Hugh Cornwell

Elysium, Wednesday, March 14

Maybe the least busy person in Austin on Wednesday was the door guy at Elysium. When the average age of the audience is “gray,” there’s not much carding to do. At least Hugh Cornwell has aged better than most of his fans, and as good as he looked, his suit looked even better. Actually, these weren’t even fans of Cornwell so much as fans of his former outfit, the Stranglers. That much was clear from the audience’s tepid reactions to the handful of songs from Cornwell’s 2004 solo release, Beyond Elysian Fields. Stranglers material like “No More Heroes” and “Nice ‘n’ Sleazy,” on the other hand, redrew the crowd’s attention in a hurry. The problem was holding it, since what was once kind of punkish in the late Seventies doesn’t really translate to the singer-songwriter idiom of one guy onstage with an acoustic guitar. The crowd did their best to buoy him nonetheless, particularly when they sang impromptu backup harmonies on “Hanging Around” from the seminal Rattus Norvegicus.

This article appears in March 23 • 2007.

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