Thao Covers The Clash

Okkervil River at Variety Playhouse, Atlanta, September 21, 2013

I can tell only in the most general of terms which bands are popular and which ones aren't. Friday night, I went to The Variety Playhouse expecting a small crowd for Daughter and was surprised to see the longest line in front of the venue that I can recall.  Last night, I went back to the Playhouse to see the band Okkervil River afraid that the show might have sold out.  Over the years, the band has released at least seven critically acclaimed albums and reportedly have a near cult-like following. I was fearing a sell out but walked into a near-empty theater.

In fact, as soon as I entered the venue, I thought that I might have made a terrible mistake.  This wasn't the place for me, I thought.  The few people who were there, about 40 minutes before show time, were sitting comfortably in the theater seats or at tables set up on the risers.  No one was standing in front of the stage. Worse, the PA system was playing some of the worst "adult contemporary" soft-rock mulch I had ever heard.  Sound Hound couldn't even recognize the songs.  This was all too polite and date-night oriented for me, and besides, there were less than 50 people inside.  Where was the rest of the audience?  I thought about cutting my losses there and then, despite the ticket price ($22.50), despite the cost of parking ($7), and just turning around and leaving, but wisely, as it turns out, instead I just took a seat (first riser, right) and waited to see what happened, suffering through that awful background music.

What happened was people slowly trickled in, and eventually, with about 10 minutes left before show time, a group of about 6 or 8 people walked up to the stage.  I joined them, and several more followed.  Finally, the opener, Torres, took the stage, and invited more to come down from their seats and join us by the stage.     

     

Torres is Nashville's Mackenzie Scott and her band.  I really didn't know anything about her before the show, other than she had been tapped by Daughter to join them on the upcoming UK leg of their current tour.  She plays raw, primal indie rock, accompanying her fierce voice with a biting electric guitar.  Don't be misled by the video below - even though she hands off the guitar solo near the end, she did plenty of shredding herself on the Playhouse stage last night.  The audience, which was slowly growing in numbers, was spellbound, and you could have heard a pin drop between songs.  Scott even mentioned that she appreciated the attentiveness, but that it was also a little unnerving.

This is really great stuff.  Pitchfork gave her debut album a good review, rating it an 8.1, but she's even better live for the very qualities that Pitchfork was praising (the controlled aggression, the apparent fearlessness, and the quality of that voice).  She actually would compliment Daughter very well on tour - they made a wise choice selecting her for their upcoming UK dates.

Bonus points:  Scott's parents were in the Variety Playhouse audience.  

It seemed like the place was filling up, although I could no longer tell for sure, as I was now right at the center edge of the stage, buried deep in the surrounding crowd.  But the energy level had picked up significantly, and it seemed as if the audience had grown proportionally.  

Okkervil River took the stage a little before 10:00 pm.  What a terrific show!  Will Sheff led the band in a high-energy set of anthemic indie-rock songs, drawing from their extensive catalog.  Highlights, and they're almost too numerous to mention, at least for me included a haunting, stripped-down version of Kansas City from 2002's Don't Fall In Love With Everyone You See, and a rousing Lost Coastlines with an enthusiastic audience sing along, which closed the set after 75 minutes before the three-song encore.

There was so much to like about this show.  The six- to seven-member band included a second guitar, keyboards, bass, drums, and a multi-instrumentalist providing violin, trumpet, trombone, or whatever the song called for, and they backed Sheff with as much showmanship and enthusiasm as he exhibited. The sound quality was great, and from my position near the front of the stage, I could even hear the sounds of the different instruments coming from different directions. 

The band is touring behind their newest album, The Silver Gymnasium, a collection of songs reminiscing about Sheff's childhood home of Meriden, New Hampshire.  The new material fit seamlessly into the set with the older songs, including It Was My Season and On A Balcony which opened the set, and Walking Without Frankie, which kicked off the encore.  In all, the band worked almost all of the songs from the new album into the set list, without that awkward moment of losing the audience's attention until an old, familiar song was played (see The Head and The Heart).

