By Don Allred
JUNE
Pat Dailey
Fri 6/12 @Newport
Ex-Marine, ex-cop, but mainly a songbird migrating
between Key West and Ohio's Put-In-Bay, Pat Dailey
has a wide, wild range of musical perspectives on
human behavior. Perspectives on perspectives, really,
because he knows all the sweet, salty and stinky
fish stories we tell ourselves and each other, while
bumping and sailing along. Dailey's mother wit was
sharpened by the late, great songwriter-cartoonist Shel Silverstein,
from the "R"-rated banquet (and implied Jimmy Buffett parodies)
of "Raw Bars," to their kiddie-songs classic, Underwater Land,
where life in the food chain tastes better than ever.
JULY 1?:
Yourself and The Air
Wednesday @ Circus
Erick Crosby both lusts for and distrusts “pretty machinery.”
His high maintenance visions and pretty guitar fit the fearless flights
of Yourself and The Air. On Cold Outside Brings Heavy Thoughts To Think,
YaTA reached the reflective searchlight sweep and grind of “Lost and Found."
which “Popular Science” further fertilized. Spiraling cycles, schooled by “Lost...."
bent tasteful dynamics of ‘70’s/’80s/’90s rock classicism into the inspiringly ill
Friend of All Breeds EP. “Popular Science” ‘s mutating undercurrents recently
visited YaTA’s live Daytrotter Sessions, in the raw and prettier than ever.
The Crystal Method
Friday @ BoMA
Electronica vets The Crystal Method’s Divided By The Night
vibrantly tours the empire of dreams, which Hasidic MC Matisyahu
vividly challenges to “Drown in the Now.” Matisyahu starts strong,
but (judiciously interjected) parody rappers LMFAO maintain better,
in “Sine Language.” Vocalist Stephanie Warfield is superfluous,
twice. Yet New Order bassist Peter Hook rocks two microcosmic epics;
Metric’s Emily Haines is a pressured eyewitness/enabler;
Grandaddy’s Jason Lytle offers sinister sympathy.
Soap opera soundtrack balladeer Meiko makes a soulful decision,
as our hosts provide sonic slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
The Plastiscines
Monday @ The Basement
In 2006, The Plastiscines were in the vanguard of French teenage girl
new wave bands, dubbed “les bebes rockers
”(as anthologized on Paris Calling). In 2007,
the Plastinices’ own LP1 was accused of excessive and less fashionable
Strokes-iness,
but they probably didn’t care too much. 2009’s About Love finds them
still bravely crash-dancing through the drama of “Seasons that pass/Covered in ash,”
and ready to “get down in Barcelona,” which they aptly rhyme with “aroma,”
and even “tomorrow.” Ah, the creative advantages of a second language!
Kevin Devine
Tuesday @ Basement
“A flaming Ferris wheel spun
/Where the sun used to be
/I saw a couple making love
/Pushing for abandon
And the answers it can bring
/90 million miles from the graveyard
/Grown over everything.”
Too much? Not the way Kevin Devine sings it,
with a compassionate clarity. Devine knows the way all visions
“dissolve into atmosphere, “ in the narcotic haze of anything,
depending on how it’s used. His current CD, Brother’s Blood,
occasionally ODs on details of writing-times production,
but its more disarmingly intimate confessions should set the tone of this solo show.
JULY 8:
Men
Thursday @ Circus
“People got naked even before we asked, “ Men reported from a recent show.
In the spirit of their parent group, punktronic Le Tigre,
disco-delic Men also “make big plans for a newborn gay creation,”
while musically querying the connection between straight and gay
babymania and insecurity. JD Samson, co-founder of the presently
one woman/two-men Men, challenges her DJ skills with the epic
“Take Back The Night” download (from her MySpace blog).
It’s romantic, though a female voice diagnoses:
“Everything you do/ Has got a hole in it.” Gosh! Is that so wrong, Dr. Diva?
Audrye Sessions
Thursday @ Basement
“The crows came in to watch us die, “ Audrye Sessions’
leader, Ryan Karazija, sadly realizes. But those crows
are blown away by the pulp valentine of “Juliana,”
the next AS live- in-the-studio download on the Daytrotter site.
Karazija exhibits at least as much expressive (or at least vocal) range
as Bono, especially on the best tracks of Audrye Sessions’
self-titled debut album. The most compelling is “Turn Me Off,"
where a traumatized soldier demands oblivion now. Otherwise, K
arazija usually seeks a memory to light his reverie like a shivering Christmas tree.
