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Home > Austin Music Source > Archives > 2009 > May > 01 > Entry
Review: Sugarland at Erwin Center
(Jennifer Nettles (left) and Kristian Bush of Sugarland perform Thursday at Frank Erwin Center. Photo by Thao Nguyen/AMERICAN-STATESMAN.)
Multi-instrumentalist Kristian Bush’s fedora foretold Thursday evening’s fortunes: Sugarland brought a different kind of hat act to the Frank Erwin Center. Call it thinking man’s mainstream country.
While other radio stars tap kegs for hits, the best moments on this Grammy-winning duo’s latest, “Love on the Inside” — nominated for a fistful of honors at next month’s CMT music awards — spike narrative arcs with unexpected turns. “The whole thing seems like Einstein’s dreams,” Jennifer Nettles sang, as the seven-piece band formed an intimate crescent moon for “Genevieve.” “See the smoke start to shiver. I’d do anything just to forget her.” Easily imagine credentialed folkies like the Indigo Girls, minus the spit-shined “na, na, na, na” refrains, turning that out.
“As a songwriter, you’ve gotta work three times as hard so it doesn’t come out like a (bad) country song,” Bush told us last week. “Sometimes you have to choose the writer-like reference — literary, pop culture, whatever — that not everybody’s gonna get.” Of course, shaking snake oil and roses and a fortuneteller’s son off a coffee-stained page (“We Run”) won’t jangle an arena’s rafters.
Explosive covers will. Sugarland’s spot-on reading of Pearl Jam’s “Better Man” and the ebullient encore B-52’s “Love Shack” — not to mention quick-takes on R.E.M.’s Nightswimming” and Madonna’s “Holiday” — provided easy highlights. (Let’s forgive Nettles’ hokey Kate Pierson impersonation.) Approval greeting the band’s own “Something More” nearly imploded the stage, thanks to a background video swooshing past local landmarks like Artz’s and the Horseshoe Lounge.
Shame they cut the scripted set at 90 minutes flat. It was far too short. Consider: There was no pinch-hitter for Eric Hutchinson, who dropped off the three-band bill on Wednesday. Exiting fans grumbled that Billy Currington, whose deeply soulful cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Give Me One Reason” killed, wasn’t enough. Next time, Sugarland, at least throw in that cover of “Life in a Northern Town” for good measure.
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