' formula (loud synthesizers, loud guitars, loud beats) seemed tired. Toshiba EMI (learning from their mistake with Dreams Come True?) placed their bets on two smaller rock outfits: Missile Girl Scoot, a Jane's Addiction wannabe with thick echoing guitars and a slightly funky vibe, and Number Girl.

In a year when white-boy indie rock seemed on a definite decline, Number Girl stepped into the breach blowing away the Japan Nite crowd with a set of kinetic guitar rock. Most of the musical antics belonged to guitarist Hisako Tabuchi. Sporting a Prince Arthur do and Peter Pan collar, Tabuchi looked like she'd be more at home at Kiddyland than onstage, that is until she picked up her guitar. Then the spirit of Pete Townsend seemed to descend into her skinny body. Meanwhile singer-guitarist Shutoku Mukai played the intellectual-as-rock-star (glasses slowly slipping down the nose) foil.

Otherwise, indie rock's tattered mantle was almost single-handedly carried by Boise Idaho's Built to Spill who played three packed shows in the course of the five-day conference. Built to Spill infuses the usual formula of "emo rock" (as in strung-out emotional white boy rock) with the sort of guitar-play that has prompted Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore to dub them one of the few truly avant-garde rock bands (and he should know).

Despite the hype and Fat Boy Slim, electronica, another of last year's saving graces, seems doomed to flounder on the outskirts of America's musical consciousness, lost in a sea of boyzone beefcake and Brittany Spears bubble gum.

While Juan Atkins, one of the original innovators of Detroit techno and deemed a genius by many, played to a half-empty room, upstairs Tokyo's Fantastic Plastic Machine's set of dance music lite packed the hall. As if to punctuate the mass embrace of the idol aesthetic, Robbie Williams, star of the original Anglo boy group Take That, made a special appearance.

If electronica and indie rock seemed enervated, then alt country, a fringe scene of indie rock veterans who have turned to country music (real country as opposed to the blow-dry Dixie Chicks variety) for renewed inspiration bubbled in comparison. The Waco Brothers, performing at Chicago-based Bloodsport Records' showcase, sharpened the country idiom with cutting politics (which is no surprise since Jon Langford of the punk unit the Mekons is a member), while Freakwater, a female duo from Chicago via Louisville, Kentucky, played the sweet and beautiful harmonies of hill country.

Phoenix Arizona's Calexico has country inflections but the group's new album, "The Black Light," meanders along the alt country periphery, mixing the spacious Nino Rota-esque instrumentation of Tortoise with the bittersweetness of a Raymond Chandler novel and proving, yet again, the fruitlessness of trying to fence the most innovative artists into a single genre.