SXSW 2021 music documentary review roundup: Tom Petty, Poly Styrene, Sparks, and more

SXSW always features a great selection of music documentaries, and this year is no exception. While it’s hard to beat the communal experience of hundreds of slightly-drunk or hung-over festival goers pouring into an Austin theatre for a world premiere, this year’s online edition of SXSW has at least made it easier than ever to binge through the festival’s offerings from the comfort of your couch.

Below you’ll find reviews of a number of music documentaries from this year’s festival slate, including films based on Tom Petty, Texas Americana icon Guy Clark, first-wave punk legend Poly Styrene, and more.

SXSW 2021 runs through Sunday, March 21. You can find all of our coverage from this year’s festival here.

Tom Petty, Somewhere You Feel Free

Following the recent release of the extended version of Tom Petty’s 1995 classic Wildflowers comes Tom Petty, Somewhere You Feel Free, a new documentary by director Mary Wharton focused on the mid-90s period where Petty conceived and recorded the fan-favourite album. Made up of rare 16mm footage by Martyn Atkins from the era alongside new interviews with the likes of Wildflowers producer Rick Rubin, Petty bandmates Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench, and his daughter Adria, Tom Petty, Somewhere You Feel Free captures the beloved rock musician at a moment of great artistic and personal change.

Wildflowers would mark his first working experience with producer Rick Rubin, his first album for new label Warner Bros., and while ostensibly a “solo” album, would feature every member of his band The Heartbreakers apart from drummer Stan Lynch, who was fired during the sessions over creative differences. Those differences arose over the material on Wildflowers, a folksier and much more stripped-down album than anything Petty had put out in the past. In the midst of all of these creative changes, Petty was also moving away from his wife, a difficult subject he incorporated into some of the more wistful tracks on Wildflowers.

Somewhere You Feel Free is unabashedly a movie for Petty fans. Like the best documentaries, it focuses on one transformative period of the subject’s personal life and career, and never attempts to be a comprehensive overview (Peter Bogdanovich’s 4-hour Petty doc, Runnin’ Down a Dream, is there for that).

Despite its refined scope, Wharton’s film provides a great glimpse into Petty’s chemistry in the studio and the songwriting process that would lead to one of the best albums in Petty’s long and storied career. After his tragic death in 2017, getting the opportunity to observe Petty in his element joyfully producing the timeless tracks that would make up Wildflowers feels like a true gift.

Without Getting Killed or Caught

Texas Americana musician Guy Clark has long been revered by in-the-know musicians and fans as one of his generation’s finest songwriters, known as much for his achingly beautiful songs like “L.A. Freeway” as for his decades-long relationship with fellow musician Susanna Clark. In Without Getting Killed or Caught, filmmakers Tamara Saviano and Paul Whitfield examine Clark’s life and career through the lens of his relationship with Susanna and Townes Van Zandt, a complicated triangle that would drastically impact the lives of all three beloved musicians.

The film uses Susanna Clark’s copious home cassette recordings from the ’70s and her extensive journal entries (read by Sissy Spacek) to illustrate her long on-and-off-again relationship with Guy, as well as her spiritual bond with the couple’s best friend Townes, who lived with the pair for an extended period of time.

While Susanna had early success selling a number of her songs, both Guy and Townes struggled for years to attain the sort of mainstream fame that would allow them to live comfortably. Guy came close a number of times and was finally recognized as an elder statesman of Americana later in life, while Townes never achieved that level of recognition in his lifetime (after years of alcohol and drug abuse, Townes died in 1997 at just 52). Susanna was never the same after Townes’ death — in one of the most shocking title cards of any documentary in recent memory, we learn that Susanna stayed in bed for 15 years following his death.

Without Getting Killed or Caught chronicles a set of unlikely creative and personal relationships that would produce some of the most honest and heartbreaking country songs of all time. The film features interviews with contemporaries and friends of the trio including Vince Gill, Rodney Crowell, and Steve Earle, but the real emotional heft comes from Susanna’s audio “diaries” from the era, allowing a rare as-it-happens look into her life with both Guy and Townes.

A great primer for newcomers and a fitting tribute for long-time fans of these country music outlaws, Without Getting Killed or Caught is a fascinating look at the productive and occasionally tumultuous relationship between three of the greatest singer-songwriters to ever inhabit the Lone Star State.

Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché

Iconic X-Ray Spex singer Poly Styrene is the subject of this fascinating new documentary, as seen through the often-conflicted eyes of her daughter Celeste Bell.

Poly Styrene (Marianne Joan Elliott-Said) made waves as the first woman of colour to front a major punk band in the 70s, shouting out anthemic and boundary-pushing tracks like “Oh Bondage! Up Yours!” while sporting her unique and plastic-heavy homemade outfits.

Following her death in 2011, her daughter went back into her mother’s archives to put the pieces of her Poly Styrene’s tumultuous life back together and to try to gain new insights into their difficult relationship. What follows is a revelatory look at Styrene’s indelible influence on generations of women to openly and honestly express themselves through their art, as well as the mental toll that stardom took on her over the years.

Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché is a portrait of a troubled woman seeking to find her place in the world. When punk seemed to have lost its allure for her, Styrene turned to serene folk music and then became deeply entrenched in the world of Hari Krishna devotees, eventually moving to a Krishna compound with her young daughter in tow. Once entrenched in the Krishna community, Styrene would often become so wrapped up in her devotion that she would occasionally forget to even eat or drink, leaving her young daughter to fend for herself.

