Illustration by Peter Newell from Carolyn Wells' Mother Goose's Menagerie, 1901
Like other non-traditional music venues I've known, the Kilby Court draws an unpredictable crowd, both in size and composition. I've seen a show there where a capacity crowd has left en masse after the local opener and before a well-known headliner. I've been to shows there where a huge crowd inexplicably showed up on a weeknight to see a fairly new band, and I've been to shows there where the band outnumbered the audience. Friday night, New York's Ezra Furman & the Harpoons and Brighton, UK's BrakesBrakesBrakes played a pretty great show to a mostly empty room - it's too bad, but that's how these things go.
I didn't get there in time to see the other opener, Florida songwriter Rachel Goodrich, but Ezra Furman & the Harpoons was the band I was actually most excited to see. Furman has released two great albums for Minty Fresh, and he comes across as a great-songwriter-in-training. Comparisons to Dylan often come up in articles about Furman, which isn't really fair, but it's a comparison he openly invites with his songwriting and his adenoidal singing style. He wears his other influences on his sleeves as well, and it's easy to hear homage to artists from Springsteen to Neutral Milk Hotel in his songs. But the songs themselves are great in spite of their transparent influences and heart-on-sleeve lyrics, and his band played a great set with highlights from both of his albums. Furman complained that the change in elevation was messing with his voice, but he blazed through some pretty lively versions of favorites like "The Stakes Are High" and "The Worm in the Apple".
Ezra Furman & the Harpoons
The headliners of the show, BrakesBrakesBrakes, is part of a UK music scene that doesn't get a lot of coverage in US music press. You hear a little about British Sea Power and the Electric Soft Parade, but only filtered through the UK indie press (where "indie" has a very different meaning than it does Stateside). Initially a songwriting project of Eamon Hamilton (and initially called Brakes before a US legal conflict forced the band to put their name in triplicate), BrakesBrakesBrakes has evolved into something of a dynamic, if hard to pin down, rock band. Live, their sound is as slippery as it is on record, sliding from an arena-rock Beatnik Filmstars on the more "indie-rock" numbers to Clinic-gone-country on the acoustic songs.
BrakesBrakesBrakes
It's all good fun, though, and their setlist equally covered all three of their albums, opening with the stomping "All Night Disco Party" from their 2005 debut. They played a lot of bouncy upbeat numbers like "Ring a Ding Ding", "Spring Chicken", and "Hey Hey" - the highlight of the set was probably a blazing version of "Don’t Take Me To Space (Man)" from their latest studio release, Touchdown. They rounded out the set with some folkier songs like "On Your Side" and "NY Pie", one of my favorites from their first record. They seemed to be in good spirits as well, in spite of the low turnout.
I can't help but feel a little uncomfortable at under-attended shows, knowing that the band is probably disappointed. There's nothing I can do to make their experience more pleasant in any meaningful way, even if I'm enjoying it as much as I can. Both bands I saw on Friday seemed to take it in stride and with good humor, though, so I was able to loosen up and just enjoy the music. I'm not sure either band will come back this way again, so I'm glad I got a chance to see them - check them out if they're playing a show in your area.
"NY Pie" by BrakesBrakesBrakes
0 comments:
Post a Comment