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SXSW review: Esben and the Witch at the ND
The 8 p.m. slot on Wednesday of South By Southwest is a somewhat thankless position. Someone has to be first, of course, but it doesn’t make it any less easy. The crowd is usually a little hyped up from an afternoon of free music, booze and food. They’re seeing old friends, making new ones and avoiding people they hoped to never see again. (Remember kids, what happens at SXSW…will probably be Tweeted about.) So there are plenty of distractions.
Esben and the Witch were in such a position at the ND Wednesday night. That place is an odd-enough space as it is (not enough chairs, a lot of concrete, oddly placed bathrooms), but add in a mess of SXSW folks who are just settling in and an act has its work cut out for it.
The British trio acquitted itself well. Part of a new wave of qausi-Gothic acts that sometimes don’t dress quite the part (see also Tamaryn and her band and former SXSW participants Clockclean_er), frontwoman Rachel Davies was the head druid leading her small minyan in a half hour ritual of rolling percussion, guitar noise and simmering keyboards.
Supplementing drum machine rhythms with pounding on a floor tom (occasionally all three of them wailed on the same drum) Davies and guitarists Daniel Copeman and Thomas Fisher ran through songs from their full-length debut “Violet Cries” (Matador). Davies’ wail blends nicely with the sometimes foggy, sometimes thunderous music.
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