At South By Southwest, disastrous shows can happen easily. This year, the Swedish pop trio Peter Bjorn and John was one of the unfortunate bands led to SXSW slaughter.
The hundreds of bands are rushed on stage rapidly at the annual Austin music conference and festival, and they rarely get enough time to properly set up or tune.
The start of the first show by the acclaimed Peter Bjorn and John on Wednesday night was delayed and, when they finally started playing, equipment problems caused long interruptions and ruined the set. The unsympathetic crowd heckled and booed.
“It was an awful show,” said Peter Moren, the band’s lead singer, able to smile painfully about it in an interview Friday. “But it’s also good that stuff like that happens occasionally. Otherwise you become bigheaded.”
For Peter Bjorn and John, the 10-year-old trio whose fifth album “Living Thing” will be released on March 31, the issue of performance perfection is always relevant. They are pop craftsmen who create tightly woven songs (often about love) by mixing guitars, sythnesizers, acoustic instruments, samples and other sounds.
But live — when everything doesn’t go wrong — their songs don’t come off too stale or manicured. They’ll play a punk song amid a set of synth pop. Drummer John Eriksson says he likes “mayhem and mistakes” and even would have enjoyed being in the audience for their train wreck show.
Peter Bjorn and John emerged in 2006 with their third album “Writer’s Block,” which carried the infectious hit single “Young Folks,” (even Kanye West sampled it). They followed it up with the instrumental 2008 disc “Seaside Rock.”
The three members — all songwriters — have side projects, as well. Moren released a solo album last year named after the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel “The Last Tycoon.” Bjorn Yttling has become an in-demand producer. He co-produced last year’s acclaimed debut from Lykke Li, “Youth Novels.”
“Living Thing” finds the band navigating away from indie territory. Moren says it’s influenced by ’80s pop like Autolux, A-ha, Fleetwood Mac, OMD and Depeche Mode — who they’ll open for on tour this summer.
“There are almost Phil Collins effects at times, which is kind of glossy but also cold and a bit bubbly, spooky,” said Moren. “Less like an indie rock lager beer; more like a pop bubbly champagne thing.”
The Depeche Mode reference is especially evident on the new “It Don’t Move Me.”
“Normally we do, like, four or five different styles of each song,” said Eriksson, speaking on the varied music tastes of each member. The drummer gravitates toward current rock and hip-hop; Yttling is an expert on dance and electronic music; and Moren says he knows “the story of rock ‘n roll very well.”
A trio where all members write material is uncommon.
“For us, everyone is a control freak, super conscious about everything,” said Moren. “I guess we’re more like Crosby Stills and Nash than the Rolling Stones.”
One song on the new album, “Just the Past,” includes a simple intro melody Moren sang when he was 5 years old — the first song he ever wrote, which his mother recorded on a cassette. Ever since, he’s been obsessed with writing music.
“You always think about songs,” said Moren. “Constantly.”
Supreme Court Seems Likely To Uphold A Law That Could Force TikTok To Shut Down On Jan. 19
The Supreme Court on Friday seemed likely to uphold a law that would ban TikTok in the United States beginning Jan. 19 unless the popular social media program is sold by its China-based parent company.
Hearing arguments in a momentous clash of free speech and national security concerns, the justices seemed persuaded by arguments that the national security threat posed by the company's connections to China override concerns about restricting the speech either of TikTok or its 170 million users in the United States.
Early in arguments that lasted more than two and a half hours, Chief Justice John Roberts identified his main concern: TikTok's ownership by China-based ByteDance and the parent company's requirement to cooperate with the Chinese government's intelligence operations.
If left in place, the law passed by bipartisan majorities in Congress and signed by President Joe Biden in April will require TikTok to "go dark" on Jan. 19, lawyer Noel Francisco told the justices on behalf of TikTok.
At the very least, Francisco urged, the justices should enter a temporary pause that would allow TikTok to keep operating. "We might be in a different world again" after President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Jan. 20. Trump, who has 14.7 million followers on TikTok, also has called for the deadline to be pushed back to give him time to negotiate a "political resolution." Francisco served as Trump's solicitor general in his first presidential term.
But it was not clear whether any justices would choose such a course. And only Justice Neil Gorsuch sounded like he would side with TikTok to find that the ban violates the Constitution.
Gorsuch labeled arguments advanced by the Biden administration' in defense of the law a... Read More