This week's Other Paper

I'm getting lazy, so I'll just refer you to TOP's site for stories with my byline this week:

Concerts
Live review of Magnetic Fields (above) at the Southern Theatre last Friday

Locals
Review of Times New Viking's just-released Stay Awake 7"

Review of Ugly Stick's Still Glistening, the band's first release in 14 years

Review of Team Smile and Nod's Look Both Ways Before You Die

Steve Earle - Southern Theatre, 5/6

Chances are, if someone tries hard to be relevant, the transparency of that effort will end up making the person irrelevant. Such is the challenge for a topical songwriter like Steve Earle, who follows in the tradition of Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger.

But there’s also a reason Earle named his son Justin Townes Earle after Townes Van Zandt. Like Van Zandt, Earle’s greatest skill is his ability to tell a story. At the Southern Theatre on Tuesday night, it was those tales--not the politicking and attempts at rabble-rousing--that truly revealed why he’s still relevant.

Earle kicked off the mostly solo show with “Steve’s Last Ramble,” harmonica around his neck and boot stomping the stage, playing the role of a lonely folkie trying to find his way back to his woman. It was refreshingly rough around the edges and real, as were other country numbers like closer “Copperhead Road” and “Little Rock ‘N Roller.”

Earle dedicated “Now She’s Gone” to “what’s-her-name, wherever the hell she is,” along with “Goodbye.” “Same girl, different harmonica,” he said. It takes a rough-and-tumble guy like Steve Earle to pull off love songs like these without sounding overly sentimental. And it requires just as much skill to perform a long-form poem about an outlaw sentenced to die without becoming trite, but that’s just what he did with “Billy Austin.”

And then the deejay came out. Now, the deejay songs weren’t all bad, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that turntable scratching alongside Steve Earle was a glaring anachronism. It was a mixing of the contemporary and the tattered, seemingly an attempt to modernize old songs like “Guitar Town” and showcase newer tunes like “Jericho Road.” The tribal flavor of “CCKMP (Cocaine Cannot Kill My Pain),” along with reverberating echo to drive home the point, worked nicely, but other songs with hip-hoppy beats felt sorely out of place. Perhaps it’s Earle’s attempt to incorporate some of New York City’s personality into the material after migrating there from Nashville. Earle may feel at home there now, but the city hasn’t yet nestled comfortably into his repertoire.

Allison Moorer, Earle’s wife and show opener, came out for a few duets, and while the two didn’t clash, they didn’t really jel, either. A more subtle female vocal than Moorer would suit the songs better. She has some pipes and sang her opening set with gusto, but her overly affected phrasing didn’t quite suit the female songwriters she covered. Moorer has a habit of turning words like “orphan” into “or-PHAWN,” “forsaken” into “forsak-AWN” and “love” into “luu-UV.”

Earle finally got political toward the end of the evening, instructing the audience to “pick a side” and singing songs from last year’s Washington Square Serenade, such as “City of Immigrants” and “Steve’s Hammer (For Pete),” the latter of which turned into an audience sing-along. Both came across as juvenile protest songs filled with platitudes compared with the finely spun yarns from the rest of the night. “Jerusalem” was probably the best of his most overtly political material, packaged with the hope that “one fine day all the children of Abraham will lay down their swords forever in Jerusalem.”

But it’s in the stories where Earle’s convictions are really allowed to take root. “The Devil’s Right Hand,” which a tracks a young man’s love affair with a pistol, is a much more nuanced castigation of war and violence.

Political posturing is hit or miss, but a good story will always be relevant.

Punch Brothers - Southern Theatre, 3/7

While every fish fry and high school basketball game was canceled on Friday night due to the Blizzard of 2008, CAPA decided to go ahead with the Punch Brothers concert at the Southern Theatre. To be honest, I wasn’t excited about driving downtown in the quickly accumulating snow to cover the show.

But it turns out CAPA was right, and I was wrong. Those who ventured out had the privilege of witnessing a bluegrass quintet with limitless talent. And besides, despite the testimony of overexcited TV news crews, the roads really weren’t that bad.

Mandolin virtuoso Chris Thile is the bandleader of the Punch Brothers, having garnered wide critical acclaim from his time in Nickel Creek and his impressive solo albums. Even though Thile just turned 27, he’s a seasoned performer, having released his first solo album at age 12, rightfully earning the tag “child prodigy.” You can apply just about any superlative to his mandolin picking, and his voice ain’t bad, either--a pleasant Toad the Wet Sprocket-style tenor.

Thile assembled this lineup of musicians for his 2006 album, How to Grow a Woman from the Ground, later re-dubbing the group as the Punch Brothers (taken from Mark Twain’s short story “Punch, Brothers, Punch!“) for the band’s Punch album released a couple of weeks ago. It was apparent from the performance that he’s found a kinship among the musicians, who must be recognized by name: fiddler Gabe Witcher, banjo-picker Noam Pikelny, guitarist Chris Eldridge and upright bass player Greg Garrison.

One of the dangers for musicians who have complete mastery of their instruments is a tendency to be overly technical and unrestrained to the point that little or no emotion comes through in the songs. No one doubts Yngwie Malmsteen’s guitar prowess, but who wants to actually listen to his songs? The Punch Brothers didn’t fall into that trap.

The group’s expert playing and well-placed restraint was on full display during the 42-minute piece “The Blind Leaving the Blind,” which was divided into four movements as it is on Punch. Another personal bias disclosure to put this in context: I don’t like long, extended jams. Usually I find them extremely tiresome and unnecessary. So I was again surprised to find the suite engaging and wonderfully creative, combining elements of classical music, jazz, rock, blues and more to create an entirely new brand of progressive bluegrass.

Thile incorporated lyrics into the long-form composition as well, most of which are drawn from the relationship with his former wife, the aftermath of the divorce and the vagaries of youth. In the first movement he describes a scene in which he drives to a fountain in a park “where he used to play when he was young. He’s gonna wash off in front of God and everyone.” The second movement, probably the most emotionally compelling, is interspersed with the line “I’m over it.” You might even say a couple of the movements have a chorus, though it always left room for some improvisation. Movement four had the quickest pace and really showcased the players’ virtuosity.

All that said, if compositions like that had made up the entire concert, it would have inevitably become boring. So covers of the Strokes “Heart in a Cage” and the White Stripes’ “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground” were welcome additions. And since Thile claimed the Southern Theatre was “one of the best-sounding halls I’ve ever played in,” the group decided to do a lovely rendition of the Norman Blake tune “Green Light on the Southern.”

“You’re an Angel and I’m Gonna Cry” was the only ballad of the evening, and featured a mostly solo Thile singing the song’s title to a melody similar to Hank Williams’s “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” but with a much softer edge. “Wayside (Back in Time)” ended the evening, and once the show was over, I wouldn’t have minded hitting the replay button and going back in time myself.