Directed by Celeste Bell and Paul Sng, Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché is not only a rare look at one of the most influential artists of her era but a revealing examination of the intersection between art and mental illness. The film is a fitting tribute to the unique and complicated trailblazer, as well as a cautionary tale of an extremely sensitive soul who was caught up and chewed up in the whirlwind of fame and attention. Thankfully, making the film seems to have brought Celeste some much-needed closure, allowing her to come to terms with her mother’s troubled life and their often-rocky relationship.

Disintegration Loops

Twenty years after the attacks of 9/11, director David Wexler examines the legacy of experimental music icon William Basinski’s The Disintegration Loops, a four-album set of ambient music that would come to be forever associated with the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York City.

Consisting of a looped piece of analog tape that slowly disintegrates with each pass-through, changing its sound in subtle and remarkable ways, The Disintegration Loops is a hypnotic set of music that has become an elegy for those lost in the terror attacks.

Made up of Zoom interviews with Basinski, his family members, fellow ambient musicians, and critics, Disintegration Loops is a thorough examination of that fateful recording, as well as an open look at Basinski’s life and career, and how COVID has affected his work. Coming in at 44-minutes, Disintegration Loops falls somewhere between a documentary short and a feature film, and could definitely have used some extra time to elaborate on Basinski’s fascinating backstory and the rest of his career. Basinski is a naturally charismatic storyteller, but the film moves so quickly that one gets the impression we’re missing out on so much more of Basinski’s history.

Filming a documentary on Zoom also has its drawbacks — there are moments of glitchy audio and video that are part and parcel of the process, but Basinski’s story and work are compelling enough to make the overall experience worthwhile.

The Sparks Brothers

In what might be the perfect marriage of subject and director, Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, The World’s End) takes on the idiosyncratic pop duo Sparks in this thorough and often hilarious documentary.

Known as your favourite band’s favourite band, Sparks can be almost impenetrable to newcomers, and Wright’s documentary is a great entry point into the band’s overwhelming discography.

Brothers Ron (keyboards) and Russell Mael (vocals) have been making music together for over 50 years. As Sparks, they’ve released 26 (!) albums, toured the world relentlessly, and made a name for themselves in music nerd circles as a boundary-pushing band that can flip between genres on a dime. Deliberately off-kilter and theatrical in their lyrics and presentation (Ron’s Hitler-style mustache probably did the band no favours in their early years), Sparks gained early success in the UK in the ’70s, but have remained a cult band in North America for decades.

Wright’s doc takes a loving look at the wildly creative Mael brothers, and how their unbridled creativity and dedication have allowed the band to persevere through countless musical trends over the years. Filled with dozens of interviews with musicians and comedians (Sparks are a very funny band) including Beck, Weird Al” Yankovic, and Patton Oswalt, it becomes readily apparent that the band’s unique sound and commitment to following their muse wherever it takes them has struck a chord with artists and fans across generations.

Wright captures the energy and strangeness of the Mael brothers with a sense of deep appreciation and respect that you can almost palpably feel extending out from the screen. Watching The Sparks Brothers is like being led into a wild underworld you never knew existed, a Willy Wonka-like voyage into the highly prolific and gleefully provocative band that has been criminally underrated for far too long.

The Sparks Brothers opens in theatres in Canada and the U.S. on June 18. 

Under the Volcano

After the dissolution of The Beatles in 1970, the band’s producer George Martin sought out a way to produce records in a new and exciting way. After his ambition for a recording studio on a boat sailed out to sea (the sound of the generators would have bled into the recordings), Martin focused on building a top-of-the-line studio on the small Caribbean island of Montserrat.

Known as AIR Studios, the incredible recording set-up, coupled with the beautiful Caribbean destination, would eventually lure a who’s who of rock legends to record there, including The Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, Elton John, The Police, and many more. Ultimately, creating a world-renowned recording studio on a remote volcanic island was always a very risky proposition, and the studio was eventually destroyed, along with hundreds of homes, when Hurricane Hugo struck the island in 1989. It was further buried in rubble when the Soufrière Hills volcano erupted in 1995, leaving the highly-influential studio to rot.

Australian director Gracie Otto offers a joyous look back at the glory days of AIR Studios with Under the Volcano, a new documentary that delves into the wide range of acts that recorded there, and how the Montserrat locals and the stunning surroundings influenced and inspired those classic records.

Apart from the scenic locale, Montserrat was also set-up like a summer camp, with band members and AIR’s local staff living and working in close proximity. It’s clear that sort of inter-play had a massive influence on a number of the bands who made the long trek to Montserrat — one of the best moments in the film features audio of Stevie Wonder performing for locals in a tiny bar, exuberantly shouting out his love for the people of Montserrat.

While the film features plenty of interviews with the likes of Sting and Mark Knopfler discussing the intangible magic of recording in Montserrat, the secluded island studio didn’t cut it for everyone — the members of Duran Duran, barely out of their teens at the time, recall chaffing at the relaxed atmosphere, and would eventually finish their album in Australia.

Much of Under the Volcano is made up of very rich members of rock n’ roll royalty gushing about the beauty and serenity of Montserrat and Martin’s top-notch recording studio, and at times it almost feels like a wealthy relative recounting their latest exclusive vacation destination. It would be easy to see the story of AIR Studios in a colonialist light (packs of incredibly wealthy musicians descending on a sleepy Caribbean island to decompress), but Otto clearly demonstrates the enormous financial impact the studio had on the locales, as well as the deep connections many of them made with the musicians who passed through.

Ultimately, the music speaks for itself, and Under the Volcano features many of the best rock recordings from the ’70s through the ’80s, a long-lost time when label recording budgets still allowed for the sort of wild studio excesses that we’ll likely never see again.