By Don Allred
September shows:
Great Big Sea
Wednesday @ Southern Theatre
Great Big Sea hails from Newfoundland, with full-sail harmonies
that don’t detract from the gnarly details of their traditional and original ballads
. On GBS’s current album, Fortune’s Favor, Alan Doyle and co-writer
Russell Crowe raise their mugs for the iconoclastic cult figure Bill Hicks,
celebrating “A Company Of Fools.” In “Hard Case,” a siren gets a booty call:
”Hold me down, under the sea, drag me back to where we used to be.”
Folkwise, especially live, they can lead us through the reeling shadows,
hungering around those old choruses.
Eric Sardinas and Big Motor
Saturday @ Crave
Live, Eric Sardinas can groove like a comet rider, and Eric Sardinas and Big Motor
is his best studio set, sporting mostly original songs, plus Tony Joe White’s smoldering
“As The Crow Flies,” and Dennis Linde’s “Burning Love” (yep, the Elvis hit, but it fits)
. B-b-b-aaaad scootah posturing has been outrun (but not run over) by thoughtful
self-assertion. This, plus arrangements cross-wiring the leader’s voice, guitar and
dobro, Big Motor’s bass and drums, and guests on incisive keyboards and backing
vocals, adds up to Southern Rock with contemporary country appeal, fresh flash,
and blues to go.
Bell X1
Monday @Milo
If Bell X1 were English, their brand of sensitive pop-rock would be emitted
by pathetic short-pants with noses pressed against the pane, watching
Mummy drive away (in the rain). But they’re Irish, and long ago,
they learned to live without original frontman Dodi Ma,
AKA singer-songwriter Damien Rice. These restless underdogs
do smell soggy sometimes, but they can dig up diverting, even s
tartling lines, delivered with rueful charm and skill--which may be why
Flock, just released in the U.S., is already quintuple platinum in Ireland (
everybody must have five copies!)
Deadmau5
Tuesday @BOMA
Canadian DJ Deadmau5 is hot on the charts, in the clubs, and
won a Juno Award for Producer Of The Year. He’s also helped elevate WTF? (sic)
from a Tommy Lee vanity project to a listenable band. Touring with WTF?
has whetted his chops for promoting his own Random Album Title.
Here, hits like “Not Exactly” meet new tracks like “Slip,” in which a
pprehension and anticipation shade into hints of romantic payoff, soon to
ignite the night like the beats of Deadmau5’s giant red strobe-light eyes:
eternally aimed to see and keep you dancing.
October:
The Blind Boys of Alabama
Wednesday @ Ohio Theatre
In recent years, the Blind Boys of Alabama have astutely aimed their
dramatic gospel harmonies through songs by Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, and
the Rolling Stones. Their eerie version of “Amazing Grace” sounds like
“House Of The Rising Sun,” a line from which is the title of their new CD,
Down In New Orleans. Here they adapt to New Orleans syncopation, and vice versa.
Allen Toussaint and The Hot 8 Brass Band contribute; likewise
The Preservation Hall Jazz Band, who will also perform with the BBOA
at the Ohio Theatre.
Pinback
Thursday @ Milo
San Diego’s Pinback are basically two vocalists and mult-instrumentalists,
Zach Smith and Rob Crow, currently touring with Braden Diotte, Erik Hoversten,
and Chris Prescott, who was one of the double drummers on Pinback’s 2007 album,
Autumn of the Seraphs. Pinback meshes and mashes short, sometimes catchy phrases,
tunneling through (and adding to) the familiar, fried musical density of Southern California.
“Please break the pattern, “ they ask, while caught in the sweet and sour mysteries of life,
“the question banging around the center of the one,” but Pinback can keep it bangin’.
Au
Saturday @ Milo
Right, that’s “Au”, which they rhyme with “Hey you,” and it fits with the
engaging sound of this tight collective’s recent album, Verbs. Au isn’t
bombastic about it though, even when gathering a twenty-voice chorus f
or the opening track. Luke Wyland’s discreet guidance suggests the
well-digested influence of Van Dyke Parks’ fleet-to-trippy, classically gassed
work with the Beach Boys. So, there’s always a pop connection to keep thing
s near the point and the source (“au” means “of” in French, doesn’t it?).
