4Play (Oct 2010)

 By Don Allred

OCT. 7:

Drive-By Truckers

Wednesday @ Newport Music Hall

The Big To-Do is one of the best-played, best-sung, best-recorded, best-written Drive-By Truckers albums ever. Pretty much in that order, to the credit of this self-described ”lyrics-driven” band. The music crashes through “clouds that took Daddy up to Heaven” like angry, daredevil spirits, before discreetly sniffing sleazy, eerie evidence of real life’s solved crimes and lingering mysteries. Young bassist-singer (and sometimes songwriter) Shonna Tucker’s country/Motown/British Invasion-fueled delivery unstoppably testifies, further sparking the catchy crackle of unexpectedly fresh perspectives on known zones of strange weather.

Swans with Baby Dee

Wednesday @Outland

“The only way to begin/Is to reel the first liar in,”  declares ancient art-rock cave painter Michael Gira, stepping into new coiling sounds. Thus freed, seeker summons fellow faithful to  My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky.  It’s carefully wired: bludgeons are applied only when necessary. Meanwhile, transgendered Baby Dee’s transportation-savvy voice comfortably hovers and intriguingly ricochets around her harp and piano, building boldly hopeful ballads, on Songs For Ann Marie.  Dee’s range is more idiosyncratic live, sometimes including bawdy, possibly improvised verses, evolving into sing-along choruses.

Slayer/Megadeth/Anthrax

Sunday @ The LC Pavilion

The subliminal polka beats of Slayer’s current World Painted Blood make juicy DNA with somehow-swinging staccato, and even a breath of hip-hop. Give it up for drummer Dave Lombardo, who also drove Slayer’s sinfully syncretic Seasons In The Abyss,  which the thrash metal prophets now present live, in its entirety. Megadeth do the same for their equally iconoclastically iconic Rust In Peace, with David Ellefson back on bass. Anthrax’s career-spanning set may include songs from their forthcoming album; either way, we get recurring lead throat Joey Belladona.

Women

 Tuesday @ Skully’s

Women are guys. Furthermore, when perky sounds go for a stroll with nightmare noise, their whole approach might initially seem too gimmicky. But on Public Strain, Women can lure even unsympathetic ears and guarded hearts down the garden path of unlikely grooves, until it’s time to go public enough with succinctly melodic memories of lost love. Then the shredding spin and persistent post-punk bounce of “Drag Open” pursue missing beauty again, getting enough secret response to charge the randomly flooded, resplendently rippling stairway of “Eyesore.” Getting there is its own story.

OCT. 13:

Pierced Arrows

Thursday @ The Summit

Along with the other suspects forcibly re-named Lollipop Shoppe, Fred Cole conjured “You Must Be a Witch,”  a ‘60s garage classic, and even a hit. Such music biz vindication didn’t impress guitarist Fred or his bassist wife Toody, who orbited indie rock’s Dead Moon for 20 years, before Pierced Arrows. Fred’s voice can pierce any sound system (or lack thereof). Both of the Coles project psychedelic soul over and through their fractured feedback, buzzing surveillance, Kelly Halliburton’s flying saucer cymbals, and the marching sway of melodies, always ready for more.

Olof Arnalds with Cheyenne Marie Mize

Friday @ The Wexner Center

Icelandic singer/songwriter Olof Arnalds gently nudges folk-shaded nostalgia toward fresh fascination, unmistakable in several languages.  She’s at home covering tropicalia truthmonger Caetano Veloso’s ” Maria Bethania,” a tribute to his equally restless sister, and while slipping through Springsteen’s “I’m On Fire.”  Cheyenne Marie Mize nurtures lines like “I knew we would see/It was all for the best”, in a post-Americana ghost town of explosive implications. She also grows narrative from repetition, like Willie Nelson on a good night. That’s where the resemblance ends, fortunately.

Will Hoge

Friday @ The Basement

In  2008,  rocker Will Hoge crashed his motorcycle. Actually, it was a scooter, not a Harley hog, and he was heading home, not going wild. Such details evidently aid Hoge in adjusting his mirror, while wheeling through 2009’s The Wreckage. The title track turns his serious accident’s impact into “The cheap dime store perfume/Never really washes off/Makes me want to call you up again.” That’s serious too. Hoge’s shrewd studies of Seger, Petty. and the Eagles also inform his new set of unplugged remodels, The Living Room Sessions.

Doc Watson

Friday @ The Midland Theatre

Originally a banjo player, Doc Watson brings a percussive, dancing quality to his flat-picking guitar style, especially when adapting traditional fiddle tunes and blues. Rockabilly, pop, and country got the Watson treatment in the 50s, and another intended whirl on 1995’s Docabilly. 1999‘s Groovegrass 101 found him (and Bootsy Collins) rolling with the Groovegrass Boyz.  2009’s Live At The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival tracks the 86-year-old guitarist/vocalist through the droll “Frankie and Johnny,” the eerie “In the Pines,” and several levels of  “Sittin’ on Top of the World.”  In tonight’s show, tagged “Home To Our Mountains,“ he performs with guitarist Richard Watson and multi-instrumentalist David Holt.