Adam Franklin
Saturday @ Treehouse
Adam Franklin once steered Britain’s heavy Swervedriver crew
between “shoegaze” and other ‘90s tags. Nowadays, walking the pathways
of his new collection, Spent Bullets, Franklin’s also passing through layers
and particles of encounters and incidents. Pedals and grace notes flicker and fly;
Franklin and his current cohorts, Bolts Of Melody, generate ceaseless,
measured momentum. The tension can settle into settings for Franklin’s musings,
slowly swerving from subtle to vague (and back). His muse/romance object understandably
leaves, thus leading him up to the second half’s expansive, sometimes exhilarating plateau.
It’s truly poetic injustice!
Blastronauts
Monday @ Oldfield’s
Blastronauts are psych-pop multi-instrumentalists, who first
summoned the tribal thunder of Columbus’s Outer Sounds concert series.
Their studio tracks (including early arrivals from the imminent Galileo EP)
are sometimes spare, but never sparse. Beautiful aerial views are assaulted by
robots, governments and mortality, then spin on. The voyager of “Sun’s In Your Eyes “
almost rattles apart with bitterness, yet a harmonic updraft catches him.
Blastronauts bash, clash, mesh and sing through every orbit, including that of a
mentally runaway Ferris wheel. Maybe not always “wisely” (strange critters prophesy), but well.
JULY 15:
Dub Trio
Wed @ Newport
Dub’s the reggae-born spirit of the re-mix, glimpsed in stop-start ricochet echo,
possibly signaling other sounds, in and out of the groove of moods.
The mostly guitar-bass-drums Dub Trio also move through keyboards;
the hollow, disappearing pitch of melodicas, and pedal effects.
There’s a touch of hip-hop, but mostly, their dub attracts metal apparitions.
Live, “Jack Bauer” conducts instrumental interviews: swinging solid objects
, while leaving electrically elusive evidence. They can also sift through
ground-up sounds, building a sand-crib of enriched eeriness.
They just rock it one way, then another.
Unearth
Thursday @ Basement
Of metal vets Unearth’s latest album, The March, vocalist Todd Phipps says,
“We pulled back some of the speed… so we could make the tunes more pummeling.”
Sometimes the pull can be felt, when otherwise-predictably stuttering guitars burst
in and out, especially while Derek Kerswill’s drums bounce foundries through
“We Are Not Anonymous.” Sustained guitar tones initially seem to be digging
postholes for “The Chosen”, but they’re also flinging scorched Unearth,
‘til the bounce is back, for “Letting Go.” The second of two unlisted tracks
sacrifices both fast and slow, for a tasty farewell.
M83
Saturday @ Wex
Saturdays =Youth is a strict title. It also flaunts the focused way
Anthony Gonzalez re-calibrates synthesized essence-of-‘80s-soundtracks,
into cheesy sugar blasts, on the new release from his M83 dream factory.
Now they surround and support actual songs (notes, words, even plots).
Plus, now cheesy sugar blasts can be a relief from actual songs!
Yes, the gift of blessed excess, regurgitating rainbows over barriers of time and taste,
can still make the ‘80s great, or bearable. Hopefully, Gonzalez, only 26, will continue to
unwrap his gift, without falling into a mullet-lined rut.
Elizabeth and the Catapult
Tuesday @ Rumba
Elizabeth Ziman ruefully places herself among over-reaching “Taller Children”
(title track of EATC’s debut album). Then she’s stressing the stressed, continuing the cycle,
as they’re all swept away in traffic. “Rainiest Day of Summer” ‘s lovely pouting turns to
“Laughing…maybe there’s a part of us/That wants to be denied!” A Debussy-loving
piano prodigy, an r & b-schooled young professional, Ziman usually saves herself
from blue romantic goo, with a “Taller…”-to-“Rainiest…” twist of Lennon flava,
and an agile, trio-to-orchestra and back, on her own rippling train of thought (c’mon and ride it).
AUGUST
Jamey Johnson
Sunday 8/2 @ Ohio Expo
:
After eight years in the Marines, Jamey Johnson won and lost in Nashville,
then wrote clean-and-sober hits (plus "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk") for others.
He's learning to see (and get) through the old dualities. So, on Johnson's current album,
That Lonesome Song, his band bounces the sardonic daydream of "Mowin' Down The Roses"
and brushes by the testimonial "High Cost of Livin'," sweetly tempting each.
Also, black-and-white images (mere evidence) lead straight up through a World War II
veteran's history, always lived "In Color,” and still in the present tense.
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