Augustana

Salt Lake City gave Augustana its usual adoring welcome last Friday at the Avalon, but this concert was markedly different from the others that have featured this great young band from Greenville, Illinois and San Diego, California.

Augustana scored a massive radio-friendly hit with the song Boston from their major label debut All the Stars and Boulevards and seemed destined for top-40 stardom by repeating that same piano-ballad formula with front-man Dan Layus emoting over the keys.  It might have been a little boring, but it would have worked.  Trouble is, the band had some other things in mind.  Seems like on the way to their next album, they went off-script and off-road and ended up getting a little bluegrass stuck in their wheels.  This is not a band that would have covered a tune by Old Crow Medicine Show in the past, but that’s exactly what they did, playing Down Home Girl  like maybe they wrote the thing.  The new album, Can’t Love, Can’t Hurt, released April 29th, indeed has a more down-home feel to it and the show reflected that with some of the more mainstream rock tunes from the previous album, like “Hotel Roosevelt” and “Bullets” failing to even make an appearance.

  But the crowd didn’t mind that one little bit, obligingly cheering for all the new stuff and even singing along when the band played the new album’s first single “Sweet and Low.”  The transformation that the band appears to be making is perhaps summed up best by guitarist Chris Sachtleben’s slide guitar in “Where Love Went Wrong”, and by the darkness in songs like “Dust,” which rely heavily on Jared Palomar’s bass and feature lines like:

So go on and tear it up,
black and cold with the dust,
’cause i believed in the lord,
but he don’t show up anymore.

Not exactly bubble gum pop.  But then things have changed since this band wrote their last album.  Layus has a baby now, and the whole band just seems more mature.  Layus used to introduce Palomar as “the Asian Sensation,” and in one show, Juan, the road manager, staggered on stage to sing with the band and wale away on a cymbal.   Hi-jinks like that have now been replaced by group singalongs, where Palomar, keyboardist John Vincent and even drummer Justin South leave their instruments and gather round the mic to supply vocals for an unplugged number.  Even the encore has changed:  When the band came back onstage to wrap up the show, instead of playing a few of the old favorites, they jammed to a Dylan song.  This is not a band that’s planning on taking the obvious road, but it is a band that knows where it’s headed and is on a really enjoyable journey.  Ride along for an evening if you get the chance.