More by yrs. truly re GrooveGrassin’ with Doc & B-B-Bootsy: https://myvil.blogspot.com/2005/12/groovegrass-boyz.html

OCT. 20:

Marshall Chapman

Friday @ The Wexner Center

Despite the sudden death of intended collaborator Tim Krekel---early NRBQ associate, contributor to oft-revelatory Clash trib The Sandinista! Project, much more---rock-country premonition Marshall Chapman’s Big Lonesome rolls on, through sensuous shades of blue. They Came to Nashville, Chapman’s new book of conversations with fellow pilgrims, led her to complete “Riding with Willie”: “Bobbie and Willie play music all night/Sister and brother/Beautiful sight/Songs long forgotten come to light/That’s the way I like it.”  Despite Wexner’s listing, this free solo show delivers both songs and stories, according to Marshall’s sworn deputies.

Gram Rabbit

Friday @ The Rumba Cafe

Gram Rabbit’s secretly spooky name mixes the creatively cremated ashes of their Joshua Tree neighbor, prodigal Americana prodigy Gram Parsons, with the sizzling signature of ruling chanteuse Jessica Von Rabbit. GR’s occasional desert ballads increasingly get abducted by rocking space-disco and electro-pop. Von Rabbit’s an “Alice In Wonderland”-worthy queen in concert, commanding all swaying subjects, “Get off with your head. “ Still, an onstage rebel often keeps his long-eared cranium in place, when not spinning pugilistic paws. A furry Marie Antoinette may materialize, and this show’s definitely free.

Black Prairie

Saturday @ Kobo

Three roving Decemberists come ashore for Black Prairie’s Feast of the Harvest Moon. The sly slide of Chris Funk’s dobro, the discreet persistence of Nate Query’s bass, and the bold speculation of Jenny Conlee’s accordion now travel with the finger-picking guitar accents of Jon Neufeld, plus the violin and vocal nuances of Annalisa Tornfelt. Amidst a campfire kaleidoscope of Anglo-American, gypsy, and tango-encountering instrumentals, Tornfelt channels adaptive aftershock on “Red Rocking Chair,” rueful resolution on “Single Mistake.”  seductive candor on “Crooked Little Heart,”  and  “Blackest Crow” ‘s  subtle, eerie bliss.Shad

Monday @ Skully’s

On TSOL, Kenya-born, multilingual  journeyman Canadian rapper Shad unpretentiously slides orchestral perspectives and vocal samples through the strata of his world view, while grappling with temptations of feel-good lip service and reductive melodrama, always waiting in easily found sounds. Shad’s no radical, but he expertly veers through  thorny, atmospheric gardens, applying fresh pressure to traditional script-flipping:  “When Abraham went to slash Isaac/In a sense he baptized him/Rabbi said, ‘Don’t trust them cash prizes /The same thing that floats your boat can capsize it.’ Shad also courageously considers resourceful women.

OCT. 27:

Kurt Vile & Friends

Wednesday @ Skully’s

 Kurt Vile’s 12-string guitar rhythms and shrewdly elliptical lyrics navigate psych/folk-rock harmonics, re-carving gravity’s clouds. He’s ready for “Invisibility: Nonexistent” and “Ocean City,” leaving a note that begins,“You’ve got a best friend/Don’t know how.”  Currently backed by the Violators, Vile’s  intriguingly compatible with succinctly volatile punk combo Soft Pack, whose theme song is “Answer To Yourself.”  He’s equally at home with Purling Hiss, judging by their Public Service Announcement. It’s a beer can of microcosmic jams, rolling through high school gymnasium echoes.

GWAR

Wednesday @ Newport Music Hall

 Mortal foolishness provides eternal inspiration, as the gut-wrenching gospel of “Sick and Twisted” heretically heralds the approaching album apocalypse, Bloody Pit of Horror, by GWAR.  Also, advancing track “Zombies, March” challenges tempo-shifting, time-charring chariots of desire, accelerating “A Gathering of Ghouls” and “Storm Is Coming” into the expert, heartfelt meltdown of ironclad irony.

Marty Stuart

Friday @ The Midland Theatre

As Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, Marty Stuart found himself dancing and singing on the tracks by his favorite abandoned Philadelphia, Mississippi depot, then jumping out of the way of a real-life inspiration for his current album, Ghost Train. Here, traditional country artist Stuart usually responds with agility to ruined reputations, spooky relationships, washed-out bridges, and dubious career choices. Tonight’s show includes Stuart’s usual studio/stage support: ace guitarist Kenny Vaughan, plus the bass, drums, and voices of Harry Stinson and Paul Martin.

Eternal Summers

Tuesday @ The Summit

Eternal Summers’  Nicole Yun sounds perfectly serious when she sings, “I need a disciplinarian,”  as the melody freely grows notes around the last word’s syllables. Guitarist Yun and drummer Daniel Cunliff conjure canny confidence: “Nothing to fear/Only money.” On Silver, immediately diverting post-punk ventures often prove smooth and porous, grand and stealthy. When Yun wonders what she can take from you for her caravan, she’s faithfully studying strangely shared dreams. Maybe that’s why even the epic tease of “Bully In Disguise” somehow satisfies.