SXSW Music Live: Modern English

When Modern English began its set as de facto headliner of the Part Time Punks showcase on Tuesday night, it faced a packed house, including members of all the bands that performed before them. Fifteen minutes in, the Colchester, UK, quintet played to half outside at Barracuda.

Audience attrition is nothing new during SXSW, but for a band with an honest-to-gold record hit – inescapable New Wave athem “I Melt With You” – it’s surprising.

Perhaps it was because the set started a half-hour late. Constant futzing with Stephen Walker’s synthesizers, one of which refused to emit sound, pushed the start time to 12:45am. Perhaps it’s because underrated guitarist Gary McDowell, evolved from Eighties heartthrob into bearded, full-body tattoo who could be in Enslaved, spent as much time consulting his book of songs as he did picking his Stratocaster.

Maybe it was the set list itself.

Despite having a hit U.S. album in 1982’s After the Snow, which boasts “Melt,” the band, outside of three songs from its latest LP Take Me to the Trees, inexplicably chose to highlight its arty first album, ’81’s gothy Mesh & Lace. They ignored Snow almost entirely. ME’s momentum started off challenged, and though it picked up as the set progressed, it wasn’t enough to recover an audience with hundreds of other options.

A shame, given the strength of “Swans on Glass” and “Trees,” and by the time the group hit “Gathering Dust,” the first song on Mesh, it worked a mightily impressive post-punk head of steam. The band finished its 45-minute set with, of course, “Melt,” and singer Robbie Grey hardly needed to encourage the crowd to clap or sing the bridge’s distinctive “mmm-hmm-hmm.”

Still, momentum is everything at SXSW, and its successful manipulation is the difference between a great show and a merely good one.