4Play (Jan. 2010)

By Don Allred

 JAN 6:

Joey Hebdo
Thursday @ Rumba Café 

“Do what you’ve done and you get what you’ve got/I said become, become what you’re not!” Columbus’s Joey Hebdo spins out so many good lines that his post-mystical freedom songs constantly risk confusion. Appropriately so, as he pursues life and love’s mixed blessings, on 2007’s  Un EP and 2009’s  Prosciutto, which the office dictionary defines as “dry-cured, spiced ham, usually sliced thin.” Yep, Hebdo’s that ham: a show-off with a flare for shiny sonic clarity, carving up vividly intricate imagery (ditto live, especially with his four-piece band).

The Black Swans
Friday @ Rumba Café 

On the Columbus-outskirting Black Swans’ 2004 debut, Who Will Walk With You In The Darkness?, backwoods electricity gently probes what’s lurking in Jerry DeCicca’s  murky verses, as the late Noel Sayre’s violin and viola swirl way down around swaying, shuffling beats. Thus persistently lured, 2006’s Sex Brain harvests the surreal “Dark Plums,” and gets richly rewarded by “My Lips.” Despite the loss of Sayre, the current Swans deliver a succinctly gorgeous version of their recent single, ”Country Cookie # 3,” in a live performance linked from their site.

The L.E.S. Crew
Friday @ Skully’s
 

Hip Hop is the basis of the Columbus-based L.E.S. Crew, although DJ Redson, who started the show with MC Taj Mahal was already a seasoned, songwriting guitarist, and Juice rocks some beatboxing distortion. MC E-Roc’s voice also joins those of  r & b singer Ev Jones and Brian G., whose own  guitar, along with Tony F’s bass, T.L.’s drums and Dan P.’s percussion, further extends this funky Crew. They can also adapt into various subsets of sounds, while consistently bringing another round of views and clues.

Alert New London 

Friday @ The Basement 

Alert New London make the most of being young in Columbus now, with rowdy, detailed lyrics that wouldn’t have been judged “universal” enough, back when their big, crisp pop-rock sound was radio’s gold standard. They laugh and cry with all the lonely, illin’ people, stampeding through bars and boudoirs, bills and bills (both kinds). They’ve got their own dramas too, but any self-pity is more fuel for the party. When rhymes and reasons hit a wall, guitars can always vault over it, to a new-enough day and night.

JAN. 13: 

Shilpa Ray And Her Happy Hookers
Friday @ Café Bourbon Street 

“I fell in love and forgot my own mother/My father, my sister/My grandma, it killed her/I waltzed around, wishin’ you’d notice me.” That’s Shilpa Ray’s “What The *** Was I Thinking?,” which actually sounds like a dreamy, early pop-rock ballad. On A Fish Hook, An Open Eye, guilt has imploded, with memories’ shards floating through Ray’s thick, rich diction, while her harmonium’s naturally hovering sound gets lured into her Happy Hookers’ warehouse joy rides. At the crossroads, all the world is Ray’s cage and stage.
 

The Ragbirds
Saturday @ Rumba Café
 

The Ragbirds are great, but so what? Sure, Erin Zindle maintains vocal poise, while dancing and trading her electric violin for mandolin, melodica, banjo, accordion, and percussion. True, the rhythm section steams through well-timed, seamless dreams of Caribbean, East European, Middle Eastern, African, Irish and Appalachian themes. Yet they might just be another world-class world music band from Michigan, if not for Zindle’s everyday magic realism. She gossips about the moon, and gets unreasonably reasonable with the proper authorities, in between confiding, “Listen/Tell yourself the truth/Until you believe it.”
 

The Dutchess And The Duke
Saturday @ Wexner Center
 

If there were any justice, the couple from Hell who keep burning your candle would be transferred to midnight music therapy, sitting next to The Dutchess And The Duke. Rattling bones and singing along, they’d learn about pop-poetic justice with TDAD (singer-guitarists Jesse Lortz and Kimberly Morrison, backed by percussionist Donnie Hilstad). Leader Lortz is drawn through what could be a safely impressive folk-rock style, into inescapably understandable, sometimes beautifully ugly confessions. His calmly avenging angel-muse’s shadow takes notes, as the clouds and rhythms roll on.
 

The Crash Kings
Sunday @ the Basement 

The Crash Kings, stars of CD101’s Low Dough Show, are a trio with an arena-sized sound. Part of the theatrical effect is the surprising centrality of their musical Pandora’s Box: Tony Beliveau, king of Kings, plays clavinet (like Stevie Wonder on “Superstition.”) It’s a keyboard with guitar strings, and, in this case, even a guitar-style twang bar, for bending notes through various dimensions. Nevertheless, on the Crash Kings’ self-titled debut album, Beliveau belts out plenty of nature imagery, while burning pop-rock calories where they count, in the sonic spotlight.
 

