The Thursday night arrival of unseasonably cold weather in Austin, Texas coinciding with Juliana Barwick’s arrival in Austin for her show at The Parish seemed significant. Barwick’s songs, which were recorded in Iceland, possess the same pristine sheen and serene beauty as an arctic seascape. Using primarily her voice as an instrument, sounds are synthesized and looped in real time to create labyrinthine song structures in which parts move in and fade away softly, gorgeously, as a glowing, white glacier might drift across a frigid arctic ocean. However, Barwick’s music also provides an inner peace and warmth that allows the listener to observe this icy spectacle from a place of safety, looking out from a porthole while remaining hidden within themselves.
Barwick did invite a guitarist onstage after a song or two, and he remained for the duration of the set to provide subtly rising guitar notes. To aid the performance, Barwick utilizes a projected video that features the sort of dreamy, floating imagery one might expect: a body drifting in the water, a figure standing alone on the ice, gulls sailing overhead. The projections are the work of Derrick Belcham, who also directed the video for “The Harbinger,” which we posted on our site previously. If you’d like to see some of that imagery, you can head here to watch it. Barwick’s set included that song as well as album highlight “One Half,” for which Barwick also released a video.
Austin is a city that has developed a reputation for being noisy and, at times, downright disrespectful to touring musicians. We see a ton of live music, and it’s my belief that as this has become normalize, we take it for granted. However, at The Parish on Thursday, the crowd remained silent for the entire set. Usually, the beep on my camera autofocus can’t be heard over the blaring live music, but in this case, I turned it off. I even put the shutter on silent mode and still got an occasional glance from one particularly focused fan near the front. Getting out of the house in freezing temperatures is an act Texans don’t readily undertake, but once we were there, the sizable Thursday night crowd couldn’t have been happier. Barwick provides a rare live music experience. Her tour ended over the weekend, but you should keep an eye out for future dates and jump at the opportunity.
All photos © Bryan Parker & Pop Press International. Click any image to open in slideshow viewer.
