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Alt-J, Live In Concert: SXSW 2013

By Stephen Thompson
Published March 14, 2013 at 6:12 AM EDT

Alt-J's Joe Newman has a funny way of singing — especially for the uninitiated, it can seem cartoonish or, worse, affected. He bends his high, twisty voice in strange ways, wrapping it around inventive arrangements that burble and boom and otherwise ramp up a sense of unease. The easiest way to embrace alt-J's idiosyncratic charm is to witness the band live; to hear how often Newman sings quietly and subtly, and to get a fuller feel for the prettiness at the core of alt-J's songs.

On Wednesday night at Stubb's, the band dug deep into its one and only album, last year's Mercury Prize-winning An Awesome Wave, and found a sweet spot where odd adventurousness meets beauty that seeps under the skin.

Set List

  • "Intro"

  • "Interlude I"

  • "Tessellate"

  • "Something Good"

  • "Buffalo"

  • "Dissolve Me"

  • "Fitzpleasure"

  • "Matilda"

  • "Interlude II"

  • "Bloodflood"

  • "Ms"

  • "Breezeblocks"

  • "Hand-Made"

  • "Taro"

    • Credits

    Producers: Bob Boilen, Mito Habe-Evans, Robin Hilton, Amy Schriefer; Technical Director: Kevin Wait; Event Coordinator: Saidah Blount; Assistant Producer: Denise DeBelius; Videographers: Christopher Farber, Katie Hayes Luke, A.J. Wilhelm; Audio Engineering by Metro Mobile; Production Assistants: Gabriella Garcia-Pardo, Ryan Smith; Special Thanks to: Stubb's and South By Southwest; Executive Producers: Anya Grundmann, Keith Jenkins.

    Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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    Stephen Thompson
    Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)
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