Lucius tapes 'Austin City Limits,' gets cozy with the crowd and covers Donna Summer

Stepping off the stage near the end of Sunday's "Austin City Limits" taping, Lucius leaders Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig slowly eased their way into the middle of the few hundred fans on ACL Live's standing-room-only floor. What had been a lively performance with their full band suddenly became intimate, as if the duo was singing to friends in their living room.

"We used to do this way back on our first record," Wolfe said as they began the gentle but powerful song "Two of Us on the Run" from their 2013 "Wildewoman" album. "It's been a very long time."

They're not the first performers to do this, of course, but Wolfe and Laessig are wise enough to get that it can help make a direct connection to the audience. "We hope that you're receiving something from us," Wolfe continued, "because we are receiving something from you."

Energy flowed freely between performers and audience for nearly all of the Los Angeles-via-Brooklyn indie band's 75-minute performance. Wolfe and Laessig, whose resume sports collaborations with artists such as Roger Waters and Brandi Carlile ― they'd joined Carlile at Austin's Waterloo Park on Friday ― had appeared as special guests on "Austin City Limits" before, most notably for several songs with Jeff Tweedy and his son, Spencer Tweedy, in 2014. But this was the first time their own band had taped the show.

They made the most of it with a splendid set of pop music that mixed elements of melodic folk, dance-groove funk and emotional atmospherics, all delivered with a highly stylized visual presentation that's as much a part of Lucius's identity as their sound. From their striking green ensembles ― Laessig added a black leather jacket over hers ― to the mirror-plate sparkle of two floor-tom drums, a pair of keytars and their own eyelashes, the pair put on a performance that should translate quite well to TV when the episode airs during the program's upcoming 48th season.

Lucius, not surprisingly, focused on the new album "Second Nature," sprinkling more than half of its tracks into a 14-song set. But unlike an artist such as Carlile, who last week taped the program for the third time and focused even more on new material because she'd played the show twice before, Lucius's "Austin City Limits" debut provided reason to dig back to their previous records, as well.

More:Review of Brandi Carlile's "Austin City Limits" taping

Thus they played four songs from "Wildewoman," the album that first brought them to wide attention about a decade ago. They included not only "Two of Us on the Run" but also "Tempest," "How Loud Your Heart Gets" and the uplifting set-closer "Turn It Around," which got folks dancing to its contagious "looking through the wrong end of the telescope" chorus.

The set began just like the new album does, with the title track and "Next to Normal" setting a cool groove, from which they gradually segued into more melodic numbers over the next few songs. "Dusty Trails," the lone song from 2016's "Good Grief" album, and a cover of 1970s songwriter Gerry Rafferty's "Right Down the Line" from 2018's acoustic collection "Nudes" led into the heart of the set with the new album's "Heartbursts" and "White Lies."

Previous coverage:Read our review of Lucius at ACL Fest 2014

That pair of spectacularly dynamic tunes showed off the extraordinary talent of their backing band, which includes longtime members Peter Lalish on guitar/keyboards and Dan Molad on drums. More recent recruits Solomon Dorsey (bass/keyboards), Alex Pfender (guitar/keyboards) and Bill Campbell (percussion) filled out the crescent circle that surrounded Laessig and Wolfe at center stage.

The main set concluded when "Turn It Around" seamlessly segued into Donna Summer's "I Feel Love," an enchanting disco number that perfectly fits into the Lucius vibe. But the night wasn't quite over. Apparently, there were some lighting issues when Wolfe and Laessig went into the crowd for "Two of Us on the Run," so they headed back out for a re-shoot.

"We get to cuddle with you again," Wolfe said, both band and audience happy to have the second take. And she thanked the crowd again for the energy they provided: "What you give us makes it possible to sing and keep going."

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Lucius tapes 'Austin City Limits' for the first time at ACL Live