A fun weekend of music here. This review will appear (in truncated
form) in tomorrow's paper:
POP REVIEW
Joe Henry with Oh Susanna
at The Rivoli on Friday
and Smog with Picastro
at Barcode on Saturday
CARL WILSON
The Globe and Mail, Toronto
The variations to be rung on the singer-songwriter bar gig can often
seem quite limited: the singer with acoustic guitar, the singer with
electric guitar, the singer with a band. But when the minutiae of the
trade are attended to, a clever performer can make the form seem
infinite.
Take two consecutive shows in Toronto this past weekend. Both
North Carolina-born, Los Angeles-resident Joe Henry (incidentally
Madonna's brother-in-law) and Chicago-based Bill Callahan (who goes by
the sobriquet Smog) are 30-something veterans of the musical margins.
Both have gained cult followings for their acoustic-based
singer-songwriter stylings and poetic, depressive lyrics.
What's more, with Henry's new album Fuse and Smog's Knock Knock,
both have recently reinvented themselves, turning to bigger rhythms,
band arrangements and upbeat tunes. But what that meant to each one,
live, was vastly different. Consider:
Opening Acts: In keeping with the country-tinged sound of Henry's
older albums, he was preceded by Toronto singer Oh Susanna, who might
be called an Emmylou Harris for the uptight and undemanding listener.
Suiting Callahan's hipper-than-hip indie-rock berth, his opener was
artful local band Picastro. The trio features acoustic and electric
guitars and cello (and some piano), blending experimental chamber
music with attitude-heavy vocals evoking a low-energy P.J. Harvey.
Unfortunately, except bursts of inspired guitar noise, the songs
blended into one over-intellectualized drone.
Lights, Costumes, Action: Henry gave Friday night's crowd at the
Rivoli a reborn rock'n'roll frontman, decked out in suit and pink tie,
taking the spotlight with a slick, five-piece band. Concentrating on
Fuse and his previous album, Trampoline, Henry charmed the crowd like
a classic movie idol, with occasional flashes of desperation _
bringing one hand to the side of his mouth and leaning into the
microphone as if confiding a secret.
At the Barcode on Saturday, Callahan stood in jeans and casual
shirt in near-darkness, half-turning his tall, skinny frame from the
crowd, absorbed in his own creations. The black humour of a song like
No Dancing ("There's always some turtle snapping in my head/ Saying,
you can't just waltz in here, acting like nothing is wrong") was
played deadpan. The stance could be off-putting, but Callahan has the
charisma to carry it off, like a tranquilized tiger you keep watching
to see if he'll ever spring.
Band Alchemy: Callahan's drummer-pianist and second guitarist (from
compatriot bands Guvner and the Silver Jews) kept the textures subtle,
the flourishes rare but unexpectedly pretty. The pulse kept the focus
squarely on Smog's oddball tunes. By contrast Henry's group rocked the
joint with a sound strangely reminiscent of early-1980s pop. (One
piece sounded eerily like a Simple Minds song.)
Bassist Jennifer Condos was the singer's equal in sex appeal, with
a powerhouse-blonde look somewhere between Sonic Youth bassist Kim
Gordon and screen goddess Gena Rowlands (with perhaps a touch of
Henry's famous sister-in-law), and an intimate, kinetic approach to
her instrument.
The overall sound bore the traces of Daniel Lanois's studio work on
Fuse; one audience member compared it to Bob Dylan's Lanois-produced
Time Out of Mind. But the drums and bass were overwhelming in the mix,
smothering the emotional range of Henry's songs. You wished he'd shoo
the rock band away, at least for awhile.
Encore Etiquette: In their different ways, each singer won his
audience's love and left the stage to cheers and stomps. Playing by
the book, Henry returned quickly and played another couple of songs,
but since it was still early, the crowd roared again. Normally, this
should be taken as a signal to really let loose and tear the house
down, yet Henry and company played a couple of (very touching) final
numbers and took the leave-'em-wanting-more route.
What happened at the Barcode was much stranger. After a final
instrumental piece, the trio left the stage. The mostly
college-cognoscenti crowd went uncharacteristically wild, screaming
and clapping and whistling. Nothing. They continued. Nothing. This
became a contest of wills. While half the audience eventually left, a
determined few dozen kept the applause going for what seemed like
hours but must have been 10 to 15 minutes. Finally, they gave up _ and
immediately, the band came back on stage, as if they had just been
waiting for the crowd to stop making all that racket.
It was an unforgettable up-ending of rock expectations _ Smog's
specialty since his classic lo-fi recordings nine years ago. Callahan
closed, appropriately, with Ex-Con, a superb song from 1997's Red
Apple Falls: "Alone in my room, I feel such a warmth for the
community/ But out on the streets, I feel like a robot by the river."
And it was that sense of paradox that allowed him mostly to
outstrip the brand of hardworking showmanship Henry had displayed _
because something else seems necessary these days, something aslant,
to make the tired rock-show experience come back to life.
