Got a System (Jon Brion, Canal Room) [EDIT]

The Canal Room is an utterly incompetent venue; any considerate performer should avoid it.  Maybe the house is used to dumping on their day-to-day dancey-dance patrons, the gotta-get-laid guidos and tricked-up club hoochies who are looking only to get sauced up and sucked-off.  But if they’re going to entertain thoughts of establishing themselves as a respectable performance space, they’re going to have to start treating their patrons with some sort of respect.

This is only the second time I’ve been to the Canal Room, and it’s the second time I’ve had to wait outside the venue for almost an hour in precipitation (at least it was only drizzle on a suddenly chilly October evening; last time it was through a March snowfall).  Doors were advertised at 7:30, Brion was going on at 8.  I got there at 7:50, got inside at 8:45, show started ten minutes later.  The only positive would be that if you wanted to get in free, all you had to do was stand in the ticket-holders’ line:  After a while, they were so backed up at the door, they just waved everyone through.

I’m sorry to put this at the top – because Jon Brion’s show was magnificent, and I’ll get to that in a moment – but performers should know what a disservice they do their fans by performing here.  If you find you must attend a show there – and sadly, I might be back there next week (though I’m now seriously thinking about passing on Veruca Salt) – do not patronize the club’s bar.  They’re going to treat you like shit?  Fine:  Treat them like shit, right back.

*

“I think... I’ll play ‘Sexy Sadie’ as Thelonius Monk.”  And then, he did.

Jon Brion (excellent fan site here) also squeezed Pet Sounds out of “Roxanne” while flirting with Rachmaninoff and Victor Borge.  He played “Purple Rain” as a 1950s Les Paul record.  The audience provided three-part harmony to his sweet take on “Waterloo Sunset;” Rhett Miller joined him for a pair of Old 97s ditties (“Rollerskate Skinny” and “Singular Girl”) and a Beatles tune (“I’ll Cry Instead”).  There were Brion originals from his days with The Grays (“Same Thing”) and from his solo album (“Trouble,” and the gorgeous “Same Mistakes” from 2001’s Meaningless (sample & buy here)).

Brion is probably best known, these days, as a producer; he’s gotten ink lately as both the unlikely mastermind behind Kanye West’s new CD and as Fiona Apple’s product manager on the beta-tested Extraordinary Machine.  Some are more familiar with his soundtrack work:  He inherited the role of P.T. Anderson’s go-to guy from Michael Penn (who was here just a couple weeks back), tying together pal Aimee Mann’s songs for Magnolia and composing brilliant, off-kilter smack for Punch-Drunk Love. 

None of which gives any idea what he might play in concert.  But anyone familiar with Brooklyn Vegan’s gushing review of Brion’s May performance at Tonic or this video of Brion as Tom Waits-doing-Radiohead should have known better than to pass this rare East Coast show over.

In the end, it doesn’t really matter what Brion plays; it almost doesn’t matter that he’s a consummate talent with a versatility which suggests a direct line into a vast collective musical subconscious.  What matters most is the infectious sense of fun he brings to the stage.  Put the man up there with a bunch of instruments, and he jumps around like a hyperglycemic kid in a candy store. 

Guest stars aside, he performs alone, wringing the richest sounds possible from every instrument he picks up. (“You should start a fantasy camp,” Miller told him.  “Like Michael Jordan.  Executives could pay you $15,000 to make their songs sound good.”)  It’s most fun when he picks them all up, though:  He leaps from drum set to guitar (he had both an acoustic and an electric with bass pick-up) to piano, looping and accompanying himself all the way. 

If you’ve ever seen Andrew Bird play live (and if you haven’t, you should), you know part of the drill:  The performer will spend some time at one instrument, recording a riff or beat or bassline, grab the next piece of equipment, record the next bit... and so on, until a man has built a band around himself.  Brion goes about it a bit differently in that, unlike Bird, he plays his own drums, too... and plays huge chunks of song at each set-up.  His loops are lengthy, and complex; he’s got the whole song on repeat in his brain, and he pulls it out, little by little.  It can take a while to accomplish, but it’s an amazing process to watch. 

He assembled a full one-man band on three songs last night (“I Was Happy with You” was the only one I was able to identify).  On “Purple Rain,” he stayed at guitar, overdubbing backbeat-heavy staccato strums with jazz-tonky fills until he had five or six tracks going at once.  There were no do-overs, and no noticeable missteps.  But, again, more than being technically impressive, it’s just a whole lot of fun watching someone who can do just about anything do just that.

If there’s any downside to the act, it’s that the artist’s own Beatle-informed originals tend towards a sort of sameness; if Jon Brion can’t make them sound incredible, you don’t get the feeling anyone could.

These shows were arranged around his participation in some kind of Les Paul tribute; he promised to be back soon.  Tickets are still available for his Wednesday night show (buy here), and for those lucky folks in Los Angeles, Mr. Brion is at Largo every single Friday.

tags: indie music  jon brion  concert reviews  canal room  

links: digg this    del.icio.us    reddit