One of the best things one can say about a band is that they take you to their own special space, but Supergrass' show at the South by Southwest music festival was a bit much. An unseasonable cold front had made the grass-covered section of Texas resemble Britain's South Downs, and the scaffolded stage makes the show look even more like an English pop festival. That's the perfect setting for Supergrass, of course, and the power-pop trio looked comfortable from the moment they hit the stage playing "In It for the Money," the title track from their new album.

Mixing crowd-pleasers with their slightly less singable new tunes, Gaz Coombes, Mick Quinn, and Danny Goffey (plus Gaz's silent-member brother Rob on keyboards) blasted through a hyperspeed "Caught By The Fuzz," the mid-tempo "Time," and the new, swaying "Going Out." Even in a high wind that made the speakers almost swallow their own noise, Coombes and Quinn's harmonies sounded crisp and lush in their simplicity. Nearby, gloomy crooner Mark Eitzel stood nodding his head in rhythmic approval -- proof that Supergrass' pop can cheer even the deeply morose.

"This is actually the second time we've played this," Coombes said into the mike as he swapped vintage guitars and introduced the Hammond-heavy "Cheapskate," a late-'60s-style gothic tune that evoked the Doors and Small Faces. Then he announced the band's regular cover of the First Edition's "I Just Checked In," as being "by a guy called Kenny Rogers," scoring brownie points by name-dropping the rotisserie chicken franchiser deep in C&W territory.

After running through some new material for the industry-heavy crowd -- including the anthemic "Sun Hits the Sky" and the psychedelic power ballad "You Can See Me" -- Supergrass quickly left the stage without an encore to what seemed like moderate applause. Though that might seem a sign of audience disapproval, the band actually received the biggest crowd endorsement of all -- a willingness to stay put as temperatures dropped well below comfortable levels. R