By the end of the set, the audience had packed the area in front of the stage, and any memories of my initial impression of a sedentary crowd listening to adult-contemporary songs had long since vanished.   

This was my first time seeing Okkervil River (as well as Torres), but I can guarantee you I will not miss a chance to see them (or Torres) again.

Daughter at Variety Playhouse, Atlanta, September 20, 2013

I can tell only in the most general of terms which bands are popular and which ones aren't.  I listen to music more or less in a vacuum and respond to those bands whose sound I enjoy and ignore those that I don't, but don't have much of a peer group around me to tell me who I should be listening to and who I shouldn't.  As a result, I'm not the best judge of which shows are going to attract a large audience and which shows are going to have a sparse turnout, other than by the size of the venue and the hype of the promoter.  I'm often surprised to find only a handful of people at shows I thought would sell out, and equally surprised to see capacity crowds for bands I imagined that only I would enjoy.  Last night was an instance of the latter. 

When I saw that the fine English indie-rock band Daughter would be playing at Variety Playhouse, a medium-capacity venue, it was the first I knew that at least someone considered them more popular than, say, Austra, who played last week at the far smaller Earl.  But I couldn't imagine that Daughter's melancholy, down-tempo songs would attract all that large of an audience, so I didn't buy tickets in advance and only showed up at the box office about 15 minutes after the doors had opened.

I was surprised to see a line in front of the Playhouse that extended well past the adjacent Elmyr restaurant and far down the block, one of the longest lines I've seen in front of the Variety Playhouse.  I was easily able to buy a ticket (the line was for entry and not for purchase), but by the time I finally got inside, my preferred, usual spot in Variety Playhouse - first riser, right-hand side - was taken.  No problem, I found a suitable spot at the first riser, left-had side, but my first surprise of the night was how large a crowd Daughter had attracted for their first Atlanta appearance. 

My second surprise was that much of  the audience had apparently come for the opening act, another London band, a folk-rock ensemble called Bear's Den.  I had never heard of Bear's Den, but they had apparently played last week at the huge Mumford & Sons concert held in Centennial Park, arguably Atlanta's largest venue (Piedmont Park, where Music Midtown is going down this weekend, could make an equally legitimate claim as the city's largest venue).  Even the band seemed surprised by their enthusiastic reception, and the audience's quiet attentiveness while the songs were played. 

My guess is that Bear's Den must really have nailed it at the Mumfords' show, whom they sound quite like in many respects, although the NY Times Magazine notes that they've built up a cult-like following on both sides of the Atlantic with their relentless touring over the past year.  

The audience was predominantly quite young, even by rock concert standards - kids these days certainly do love their folk rock - but I was encouraged to see quite a few older folks as well, until I realized that they were mostly all there as chaperons for their younger charges.  In any event, the young audience seemed to really eat up every note of Bear's Den music, which actually was quite good, a sort of stripped-down version (they're a trio) of Mumford & Sons without the cloying over-earnestness of the latter. Further, the band appeared not only to be genuinely touched by their reception, but also to be a genuinely nice, sincere group of guys.

Bear's Dan are supporting Daughter on their North American tour, and the audience stayed for the headliner and gave them the same unconditional approval and attention as they had for Bear's Den.  The crowd was as quiet for both bands as I've heard at a rock show in quite a while, which was fortunate as Daughter's music alternates between loud and quieter, more intimate passages.    

I've been listening to Daughter for about a year now and think very highly of them, but was still pleasantly surprised to hear how much fuller their live sound was compared to the more bare, almost minimalistic approach of their recordings. Guitarist Igor Haefeli added many lovely orchestral flourishes to singer Elena Tonra's songs, often bowing his electric guitar to sonic effect. Normally, the difference in sound between the recordings of a favorite band and their live performance causes consternation not jubilation, but one could not help but appreciate Daughter's live sound, which lies somewhere between The xx and The Sundays at their prime.    

Dave seems to have really liked them, and was he hitting on Elena at the end?  Creepy.

