Kevin Bronson on March 17th, 2016

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Mercury Rev, PWR BTTM, Jess Williamson, The Crookes, Moving Panoramas, Dana Falconberry

“I was at Iggy Pop earlier and I didn’t think anything could be better than that … but … this … was.”

So said a South by Southwest Music Festival veteran well past midnight Wednesday, after the long-running New York psychedelic rockers hosted an hour-long episode of grand cinema at the Bella Union showcase at the Elysium in Austin. It planted smiles on the faces of long-timers whose love affair with the band dates to the 1990s, breathed life into into the tired bodies of festival-goers (especially those who, ahem, hosted a day party earlier Wednesday) and sent everybody home with chills.

Performing shrouded in fog and back-lit by changing hues, frontman Jonathan Donahue was typically mime-like on stage, gesticulating gracefully, arms waving as if in flight and “conducting” his four bandmates as they soared through a surprisingly career-spanning set. Ostensibly, Mercury Rev has revved up in support of last fall’s “The Light in You,” their first album in seven years. They played three songs from the new one, two of them (“Queen of Swans” and “Autumn’s in the Air”) sandwiching 1991’s “Frittering.” They played “Holes,” “Goddess on a Hiway,” “Opus 40” and “The Funny Bird” from 1998’s “Deserter’s Songs,” and finished dramatically with the sweeping “The Dark Is Rising” (2001) as stage managers threatened to cut them off at the 2 a.m. curfew. (They didn’t, but the band went only a minute over.)

Between the staging, the music’s arching keyboards and orchestration and guitarist Sean “Grasshopper” Mackowiak’s soaring textures, it’s to imagine anything else this week in Austin will feel that kaleidoscopic yet intimate.

Earlier in the evening, there were some quick stops to be made:

Queer punk duo PWR BTTM were both engaging and hilarous at the ScratcHouse — there was something about gnomes we didn’t understand, but the song about sodomy came through loud and clear.

Austin’s Jess Williamson preceded them with a set of rapturous avant-folk, some of it (she introduced one tune as “Heartsong”) from an album she has finished but not yet released.

At the showcase hosted by Austin indie label Modern Outsider, U.K. quartet the Crookes came through with a set of infectious Britpop. All-female noise-pop trio Moving Panoramas roared through an equally catchy set of popgazing, but Dana Falconberry & Medicine Bow didn’t fare as well because of sound bleed from adjacent venues. Their orchestral folk, featuring cello, banjo, guitar, electric bass and haunting harmonies, deserved a quieter place.