Very Close to, if not actually in, the CD player:
stream full album ° seen/heard ° buy
seen/heard ° listen ° preorder
seen/heard ° listen ° preorder
stream full album ° seen/heard ° buy
Send My Cinders Home (St. Vincent, Knitting Factory Old Office)
Last night, my timing was off. It happens.
Started off outside the gates at Maceo Parker, who was tight. I was not. There’s probably nothing less relaxing than being at a funk show when your internal clock’s wound all wrong. Later, of course, Prince came out... and I’m okay with having missed that. No, really. I just saw him a few months ago, and he didn’t play any old stuff this time, either.
The main goal was to catch Dallas singer-songwriter Annie Clark, aka St. Vincent. A guitarist for the Polyphonic Spree (that’s her, here), I’d first read about her on My Old Kentucky Blog’s SXSW recap; he got to see her perform cross-legged on the floor of Red Hunter’s apartment. The Knitting Factory Old Office is only slightly less intimate.
Unfortunately, the KF Box Office didn’t have any set times, and was unsure about the order in which the performers would be going on. Awesome. I got there for a whole five-six songs of Clark’s set, and completely missed Philly math’fit Pattern is Movement (myspace), who is serving as her backing band on the tour.
I got there just in time to see some guy packing up his French Horn. Dude, if there’s a French Horn in a band, I want to hear it. Crap.
Clark can hold a room all on her own, though. She’s got an Olive Oyl build, a nest of curly chestnut hair, wide eyes and high cheekbones; her voice is bigger than all of her. It’s deep and smooth and accurate, but she’s not particularly interested in being direct. She d-babbles in wordplay (her band is, presumably, named after the poet) and twists her tone to suit the song; a line about singing the blues brings with it a Billie Holiday impersonation.
It’s good when the gal-and-a-guitar gets bored easily, because you won’t be. If you go to her myspace you can sample some songs from her forthcoming – late 2006/early 2007 – CD. Gorilla vs Bear, who’s a big fan, has an MP3 of “Paris is Burning” ...which, after the horn intro, gets very Paranoid Android; it carries its pizzicato through a polished pop chorus and eventually lands in a twangy Waitsish waltz. With hand-claps. All this, without sounding hodge-podgey.
They’re/she’s playing, again, Sunday night at Pete’s Candy Store, and depending on my inner clock’s disposition, I might haul myself up there for it.
*
After Clark, local warbler Erica Glyn (myspace) came on with what her site trumpeted as a full band – including Glyn, there were three guitars and an upright bass – but they sounded more like a group of musicians sharing space than an actual band.
Glyn sounds like someone working her way out of a gal-and-guitar trap. Her chords are mostly bright and full, her songs repetitive and selfhelpish... but she wants to be dark and spare. Towards this end she recruited a guitarist who ruined the meat of her set, drowning Glyn’s very capable voice and sharp acoustic strumming with lumpy noise-and-reverb gravy. I was actually on the guitarist’s side for a while, hoping Glyn would drop the simple safe strumming and let loose (the Chuck Eddy quote on her front page compares her to P.J. Harvey, but surrounding yourself with risk takers doesn’t really mean you’re taking risks; I kept thinking Heather Nova); unfortunately, that guitarist was rhythmically incapable of supporting anyone, pushing the tempo out of whack whether he was plucking simple arpeggios or revving up for big rumbley sweeps.
Band needs practice, she needs to make some decisions.
The most interesting song on her page is “Different Person Now” which threatens Life is Sweet-era Maria McKee material with a hard rock riff.
Erica Glyn- Different Person Now (mp3)
Her latest record is called These Small Hours; I can’t find any link to buy the record, though. She’s playing June 28th at Pianos, and will presumably be selling it there.