The Winter Doldrums have finally passed and the 2013 concert season has kicked off with as fine a show as one could hope for a season opener. The show was held in East Atlanta Village's 529, which for some reason has replaced the wall that had been torn down during the Om/Daniel Higgs show. I was anxious to see how the club would expand into the new space, but was surprised to instead see the old wall back up.
The evening's headliner was new Atlanta band Iron Jayne, but the star of the evening was Lonesome Leash, the solo project of Dark Dark Dark's Walt McClements. Spirit Temple opened with a revelatory set, and Atlanta's Cousin Dan provided retro DJ sets as "Moreland Brando" between each act (I hadn't heard Patty Smith's Gloria in years, and I especially enjoyed his segue from Bowie's Fame to Destroyer's Kaputt).
The opener was Atlanta's Spirit Temple, Walter Fox's very enjoyable and interesting one-man band. Performing in silhouette behind a screen, he looped guitar, recorder, and percussion to build beautiful sonic soundscapes.
While he played, various abstract video images were projected onto the screen, apparently by members of Atlanta electronic duo Featureless Ghost. That's Emily Kempf (see below) in front of the screen in the picture above.
Spirit Temple sounded at times like Frippertronic-period Robert Fripp, and at other times a little like Owen Pallett. Near the end of the set, when he overlayed bells, drums, and flute over a bass-like guitar line, he even evoked the spirit of Pharaoh Sander's Upper Egypt.
Walt McClements' Lonesome Leash is another, slightly more traditional, one-man band. Walt primarily sings and plays accordion, while simultaneously playing a small drum kit and occasionally adding flourishes of trumpet. The resulting output has a somewhat gypsy-flavored, Slavic sound, and Walt's songs generally build up in intensity to an emotional climax before cooling back off to the conclusion, much like a jazz soloist. A native of New Orleans, McClements brings some of the Crescent City's eclecticism to Lonesome Leash's music.
His set included the rousing Feeding Frenzy as the second song in his set, and closed with Ghosts, played without the drum machine he usually uses for the song, as it reportedly broke during his recent performance with Franz Nicolay at Brooklyn's The Sycamore. Undaunted, he still managed a terrific and emotive performance which was well received by the appreciative audience.
Lonesome Leash was the reason I came to this show (that and nearly two months of Winter Doldrums), but the evening had still more in store for us. The evening's headliner was Emily Kempf's new band, Iron Jayne. Kempf, formerly of Atlanta's The Back Pockets, has stripped away not only the theatrics and audience participation of The Back Pockets, but also turned away from the freak-folk sound that characterized the former art-damaged band for a more straight-forward pop rock. Gone are the violins and horns and other odd instruments, and in their place the band consists of Kempf on keyboards, Garrett Goss on drums, Ryan Odom on guitar, and Chad LeBlanc on bass. Kempf's vocals are still simultaneously quirky and appealing, especially when she came out from behind the keyboards and sang at the front of the stage.
The band has gone through a few personnel changes since forming last August, and this was the first performance by this line-up of Iron Jayne. At one point near the end of the set, Kempf declared, "Alright, now we're really a band." The set was surprisingly short, probably because they don't have all that many songs yet, but still conveyed a sense of potential greatness for this new band.
Iron Jayne's next performance will be back at 529 on February 7, when they will be opening for U.S. Girls.
This was my first show since the Of Monsters and Men concert at The Tabernacle back on November 29. The Winter Doldrums were cold and long, and I'm glad they seem to finally be over. On the other hand, between the lush ambiance of Spirit Temple, the rousing folk polka of Lonesome Leash, the assertive rock of Iron Jayne, and Cousin Dan's nostalgic DJ set, I couldn't ask for a better return to the Atlanta music scene.
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