Dan Auerbach, fresh off his two-week tour with Hacienda and Those Darlins, helped kick off the 23rd annual South by Southwest Music Conference in Austin, Texas, last night with an opening-night set at The Parish. The first reports are in, and the show seems to be the hit of a typically jam-packed SxSW night.

MTV includes the "raw and rumbling set" among the highlights, and JamBase's editor-in-chief, Kayce, puts it firmly in the evening's no. 1 slot. "The top pick for the first night was undoubtedly Dan Auerbach," says Kayce. He continues:

After being snuck into a packed Parish that was hot and sweaty just like the sounds, it took all of one song to realize this was something special ... Certainly in the same vein as The Black Keys, here Auerbach shows his softer side letting some ballads slip in next to the searing, psychedelic blues rock bombast. But don't get the wrong idea, this is most definitely unforgiving, head-banging-rock. And it's really this dynamic of softer sections combusting into flames that makes this project so compelling.

Read more from the South by Southwest report at jambase.com. Up next for Dan at the conference are a late night (early morning) show at Bill's Place, Friday night at 2 AM, and mid-day set at The Mean Eyed Cat for MOJO magazine's British BBQ.

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JamBase also reviewed the second-to-last show on Dan's two-week US tour with Hacienda and My Morning Jacket drummer Patrick Hallahan in San Francisco last week. "With his first venture into solo territory on the just-released Keep It Hid," says reviewer Jim Welte, "Auerbach has taken his foot off the gas a bit and expanded on his band's trademark sound. In a superb live set at Bimbo's 365 Club, Auerbach proved ... that he is a bluesman who has blossomed into a whole lot more."

Welte says that "Auerbach's growth was evident from the start" and cites two of the night's less blues-based tunes as "the evening's revelation, showcasing Auerbach's voice ... two sparse, almost dreamy tracks that let him show off a singing style that was lilting, soulful and full of feeling." The reviewer concludes: "This bluesman can wield his inner songbird as well as his axe."

Read the complete concert review at jambase.com.

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Also out of Texas, the Dallas Observer's Austin Powell reviews Dan's new album and has this to say:

The Black Keys' Dan Auerbach used to make annual pilgrimages to the Mississippi Delta, starting on Nashville's Music Row and detouring west through Memphis, if only to dig through the bins at Shangri-La Records. The Akron, Ohio, native's self-produced and perfectly sequenced solo debut, Keep It Hid, plays out like the soundtrack to that voyage: It's an intimate trek down gravel roads and back alleys to the crossroads of American music.

Read more at dallasobserver.com.