Index of Shows | Homepage | Write to me
I love living in Boston! I feel totally blessed (in, you know, a totally secular, non-superstitious sense) to live in a place that offers me such a great variety of amazing music that I have to rush to get to all the unmissably good things on one night.
I start out at TT's, where Andrew Morgan is playing when I arrive. He's doing the solo acoustic thing, and it does seem a bit odd--the songs remind me of Morrissey more than anything else, although he certainly doesn't sound like he has a mouth full of oatmeal, but the guitar is pretty pedestrian and doesn't go too well with the songs. Between songs, he explains that he actually had a band, but he's just moved to Boston recently, and his CD is more chamber-pop, and we should actually imagine these songs with a small orchestra. That makes more sense.
Then, in the event I came here for, Tristan da Cunha fuck my brain. I just can't believe how good this band are, and how perfectly suited to my tastes. As an exercise, I restrain myself from counting the wild and creative rhythms that are coming at me thick and fast (really thick, really fast) and practice focusing my attention on various aspects of their performance, and what's really impressive is that it's all great. The drumming is, of course, inspired and inspiring and damn near perfect. (I actually think I might catch him dragging just the tiniest bit in one small part of one song, and that's honestly the closest I can come to finding anything about it that's not literally perfect.) The bass lines are interesting and driving and rhythmically complicated, and the extent to which they are locked into the drumming is inhuman. The guitar parts have these surreal harmonies in them, and fascinating, spastic, epileptic melodies, and sometimes they actually layer ANOTHER bizarre rhythm against and atop the bizarre rhythms that the rhythm section is playing. The vocals are freakish, sometimes Residents-y, always entertaining, and complement the songs beautifully. Best of all, this whole set is being recorded. I want a copy, desperately.
As soon as they finish, I hop in a cab to Inman Square, where an evening of solo piano artists is in progress at the Zeitgeist. Playing when I arrive is a guy who goes by Sleepshell. He plays beautifully. His melodies aren't always great, but his lyrics seem to mine some of the same clever/bitchy vein that I came here for. His voice is atrocious, a thick, nasal bleating with poorly sustained pitch, but his piano playing is lovely and understated and I try to focus on that.
Then Amanda Palmer takes the bench, launching immediately into "Blake Says," the song I most wanted to hear. What a beautiful, beautiful song. It's completely different from what Tristan gave me, and equally exquisite, and I am overwhelmed with joy. She proceeds to play some fairly new stuff, including one REALLY new one, and a whole bunch of covers. (Leonard Cohen, Elliott Smith...) Amanda's voice sounds really raggedly powerful, and almost overwhelms the tiny space, but she has such dynamic range that it never gets to be too much. Finally, she gets up from the piano and Brian Viglione joins her on guitar for a couple of last songs. They close with their cover of "Rainbow Connection," and dedicate it to a very sick friend, which makes the cheery, kind of lovably sappy song unexpectedly poignant and powerful. Then they are prevailed upon for one more, and they give us their shockingly beautiful cover of Neutral Milk Hotel's "Two-Headed Boy." My joy is complete.
