Austin City Limits

Ryan Adams made a triumphant return to the Austin City Limits stage last night playing a quiet, soulful acoustic set followed by a rocking electric set keeping fans on their feet for over two hours. Tonight’s taping was two shows for the price of one.

In perfect contrast to the nature of the first set, Adams hit the stage in a Dag Nasty T-shirt and a blue jean jacket adorned by punk rock patches before essaying a series of his patented melancholy ballads. He opened with “Oh My Sweet Carolina” from his debut solo album Heartbreaker; while it was originally a duet with Emmylou Harris, it worked just fine solo. Adams alternated between older tunes (“Desire,” “Please Do Not Let Me Go,” “My Winding Wheel”) and songs from his new self-titled LP (“My Wrecking Ball,” “Am I Safe,” “Gimme Something Good”), peppering his tales of disappointment and heartbreak with enough snappy patter to make Spider-Man proud. He ended the solo set with a particularly affecting “If I Was a Stranger” and a ramshackle romp through Bryan Adams’ “Run To You,” leaving the audience in both tears and stitches.

With a stage festooned with a fake giant amp, a golden skull, an American flag with a peace symbol, a stuffed tiger and a video game console loaded with 80s classics, Adams and his new band the Shining arrived and launched into a fully-amplified version of “Gimme Something Good,” making the title a demand instead of a plea. Expertly backed by his quartet (which included Mike Viola, the voice of “That Thing You Do”), Adams followed the same pattern as the acoustic set, moving back and forth between new tunes and old favorites. Recent songs like the Stonesy rocker “Stay With Me,” the dramatic rock ballads “Do I Wait” and “Dirty Rain” and the atmospheric noisemaker “Shadows” were greeted with the same enthusiasm as older set pieces like the pretty folk popper “La Cienega Just Smiled,” the sad country lament “Dear Chicago” and the rousing anthem “New York New York.”

The show came to a head near the end, with a medley of “Rats in the Walls” and “When the Summer Ends,” a pair of brief tunes from his recent 1984 EP, and the mood-swinging dynamics of the charged “I See Monsters” from Love is Hell. Adams ended the show where he began, revisiting his solo debut Heartbreaker for the profane country kiss off “Come Pick Me Up,” at which the audience cheered as soon as he played its opening harmonica lick. It was a sprawling, wide-ranging trip through Adams’ musical mind, and we can’t wait for you to see it when it broadcasts on PBS early next year. Stay tuned.

We love having hometown heroes on Austin City Limits. So we’re thrilled to welcome ACL vets Spoon back for our 40th anniversary season. Masterful songwriter and singer Britt Daniel had led his crew to our stage on three other occasions: in 2002, 2005 and 2010. Now riding high on their rapturously received new record They Want My Soul, Spoon returned for their fourth taping to rock ACL once again.

The quintet opened the show with the new album’s “Knock Knock Knock,” a moody rock tune punctuated by Alex Fischel’s noisy guitar solos. The band then swung directly into “Rent I Pay,” another They Want My Soul tune that proved that Spoon has only gotten tighter, hookier and more melodic as they’ve matured. The band drew mostly from its three most recent albums thereafter, banging out tasty, tension-filled pop rockers like “Who Makes Your Money,” “Do You” and “Rainy Taxi” and groovier, more atmospheric numbers a la “Way We Get By” (which found Fischel joining the audience with his tambourine), “The Ghost of You Lingers” (on which Jim Eno abandoned his drum kit to take up one of our handheld cameras) and “Don’t You Evah.” They split the difference with “Don’t Make Me a Target,” which started out stacatto and moved into limber by the end, thanks in part to Eric Harvey’s clavinet. Much to the fans’ delight, Spoon dipped into their two decades’ of catalog as well, with the piano-driven “Way We Get By,” winsome “The Beast and Dragon, Adored” and gloriously choppy “I Turn My Camera On.” Preferring a no-frills approach, Spoon makes a virtue of straightforward, gimmick-free performances, contrasting Daniel’s vibrant, barely contained cool with Fischel’s spastic thrashing.

Spoon ended the main set with the postpunk slash of “Got Nuffin” and the more jangling “Black Like Me,” but the evening wasn’t over yet. The band returned with a pair of gems from They Want My Soul, the nearly funky “Outlier” and the snappy title cut. But it was the ending that brought down the house, as the band blazed through a dynamic version of its radio hit “The Underdog,” giving it as close to a big rawk finish as they’ll ever come. It was a bravura performance, and we can’t wait for you to see it when it airs on PBS early next year.

Last night we welcomed the The Avett Brothers back to the Austin City Limits stage in a triumphant return to the show. Fresh from their appearance at the ACL Music Festival, the band was greeted by enthusiastic fans eagerly waiting to hear them and sing along.  Since the band first appeared on the show in 2009, they have been busy writing and recording back-to-back Rick Rubin-produced albums The Carpenter (which received a Grammy nomination for Best Americana Album) and Magpie and the Dandelion.

As the band opened with the romantic folk rocker “Live and Die,” there was a clear difference between this band and the one that visited in Season 35, and not just because of the addition of a drummer, keyboardist and fiddler. The ragged, nervous energy of the first show has been replaced by a different vibe, one of confidence and the professionalism that comes from having played hundreds, if not thousands, of shows to people all over the world. The energy level was just as high as last time, but this time the band focused its power, giving the frisky folk tune “The Fall,” the piano anthem “Head Full of Doubt, Heart Full of Promise” and the giddy folk rocker “Satan Pulls the Strings” a blazing vitality that was infectious. Not that the audience needed much prodding – even lower key tunes like “Life” and “Rejects in the Attic” garnered cheers before they’d barely started.

As good as the band was with newer tunes, it was on older songs like “Slight Figure of Speech” and “Kick Drum Heart,” both transformed into rock anthems, that proved explosive. The band ended the show with an especially peppy take on George Jones’ “The Race is On,” on which the septet bounced all over the stage, before coming down with the lovely “November Blue” from their very first LP. The crowd went wild as their heroes left the stage, and we’re sure you’ll go wild as well when we broadcast this episode early next year on your PBS station.