A Range of Styles in Three Performances
By JON PARELES |
| Josh Haner/The New York Times1, 2, 3 performing at Club de Ville in Austin on Friday. |
Oh land - the English-friendly stage name of the Danish songwriter Nanna Ø and Fabricius — brought a jazzy, tech-savvy ingenuity to dance-pop songs. Her beats pushed with syncopation rather than bombast; her voice was both elfin and strong, flicking her zigzagging melody lines across the music. Using an electronic percussion gizmo, she tapped out lines in counterpoint to what she was singing; every so often she electronically harmonized her voice into a chorus, but she’s one singer who needs no Auto-Tune. Her songs are snappy, with elegant little convolutions, and she performed them while twirling merrily around the stage, sharing the delight of a pop craftsmanship that eludes formulas.
Jamie Woon, a British singer who’s learned quite a few things from Stevie Wonder — vocal Arabesques, funk vamps — but applied them with a darker, moodier sensibility. He used the stark pulses and surreal glow of electronic dance music, sometimes switching to more live instruments partway through, to surround minor-mode tunes that sounded far less optimistic than his lyrics: “How will we get through tomorrow every day?/I don’t know but we get through it anyway.” For all their positive thinking, the songs had a mournful streak.
1,2,3 — a band from Pittsburgh with a Google-defying name — fought technical problems to play songs that put cantankerous twists into taut rock structures. During its brief set, songs hinted at lurching roots-rock, Talking Heads’ new wave funk, the keyboard filigree of progressive rock and the slow roll of a soul ballad. Lead vocals had a wry, scratchy edge, even as they delivered scrappy, snappy choruses: “I’m scared,” went one, “but not that scared.”
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