Elena's sweet, almost shy, stage presence was a welcome relief to Daughter's lyrical material, which typically involves dark subject matter and a gloomy, pessimistic view on life ("This one's really depressing," Elena announced - or warned - before one song).  It seemed to take her a while to warm up to the audience, but as she gained her confidence bantering back and forth a little, she emerged as a somewhat introverted but gifted performer, genuinely glad to be playing the music she loves to an appreciative crowd. This was refreshing coming as it does from a singer who declares "I want you so much but I hate your guts" in her song Landfill.  

This was truly great stuff and Daughter played as fine a set as I've heard in a while, and I've heard a lot of sets (over 75 by my count) since Labor Day weekend.  This is a really great band, and the exciting thing is they're just getting started.  Headlining the Variety Playhouse is not a bad way to make your first appearance in Atlanta.  

The band closed their nearly hour-long set with an encore cover of Daft Punk's Get Lucky.

The rain is pouring down today - the first rain I've encountered in Atlanta since coming back from the Northwest - which must be wreaking havoc on Music Midtown.  Poor Atlanta - first, it rains non-stop during its inaugeral Shaky Knees festival last spring, and now it rains during its signature Music Midtown.  The irony that it rained only one out of ten days in the Pacific Northwest during Bumbershoot and MFNW is not lost on me. In any event, it doesn't look like appropriate weather for today's East Atlanta Strut either, so it looks like I get to relax today, watch some football, and catch up on missed episodes of Sons of Anarchy. 

Black Prairie Redux (with some dude singing)

So is this Colin Meloy backed by most of Black Prairie and featuring Laura Veirs, or is this Black Prairie with Meloy and Veirs, or is this The Decemberists with Veirs, or does this even matter? 

The Newport Folk Festival, July 2013.

Charles Bradley at Bumbershoot

Charles Bradley at Bumbershoot, Aug. 31, 2013 

Dude, I was there!  Charles Bradley and His Extraordinaires at the KEXP Bumbershoot Music Lounge, August 31, 2013.

Black Prairie - Eddie's Attic, Decatur, Georgia, 9/17/13

Black Prairie is a six-piece bluegrass and Americana-influenced band from Portland, Oregon, consisting of four-fifths of The Decemberists (basically, The Decemberists without frontman Colin Meloy), plus violinist and singer Annalisa Tornfelt of the bands Bearfoot and The Woolwines and guitarist Jon Neufeld of Dolorean and Jackstraw.  Last night, they played at Decatur, Georgia's Eddie's Attic.

It was a wonderful, almost magical, performance.  Between their bluegrass sound, their Balkan-influenced, gypsy instrumentals, and heartfelt songs, they were consistently innovative and surprising, even after accordionist Jenny Conlee revealed the set's blueprint early in the show by announcing that they would be playing fast songs followed by slow songs.

Highlights, and there were many, include Annalisa's performances on a Romanian Stroh violin, a violin that amplifies its sound through a metal horn rather than a wooden sound box as on a standard violin, and multi-instrumentalist Chris Funk's contributions on banjo and dobro.  Jenny Conlee was a warm and captivating performer, as always.   

Here's a relatively recent performance that captures their sound pretty well:

And since Annalisa said the video shot by the Skidmore Fountain with passing trains was her favorite, here that is as well:

Like many bands, they included an ironic cover in their set, performing Kansas' Carry On Wayward Son as their encore closer, with Annalisa belting out the sustained high notes at the end in show-stopping fashion. 

It's hard for me to accept, but despite all the time I spent in Portland back in '07 and '08, and despite attending three consecutive MFNWs in Portland between 2011 and 2013 and three Bumbershoots in Seattle the same years, I still haven't seen The Decemberists perform live.  Seeing four-fifths of the band last night was pretty damn close, and early this month during Day Two of MFNW, I saw Decemberist and Black Prairie drummer John Moen playing guitar and singing as the co-frontman of the new band Eyelids.  

Decemberist frontman Colin Meloy is on tour and will be playing Variety Playhouse in November - seeing him play then, in addition to my Black Prairie experience, may qualify as finally having seen The Decemberists, even if not altogether at once. 

Dude, I Was There!