Last night, Mutual Benefit, the project of musician Jordan Lee, made a stop in Austin for a set at Red 7. Lee’s music consists of dreamy soundscapes that wander from loose structures teeming with twinkling guitar picking to cohesive, melodic arrangements. Mutual Benefit’s most recent album, Love’s Crushing Diamond, is an astounding work of soft, complex textures. It’s the kind of music that immediately transcends sound and demands metaphorical comparison. I am holding a gem up to the morning’s earliest sunlight, and it scatters color in all direction. The ocean’s tide rolls in with successive waves, and then recedes again leaving a collection of shimmering translucent shells on the tan sand. This is music that resonates on some universal level.
From the moment that band kicked off the set with “Golden Wake,” the entire crowd was transfixed as Lee and his band ambled easily through the setlist. Maybe it’s my own restlessness with daily life, but the song felt particularly emotive last night, as Lee sang, “I took a walk my usual way/ and called to quit my job today,” and later, “We weren’t made to be this way / We weren’t made to be afraid.” Lee seemed in high spirits, grinning as he made eye contact with his band members and bantering easily with the crowd. He had concertgoers enrapt in his cheesy jokes as he relayed a story about thinking up Biblical puns based on Mountain Dew, such as “Dew-teronomy” and “Dew unto others.” Mutual Benefit got a ton of attention with the release of Loves’s Crushing Diamond, but hype has quelled in recent months. I’m hoping we’ll see new material sooner rather than later, so as to ignite the spark of interest the band deserves.
Earlier in the night, Suno Deko, the project of David Courtright played a solo set of similarly minded, labyrinthine pop. Utilizing loop pedals, the show incorporated synths, violin, guitars, and drums all played by Courtright, who also provided compressed, buzzing vocal tracks. The songs are reminiscent of the work of Owen Pallett, but angles less toward experimentation and more toward expertly layered pop songs.
Austin’s own Taft kicked off the night with a solo set. Without his full band, Taft had a task in store for him in playing to the night’s early arrivers, but he handled the set with poise as he delivered his songs with confidence and boldness while shuffling around the stage. The set ended with a cover of The Kinks “Strangers,” and a nod to the arriving strangers Mutual Benefit who shared the stage for this one night before passing on to their next tour stop.
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