Instrumentally and vocally, they’d make a great wedding band. Oh, waiter!
Sole and the Skyrider Band
Monday @ Café Bourbon
Sole is a rapper who’s been around for a while, and now he’s
collaborating with the versatile three-man Skyrider Band.
This team’s self-titled debut finds its own beat in tidal patterns.
Waves of words and charred chamber music suggest lost scenes
of the last samurai, chopping his way through a worldwide junkyard.
Sole rails against media manipulation, but “I love words,
like Cortez loved the mayhem!” He’s no fan of death scenes though,
perhaps because “In paradise—there you are forced to enjoy yourself!”
The Spinto Band
Wednesday @ Skully's
The Spinto Band's name was allegedly inspired by lead singer Nick
Krill's discovery of his grandfather Roy Spinto's verses in a
Crackerjack box. Krill writes his own words now, and, despite the
Spinto Band's Daytrotter Sessions performance of a scene from
Gremlins 2, and the way their Moonwink CD sometimes sounds like a
kiddie record speeding up, the songs have grown into an accomplished
adolescent's obsessive relationships, not least with the mirror. Lots
of dizzy cool, especially in "Carnival," though words can blur, as
Fancy Pants gets chased by rockers!
Atmosphere
Wednesday @ Newport
Atmosphere's latest offering, When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That
Sh** Gold, has hip-hop's poise, but not its expected swagger.
Although there's the way a lost daddy feels after finding "The
Waitress" every day: "Her threats rejuvenate my breath!" Pungent
scenes of work and play get shuffled and dealt, by Slug's rapping and
singing, Ant's small band and mixing. The little girl who rides "In
Her Music Box" tunes out parental fighting, by tuning into the sweeter
sounds of gangsta rap. She's living up to the album's title, just by
living on.
Magnetic Fields
Friday @ Southern Theatre
When Magnetic Fields' Stephin Merritt announced that MF's 69 Love
Songs celebrated every glory of pop, except "heavy rock," because
that was kid stuff, we knew he'd rock out too, someday. On
Distortion, Wilde-child Merritt provides firecrackers for dancers,
peppers for drinkers, tattoos for "A Nun's Litany," valentines for
"Zombie Boy," and sizzling halos for his fellow crooners,
recording/touring guest Shirley Simms, plus mainstay Claudia Gonson.
Gonson also plays drums and keyboards — but no synthesizers. Prepare
for organic noise, including electric cello and guitar, while groaning
along to "Too Drunk To Dream.”
Lotus
Tuesday @ Skully's
Stirring in more ingredients can fatally thicken most jam bands'
grooves, yet Lotus's two-CD concert album, Escaping Sargasso Sea, was
a daring departure. The new Hammerstrike brings ten
studio-recorded songs (mostly instrumentals), totalling fifty minutes,
but two lines of development find plenty of room. From the beginning,
macho-lyrical wide-screen rockers roll around "Behind Midwestern
Stores," while sci-fi minority reports funk-warp the "Age of
Inexperience." These tendencies eventually have mighty babies,
including the insatiably orbiting blues pump of "Alkaline," and the
mutant mirage pop rattle of "Turquoise" and "Disappear In A Blood Red
Sky."
Nov.Love Willows
Sunday @ Skully’s
The Love Willows are Ryan Wilson and Hope Partlow, who scored
her first music biz deal in 2002, when she was fourteen.
This Virgin Records contract was cancelled two months
after her industriously engaging debut album, Who We Are,
finally emerged in 2005. The Love Willows' Hey! Hey! release
is still TBA, but their "Falling Faster" single, posted excerpts
and videos further nurture Partlow's ever-budding saga, with tight,
bright, empathetically anxious, classic-pop/new wave beauty.
The recording duo built a full-band studio sound, and now tour
with three more players.
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