Tag: Season 40

When ACL is in an anniversary season, it’s tempting for us to concentrate on booking the biggest artists we can find. That would deny, however, one of our core missions: to expose our audience to new artists. Of course, Thao & the Get Down Stay Down aren’t exactly new – the San Francisco-based act has been working for a decade. But Thao Nguyen and her intrepid band have begun to explode far past their underground origins, making it the perfect time to for us to invite them on the show for their debut taping.

After the brief, gospel-style open of “The Clap,” Thao and the band launched into “City,” a patented example of their patented funky folk rock. The group’s blend of groovy rhythms and Thao’s folk-influenced fingerpicking give the band a distinctive sound that truly makes it stand out from the pack, as “Cool Yourself,” “Beat” and “Every Body” easily proved. But she and her quintet hardly stick to one groove. The band also hopped jauntily through the jazzy piano pop of “The Feeling Kind,” complete with Dixieland trumpet solo, skipped energetically through the ska/soul hybrid “Swimming Pools,” moved through the crescendoing dynamics of the waltz “Age of Ice” and pounded through the percussion-heavy “Squareneck,” with Thao getting down and dirty on her lap steel guitar. Thao also demonstrated imaginative versatility with her instruments, playing her banjo like a guitar on the reggae-tinged rocker “Holy Roller” and her archtop guitar like a clawhammer banjo on the bluegrassy “Kindness Be Conceived.” The band ended the main set with the singalong folk pop of “We the Common,” a tribute to Thao’s volunteer work with the California Coalition for Women Prisoners.

Thao and the Get Down Stay Down encored with “Body,” another fine example of their patented unpredictable pop that included an audience participation section of handclapping, and “Bag of Hammers,” more of the same, enhanced with Thao’s tropical guitar lick. Thao’s natural exuberance and wide-ranging songwriting acumen made the show a joy to see and hear. We can’t wait for you to see it when it airs on PBS this fall.

“It’s always a thrill to introduce one of our own,” said ACL’s Terry Lickona as he set the stage for White Denim’s debut taping. While Austin City Limits casts its net far and wide around the world, we’re always happy to showcase homegrown talent. So we were thrilled to welcome White Denim to our fair studio. The Austin band has firmly established itself as an international draw on the club and festival circuits, and with the release of its latest acclaimed, Jeff Tweedy-produced LP Corsicana Lemonade, the time was right, and the Moody was packed with fans cheering them on.

Having evolved far beyond their garage rock origins, the band presented clusters of songs, layering together tunes from Corsicana Lemonade and D into jazzy suites that drew equally from prog rock, psychedelia and the jam band tradition. “Pretty Green,” “Corsicana Lemonade” and “River to Consider” illustrated the quartet’s evolution well, seguing from pounding, riff-oriented verses and choruses to jazzy bridges and long solo passages, sprinkled liberally with compressed wah-wah guitar. The tightly-knit duo of “Comeback” and “At the Farm” continued the trend with heavier riffs, busier rhythms and even proggier interplay, featuring singer James Petralli’s scatting and kazoo solo.The suite of  “Anvil Everything/Sometimes I Don’t Wanna Shake/I Start to Run” threw in everything except the kitchen sink: psychedelic grunge, heavy rock riffs, fast-talking vocals, airy arrangements and even a mutated Bo Diddley beat – the band’s current approach in a (large) nutshell.

Not everything involved extended jams – “Distant Relative Salute” essayed a frisky, jazzy rocker, “A Place to Start” evinced soulful pop and “Street Joy” ran its power ballad atmosphere on the fuel of Petralli’s powerful vocal chords. The set ended back in jamland with “At Night in Dreams,” a song that reveled in both the melodics and the expressive musicianship. A quick redo of the choogling “Dreams” and a frenzied meltdown of “Mess Your Hair Up” brought the set to a howling close, the fans going wild. We couldn’t be prouder of hometown heroes White Denim, and we can’t wait for you to see this episode when it airs later this year as part of our 40th season. Stay tuned.

Nobody explores the thin line between light and darkness as well as Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. The Australian native and British resident has spent 30 years amassing a rogue’s gallery of killers, creepers and unsavory characters of all types. Yet he’s also capable of stripping away the grime and debauchery to give life to languorous love songs that border on the spiritual. His international band of brigands – including righthand man Warren Ellis and original Bad Seed Barry Adamson – are equally adept at shimmering beauty and hellacious noise, depending on the mood the song requires. That yin/yang contrast, a dichotomy on which Cave and the Seeds have built a successful three-decade career, exploded in full effect for the band’s first taping for Austin City Limits.

With an unusual (for us) stage setup that featured two ramps allowing the stage-stalking Cave to join the crowd, the band arrived to the electronic thrum of “We Real Cool,” one of the singles from his latest LP Push the Sky Away. The brooding amble of “Jubilee Street” seemingly continued the sedate mood, but ramped up the energy of a tent revival in no time for the first of the evening’s standout performances. The quiet dismissed for the moment, the Seeds launched into the explosive “Tupelo,” a twisted take on the mythology surrounding Elvis Presley that had Cave raving like a hellfire-and-brimstone preacher fallen from grace and grimly trying to claw his way back.

From then on the dark and the light battled for supremacy. In the former’s corner: the creeping crawl of Cave’s serial killer ode “Red Right Hand” (made infamous in part by its use in The X-Files) and the rock ‘n’ roll savagery of the obsessive love song “From Her to Eternity,” the title track of the first Bad Seeds album. In the latter’s: the religious authority satire “God is in the House” and the unusually straightforward romantic sentiments of “Love Letter,” both keying on Cave’s sensual croon and piano. The sonorous “Mermaids” and the rambling “Higgs Boson Blues,” one of the most discussed tunes on Push the Sky Away, seemed ambivalent toward the balance of good and evil, letting Cave ponder issues of modern technology shaping the inconsistency of memory.

That was apparently all the clemency Cave had left in him, though, as the Seeds launched into “The Mercy Seat,” the murderously powerful first-person account of execution by electric chair that has become the band’s signature song. That was merely a warm-up, however, for “Stagger Lee.” Cave’s aggressively profane version of the century-old folk song pushes the original’s braggadocio into deliberately over-the-top heights of arrogance and violence, and his especially intense performance had the audience howling for blood.

There was no way to top that kind of ferocity, so the band didn’t try, wisely choosing to close the show with the austere beauty of the title track to Push the Sky Away. It was the perfect comedown for the rollercoaster ride of a Bad Seeds performance, moving from devil to angel and all points in between. We can’t wait for you to see Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds in action on the ACL stage – watch your local listings this fall.