Braids of Grolly (Emmy the Great, Bowery Ballroom, 3-11-08)

(pic, from a different performance, via acb's flickr) 

I've seen Emmy the Great (myspace) three times, now, and I've yet to write a single show up.  Some of that's because I don't do much show writing-up, anymore; some of that's because I've already made mention of the music, and getting all-Emmy-all-the-time would be alarmingly obsessive.  (It does feel like I've reigned the wagons in around a few favorites to the exclusion of all else.  So:  The new Thee Oh Sees/OCS record is really good, and is available for download at Amazon.  There.)

Much of it, though, is because her shows are so low-key and casual that they don't beg for exhaustive play-by-play.  She's upright without coming off aloof.  She's unguarded - cracking labia jokes, playfully insulting her mother - and utterly charming. (At least when on stage.)(Oh, I kid.)  Tuesday night she happily pointed out that the next song would sound almost exactly like the last song, and that the one after that would have the same theme as this one.  "No one wants to put too much effort into what they're doing," she said.  (Or something like that. I didn't bother to keep notes.)

Musically everything is well-placed and perfectly delineated.  Her strumming was muddy when I saw her in September; that just highlighted the clarity of her voice.  (The mix at the Bowery was harsh for the first half of the set.)  Extra sonic space is given to fills and harmonies from a couple of supporting members; last fall it was a pair of men called Euan (1, 2) on voice and mandolin/guitar, this time it was Euan #1 and an abruptly adopted violinist.

She sent them both away in what I thought was a bold move.  As the opener for two much louder acts, and for a room one suspects was full of guest-listed gladhanders (Disclosure!  Me too!), she battled a very gabby balcony and back-of-room.  Instead of getting louder, she went solo and shut the schmoozers up.  They started in again when the band went to back to three, of course.  But the main part of the floor was hers start-to-end.  Some kid drove up from Baltimore to see her.

Set went something like:  "Easter Parade," "Gabriel," "City Song," "We Almost Had a Baby," "24," "The Hypnotist's Son," a cover of Eugene McGuinness' "Bird on a Wire," "M.I.A."

Sasha Frere-Jones and Sentimentalist Magazine were also there.  Spectacular Views has "crappy camera phone pics."

She's moved on to the annual Austin clusterfuck; looks like she's doing three sets today, lucky y'all.  "There are 600 bands at South-by-Southwest," Emmy sighed before saying she's scheduled to perform right before or after an ex-boyfriend's band at one show, and before a former best friend and "the girl who told him he could never talk to me again" at another.  You might want to show up early to that Saturday gig and breathe deep the air of awkwardness.

In addition to her posted dates (on her myspace), she'll also be sitting in with Lightspeed Champion at the Stereogum/Paste Afternoon Shindig at "Volume Night Club" (Really?  That's a place?); perf is scheduled for Friday at noon (I'm assuming Central time) and will be broadcast live on WXPN.

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I have issues (NSFW!) with her merch aesthetic.

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Peoplepeoplepeople.  You had me with the "Hello."  But this is not good:

Sure, he hits the notes.  And something good happens around the 2:40 mark.  When (at least in close-up it looks like) David Cook's arms spread wide and the chorus hits, "I look at all the lonely people" sort of swallows up the silly bombast.  But the rest... I'm sure that if you massively overthink things, you can justify the arrangement.  Like...

Like:  Our loneliness is MUCH LOUDER, now.  The quaint, sad chamber music of the original has been booted in favor of swirly white noise projections and alt-rock bludgery; our constant interconnectiveness is really a celebration of techno-abetted isolation.  This is an "Eleanor Rigby" for 15,000-myspace-friend friendlessness, it's a performance geared to whack the whammy bar of a preprogrammed Guitar Hero audience.

All bullshit, of course.  That was just plain awful.

This is not good, either.  It is great:

Makes no sense, none at all, nuh-uh, no way.  And that's why it's unassailably great.  It goes off-key in spots, but it's a wonderful, showy celebration of whatthefuckery.  It frustrates its contrived back porch opening, jumps into a quick start-stop give-and-take, settles into soul.  Then Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Chikezie indulges in some sui generational spazz.  Argyle sweater vest?  Out of control, and its expurgation crunches all that shit together awesomely.  Splat!  Give me more splat!

This man is the only interesting performer on this show.

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Feeling too productive?

(via) Hulu, the joint News Corp./NBC Universal video streaming site, features full episodes of everything from Arrested Development to Astroboy.  Okay, there's more than that (a single season of Buffy, five whole episodes of The Simpsons and Battlestar Galactica) and hopefully much more to come.  There are far wider selections available through tv links-style sites, or chopped-up on YouTube, and those are commercial-free... but Hulu is legal.  Which is good, right?  Writer's strike yadda yadda?

I haven't had time to phutz with it, but one of Alan Sepinwall's commenters says you can eliminate the banner ads (ugh) by using the pop-out feature.

There are movies, too, though the selection there is even more pathetic.  And weird.  Kagemusha!  And Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine?  Probably just a slow roll-out.

It's embeddable, so thumbs-up for that.  This might not be my favorite Arrested episode ever, but it's a genius way to make seventeen minutes of unlikely set-up come together in one minute of bladder-threatening perfection:

tags: emmy the great  american idol  concert reviews  

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