It seems warranted today to drop in a brief mention about the latest Austin City Limits episode featuring half-hour segments by Nick Lowe and the Swell Season; it aired last night in our neck of the woods, and perhaps yours as well. (If not, check your local listings for upcoming broadcasts or repeats.)
I’ve been watching this show for most of its thirty-odd years, and have been fortunate to attend a few tapings, but I can’t recall ever seeing an episode as gratifying as this one. It was an ideal mix of talent both long-known (Lowe first rose to the fore in the mid-’70s, about the time ACL was first hitting the airwaves) and much more recently surfacing (the Swell Season’s Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova became world-famous when they won the Oscar for Best Song from the indie film Once, just under a year ago).
Lowe’s all-too-brief seven-song set (if there was any downside to this episode, it was that both artists might fairly have warranted a full hour of their own) was delivered entirely solo, but compellingly so; nothing else was needed, largely because Lowe’s songs stand up with pretty much anyone’s. (Thus the likes of Elvis Costello and Johnny Cash having put their own stamp on two of the songs he rendered here.) Even an as-yet unrecorded number, “I Read A Lot”, fully held its own with his more time-tested fare.
Swell Season also included a new tune (titled “Low Rising”) in the mix, along with four songs from the Once soundtrack. But it was the way they re-imagined their Oscar-winning song, “Falling Slowly”, that made the performance something special. Hansard, Irglova, and their backing band were joined on the song by a dozen members of Austin’s local Conspirare Youth Choir, who lifted the now-well-known tune into a whole different dimension. What the choir sang wasn’t spectacular on the contrary, it was relatively simple but the emotional chord struck by the addition of youthful voices was revelatory. (Video of the song, and of “All Men Are Liars” from Lowe’s set, is available on ACL’s website here.)
The capper was Hansard’s introduction, for the Swell Season’s final number, of eccentric songwriter Daniel Johnston, who began his improbable rise to fame during his mid-1980s days in Austin but had never previously appeared on ACL. Hansard, Irglova, their band, and the Conspirare choir all supported Johnston as he sang, nervously but poignantly, his song “Life In Vain” (from his 1994 album Fun. The kids especially seemed to radiate in singing Johnston’s soul-searching chorus: “I gotta really try/Try so hard to get by/And where am I going to?”
Apparently Hansard and Irglova have been Daniel Johnston devotees for awhile, and have been performing some of his other songs in concert during the past year or two. YouTube turns up a few clips of them doing the oft-covered “Devil Town”, though the best of the bunch may be this August 2008 rendition of “Some Things Last A Long Time”:
