Live music review: A joyous solstice fest by The Bright Light Social Hour

The summer solstice is upon us, and that can mean only one thing: a joyous hometown performance by Austin’s The Bright Light Social Hour.  This year, the band was joined for their one-night Endless Light Festival at Mohawk by four other outstanding Austin bands; Megafauna, Bruce, LLuvii, and Grandmaster on June 21 at the longtime downtown Red River Cultural District venue.

We arrived just in time to see Grandmaster, the eleven-piece cult-band that won this year’s Austin Music Award for Best New Act. Wearing matching red bucket hats and eyeshades, and joined by the imposing, shrouded character-musician known as The Grandmaster, the band crowded the stage and let forth their powerful, multi-layered wall of funk, which had the crowd hyped.

Next month, fans can catch the up and coming Grandmaster at their second annual Gala at the Paramount Theater with Urban Heat, Nolan Potter’s Nightmare Band and The Thing on July 26. It’s an equally good lineup as TBLSH’s fest for Austin music fans. Tickets are available here.

As The Bright Light Social Hour’s team set up the stage, fans moved to the Mohawk’s more intimate indoor stage. We saw Lluvii (pronounced U-V), a dreamy-sounding ensemble that feels like a breath of fresh air, in part due to the ethereal vocals, infusion of Latin percussion and partly due to the rainforest sounds in their stage production. Deeply groovy, yet soulful, their set made for a perfect transition between the funkadelic Grandmaster and a psych-heavy performance by The Bright Light Social Hour.

When TBLSH – Jackie O’Brien (bass/vocals), Curtis Roush (guitar/vocals), Zac Catanzaro (drums), Mia Carruthers (keys/vocals), and Juan “Alfredo” Ríos (percussion) – finally took the main stage, it was ten o’clock. After warming up with a couple of songs, the band kicked off the first full performance of their 2015 album, Space is Still the Place. This year marks the tenth anniversary of the record’s release, which came during a period when the band was fighting for survival amidst profound loss. O’Brien shared with the audience that many of the songs were inspired by the folks they met and stayed with while touring during that time.

Space is Still the Place was written, arranged, and produced by the band themselves after they’d scraped together enough money to pay for studio time. Instead of giving their hard-earned cash to someone else, though, they chose to invest in their own equipment and spent their time learning to craft their recorded songs. The result was nothing short of a psych-rock masterpiece. That same year, they founded Escondido Sound, a small studio on Lake Travis where they still record and produce music today.

In fact, aside from their own work and related side projects, Jackie O’Brien recently finished work on Megafauna’s latest single, “Leftist Heart,” which dropped in February. Regretfully we didn’t make their set at Mohawk for this show. The Cosmic Clash has covered the band before however, and we love their music which has shown consistent creative growth as the longtime Austin act, led by gifted guitarist and songwriter, Dani Neff. We did, however snag a few shots of the gifted indie rock trio.

There’s something special about hearing an entire album played live from start to finish. If you’ve listened to TBLSH’s album multiple times, anticipation builds with each song, knowing what you’ve to look forward to. It’s also fun to hear variations and improvisations from the recorded versions of the songs. And of course, since O’Brien and Roush are the only original members from 2015, it was exciting to see what Catanzaro, Carruthers, and Ríos brought to the material.

From the bluesy opening to “Sweet Madeline” the audience was treated to what can only be described as a once-in-a-lifetime performance. The abundant creative energy of these musicians, bridled by countless hours of practice and a genuine camaraderie, came through in a way that can only be described as legendary. I’ll be telling my grandchildren about this show, which frankly, felt more like a trip than a concert. The band moved easily between the changes in tempo and mood, taking us on a transcendent tour through this storybook of songs written to reflect a time and place that, for better or worse, exists no more.

Roush, O’Brien, and Carruthers’ smooth, elegant voices blended dreamily through songs like “Slipstream” and “Sea of the Edge,” sounding as good (if not better) than their recordings. With the reverberation of Catanzaro’s heavy drumming under our feet and Ríos’ percussion filling in the blanks, the crowd stayed in motion despite the stifling heat of a Texas summer night. (Special hat tip to the stage production folks for staggering the band members in a way that made it possible to see Catanzaro and Ríos perform clearly.) O’Brien and Roush poured themselves into their bass and guitar, respectively, laying out a tapestry woven together from decades of shared meaning.

The band was also joined onstage by The Grandmaster for the edgiest, most dissonant version of Ouroboros ever to grace an audience, during which I looked at some random dude in the crowd and we both mirrored one another’s look of pure, unbridled, idiotic joy at having our faces melted off.

After finishing the full performance of Space is Still the Place, TBLSH treated us to a handful of their other best-loved songs, including crowd favorites “Shanty” and “Back and Forth.” Almost two hours of mind-blowing music performed without letup. By the time they were finished, the crowd was soaked with sweat and filled with gratitude.

That didn’t stop them from an encore performance for the ages. Roush re-entered the stage alone, took up his guitar, and made a comment about war and the importance of rock n’roll as a way to keep sane before launching into a soft solo intro to “Garden of the Gods.”

We’ll see it out
One more empire gone to seed
We’ll see it out
Tonight with you my only need
We’ll see it out
It’s all supposed to come down soon
We’ll see it out
Under this moon

The song rolled out soulfully, deliberately, as Roush was joined again onstage by the rest of the band who took their places before hitting it hard, bringing down the house, dissolving us all in waves upon waves of premium grade jam.

On the way home, news was broadcast that my country had bombed another country that very night, while we were at the show. Messages I read online were filled with despair, but I found myself inoculated against the anxiety and grief. It felt impossible to be hopeless after what I’d just experienced. On that night – summer solstice 2025 – the music triumphed, reminding us that the only way hate wins is if we stop loving. And as long as The Bright Light Social Hour keeps playing to our hearts, I guess we’re gonna be okay.

Featured photo by Mike Cosmic. Special thanks to photographer Claudia Gomez Rodriguez