JAN. 20: 

Prefuse 73

Friday @ The Summit

The stars of DJ/producer Prefuse 73’s Everything She Touched Turned Amphexian are tiny sonic organisms, escaping the re-mixer’s semi-divine timing long enough to sing and play yet another tribute to the micro-epic wonders under our skin, rocking every second of every day. Even better, some of this restless beat radiation escapes, growing 73’s cloud-kicking Forest of Insensitivity EP, then rattling and sweeping through the moonlit Andean drama of Savath y Savala’s  La Llama. Live, Prefuse 73’s performances converge with those of his tourmates, drummers VOICEsVOICEs and DJ Gaslamp Killer.

Miranda Lambert
Friday @ Nationwide Arena

Young country star Miranda Lambert’s current album, Revolution, cranks up and orbits old folk star John Prine’s “That’s The Way The World Goes Round.” She’s found her own sharp-eyed stoicism, just naturally igniting when rubbed the wrong way too hard. Some say she rocks too hard for country, but Lambert’s “Only Prettier” draws on the droll, drawled comic zingers of honky tonk, and she thoughtfully, tunefully re-affirms her Texas two-step aww-thentication. It helps that her father’s an ace guitar picker, and both parents are also private detectives, specializing in marital disputes (rockin' country material-rich)..

Timbaland
Saturday @ Newport
 On his endearingly uneven pop-rap-dance-ballad collection, Shock Value II, studio mastermind/underdog performer Timbaland creatively relates to the hopefully up-and-coming One Republic; the surprisingly okay Katy Perry; the now cheerfully unhip  Chad Kroeger (of  Nickelback); the unabashedly twangy teen queen Miley Cyrus; the sparky Nelly Furtado; the superstar Justin Timberlake; the soulful babe-in-waiting Esthero; and some obscuro Euros. imbaland does all right by most of them, often enough. You can pick and choose online, of course, and your favorite guests may appear at his show: on stage, and/or a big interactive screen overhead.

Eclipse
Saturday @ Rumba Cafe

On  Live At The Mad Frog, the classically cosmic keyboards of Cincinnati’s Eclipse escort equally vintage roughness into popular music’s post-platinum age of the well-educated, necessarily streetwise self-employed. Latin and hip-hop find friction deep in the jazzy flow, while horns, percussion, piano, bass and guitar spin around the tensions found even (or especially) in the most hopeful relationships, as “Shining Star” and the battered “Ohio” also testify. On their self-titled studio album, Eclipse test the fire escapes with “My Couch,” “Mambo Hop,” and “A Taste of India “(word to belly dancers).

JAN. 27: 

Deas Vail
Thursday @ The LC Pavilion

Deas Vail, sometimes compared to Ben Gibbard’s main band, Death Cab For Cutie, currently open for Owl City, who often get compared to Gibbard’s side project, Postal Service. But Deas Vail aren’t getting left back They’re journeymen at heart, committed to learning. Spirituality is more evoked than invoked, by their sound (especially singer Wes Blaylock’s more heavenly high notes) and lyrics, which unpretentiously express hope and frustration. Themes tend to blend, though their recent Birds and Cages turns up the guitars. The stage should provide more room to move.

Two Cow Garage
Saturday @ Rumba Cafe

Columbus units Two Cow Garage produce songs like "Girl of My Dreams," reeling visions and/or delusions back into the spin (that's country), while "Come Back To Shelby" mashes startling combinations of familiar elements far into the garage wall (that's rock).
 "Shelby" 's radically nostalgic narrator gnarls "Sha, la, la, la, la!" like a bursting Van Morrison pinata. Sweet lost "Sadie Mae" still shatters and hovers. Two Cow Garage keep all spirits, lost and found, kickin' in the stall. Hopefully, this show will fry us some omens of the upcoming album.

Hamilton Loomis
Saturday @ Vonn Jazz Lounge

Hamilton Loomis is blues-centric, although he unselfconsciously includes decades of rock, r&b, jazz, and funk shadings in his groove, while avoiding direct comparisons. Still, Loomis does offer a straightforward tribute to his studio colleague Bo Diddley, on the recent Live In England. Mostly, this disc sports equally up-tempo Loomis originals. Vintage-times-wireless gear juices his guitar and harmonica, along with Stratton Doyle's sax, which can sound like a horn section. Occasionally, Loomis's youthful voice can get a bit G. Love-slick, but the guitar usually knocks some sense back into him.

The Get-Ups
Saturday @ Victorian’s Midnight Café

The Get-Ups began four years ago as a detour for Way Past Gone’s vocalist-guitarist Kasey Chambers and drummer Nathan Hackey, who eventually added WPG colleague Tony Castle on bass. Past Way Past Gone, as they put it in song, ”F*ck it, I’m out.” They’re out where boredom and youth butt heads, ringing like the horns added as they went ska and stayed punk. Satire and exuberance zing and zip through the reflexes of both approaches, so the Get-Ups and their audiences have reasons to celebrate (when required).