4Play (May 2009)

MAY 6:

Grace Adele
Saturday @ The Thirsty Ear
 Columbus singer-songwriter Grace Adele dances old and new dreams together, warm as vinyl and clear as digits. She reports from the sultry shadows: “I’m the one you love, dear/But you don’t want me/The passion I feel is mine alone. “ Not that she can’t have fun driving herself crazy as a rock-a-billy baby, “In my silent romance/With a man who’s unaware.” She’s more into self-scrutiny than self-pity, hanging up her hang-ups next to her raincoat, where they’re “Never Lost” (also her album’s title)
 

Great Northern
Sunday @ Skully’s
Great Northern’s  Remind Me Where The Light Is is a reality show adventure, sailing and sliding across a shining soundscape—or is it?  True, Rachel Stolte brings the wake-up call, through several layers of ice: “We want the ancients/Who can’t hold a key.” It’s becoming clear that the ancients’ mixed-up appetites, idealism, analysis, and mythological views come with the inherited/invaded fossil-fuel wasteland Great Northern’s trying to rock clean through. ”We are collapsing/Onto our feet.”  But discovering the powers of illusion also gives them more plot points to spin around, just in time!
 

The Dears
Sunday @ Skully’s
On Missiles, with most of the Dears having quit, scavenged sounds are set carefully, lighting (sometimes burning) the void, where Murray Lightburn and Nathalie Yanchak share intimately distanced, everyday spiritual crises and musical medications. Distancing provides protection in (sometimes skewed) perspective, so Lightburn eventually feels like humbly contributing a grandly orchestrated “Meltdown” of electric colors to another vagabond visionary (who’s already melting down). Yes, Lightburn might well have been too much for the old Dears, but he and Yanchak now guide a new crew and their ethereal arsenal through the traffic.
 

Nick Jaina
Tuesday @ Treehouse
 Nick Jaina is a sociable guy, and The Narrow Way is a house party. But the conga line’s passing a TV that’s turned off. He’s a “folkie,” but with some electric instruments, just loud enough. Meanwhile, truth and lies find quiet little places; love and luck can’t resist pushing (through) each other. Not to slight differences; for instance, Jaina may sometimes behave like the devil, but “I don’t feel like the devil.” Also, our host points out “the kind of fruit you leave on the vine.” So don’t say you weren’t warned.
 

MAY 13:

Lydia Brownfield
Wednesday @ Skully’s
Reading about Lydia Brownfield’s punkamorphic saga through the Southeast and NYC, then return of the Cowtown native to multi-media enterprises—none of that warned of the abyss peering warmly from deep-ass mp3s. Steve Louis’s bass and Matt Hopkins’ drums un-pave Brownfield’s way down through Andrew Bird’s  “Fiery Crash,” around her own “Liar” ‘s equally unstoppable assurances. The Orff-ian percussion and too-understandable orphan carousel quest of “A Horse Named Yankee” turn the key eternally. New album’s out this summer, but don’t wait for time (is her urge, it seems). Go to her now.

Willem Maker
Thursday @ Summit
Willem Maker’s not much for burying meanings. They might poison him like the dioxin dump did, way back in Georgia. He’s got one song specifically about that, but it’s as short as the others. Bare facts have to be quickly re-gathered, re-twisted up the neck of his guitar, peeled by his slide into images flying by, all around the rising gravity of Maker’s New Moon Hand. He’s singing his truth through bad and good dreams: learning to “leave the fever in the past,” starting at the end of the line.

 Bob Log III
Thursday @ Summit
Bob Log III is the kind of bluesman who, if he didn’t have no taste, wouldn’t have no taste at all. Yes, he was born under a NO sign, which he took to mean was no sign at all, to not name his new offspring My Shit Is Perfect. He’s one happy pappy, and indeed, this one-man-guitar-and-foot-drum-band (very eventually) had us twang-dancing like a tooth that can’t fall out. Also, it turns out that hyper-agility and total collapse go together like that “Boob Scotch” he’ll (deservedly) ask you for tonight.

Duff McKagan’s Loaded
 Saturday @ Crew
Coming out of Guns ‘N’ Roses, Duff McKagan formed Loaded in 1998, as a righteous safety valve. Seattle comrades are ready when he is, to trade his bass for vocals and guitar. Velvet Revolver probably helped prime him for Loaded’s new Sick, but market scams also have Playboy financial columnist McKagan sassing the “Sleaze Factory,” while demonstrating how to invest glam holdings wisely (and how to write a thrilling “IOU”). Each song’s a set-up for the next. This filthy-lucrative set gives as good as it gets.

MAY 20:

Couch Forts
Thursday @ Circus
Couch Forts is a scintillating C-bus trio, including Owen Kelly, who sings and plays electric guitar, between the sometimes zig-zagging rainbow vibrations of fiddler Matt Opachick and the steely underpasses of banjo plucker Tyler Evans. Kelly also kicks a lone drum, jolting the box and reminding the spirals to complete the trippy tapestry and mental maze of Couch Forts. Three-in-one variations of neurotic-erotic-romantic conflation earn resolution through social hazards of inner/outer-world adventure. Art and the heart faithfully hook up for another visionary blind date, on a folktastic catharsis break.
 

The Floorwalkers
Friday @ Frog Bear & Wild Boar
Columbus’s Floorwalkers are five tunefully jammy, seemingly rainproof souls. Their 2005 self-titled EP uncorks an after-midnight sound, sweet and chilled, basically unperturbed by female departure, despite re-tuning to a keening booty call. Sorrrow blossoms, solace is spontaneously given, then more strenuously sought; ditto salvation, resulting in blues. The Frankfort EP takes them across ”foreign shores” of further insight, though “I don’t know what’s to come here after/But if you call for me, I’ll sing for you,” and that’s the Floorwalkers’ truest, bluest key to the highway sky.
 

Ocean Ghosts
Friday @ Skully’s
Ectoplasmic Cowtown mariners Ocean Ghosts sometimes do the afterglow with Frank Zappa, judging by 2008’s American Pride. At least in terms of lofty attitudes behind earthy humor; still, their funk-sample farming feeds all. Frankly speaking, “You don’t like Lou Rawls/And your tattoos suck loose balls” is a stunning conclusion, but they don’t stop. The music takes magnanimous victory laps (though 2007’s disco-delic cruise, Pepperoni Lovers, is even more expansive). They even eventually share with Americans, that “It’s too late to feel ashamed.” So let’s get another “Death of the Party” started!
 

Lady Antebellum
Saturday @ Crew
  Cheesy name not withstanding, contemporary country trio Lady Antebellum seek soulfully sexy self-improvement. Manly, vulnerable Charlie Kelly belts from the same brave point of view as righteously hot Hillary Scott (and L.A.’s mainly co-composing Dave Hayward). They’re “Lookin’ For a Good Time “, which keeps turning back into love. Although, when Scott realizes that “Home Is Where The Heart Is” doesn’t include her hometown sweetheart, Kelly’s the guy she leaves at the altar, learning to cope. But neither is ever the villain that songs addressed to “you” occasionally (and excitingly) reveal.

 MAY 27:

Jessica Lea Mayfield
Thursday @ Basement
 Kent’s Jessica Lea Mayfield sang on Akron's Black Keys’ Attack & Release, foreshadowing the charged nocturnal atmosphere of her own album, With Blasphemy So Heartfelt. The Keys’ Dan Auerbach produces, encouraging Mayfield’s stealthy, catchy pace. Auerbach also provides an electronic dirge to further illuminate  “I Can’t Lie To You, Love.” The dirge returns too insistently later, but here it mourns and raises another song’s early glimpse. “My life is fallin’ apart /Gettin’ better, I don’t know.” Yeah, you do know: both are true; to each other, most of all.

The Silent Years
Friday @ Basement
The Silent Years’ self-titled debut’s Sunday drives were low-octane until “Devil Got My Woman” drew leader Josh Epstein’s depressive reflexes into eerie blues-pop extensions. The last three songs found emotional rescue from Sargasso seizure via sonically naughty nautical encounters. The cruise continued on 2008’s The Globe, where the warped and the mellow waltzed backwards through crunchy sunsets, into orbital outpourings like “Goddamn You!,” an ill child of R.E.M’s “Everybody Hurts.”  TSY’s forthcoming EP Let Go upgrades some melds and shades, while their live-in-the-studio Daytrotter Sessions promise a pretty good show.

Gypsy Dave and the Stumpjumpers
Friday @ Red Door
Stumpjumpers are what some residents of far northwestern Pennsylvania call each other. David Washousky takes his pensive Pennsy roots and their distance along, while sharing his name in art (and “wandering faith”) with an archetypal folk figure. His voice and guitar, times the Stumpjumpers’ fiddle and bass, slip tunefully and thoughtfully through all weather, as “The right slips by, in the moving light/Of paintings and suppertimes.” Is that political? Either way, “A black ‘n’ white/Violet summer sky” gently/boldly follows, bonding differences sensuously. (Stumpjumping indeed, by cracky!)

Harlem Gospel Choir
Sunday @ Lincoln
The Harlem Gospel Choir was founded twenty years ago by Allen Bailey, already a versatile music biz veteran. The HGC soon performed with U2, also stars of opera and most other genres.  Bailey, the Choir’s manager and master of ceremonies, reportedly will have his chronicle of their worldwide musical journeys published soon. Accompanied by synthesizer and drums, the HGC’s often interactive performances include blues, jazz and sometimes rock, always guided by gospel’s stylized spirit. At the very least, their voices elevate the roof as high as any ol’ band can.