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Emergency Music are playing when I arrive at TT's. They're pretty good, have good tunes, and the lead singer has an appealing voice. The word that keeps coming to mind is "gentle"--these are gentle, slightly countrified pop/rock songs. The guitar solos are minimal, and ideally I'd like the whole thing to have a bit more energy, but the harmony singing is really pretty. These songs would work well on the Other Side of the Bear.
Next are Ad Frank and the Fast Easy Women, with Kristen Barry (whose name I may be misspelling) on keyboard. At first, it's really all about Ad's shirt, a sexy, sleeveless number with a huge sequined Jesus-with-crown-of-thorns. Powerfully bizarre. Then the music kicks in, and they sound great. Ad is perhaps out of line to joke about the much-lamented Quick Fix breakup, but I forgive him because he's introducing "You've Been Walking Such A Fine Line," the great song he co-wrote with Jake Zavrachy. Sadly, the latter part of the set becomes dominated by recurrent technical difficulties, with Kristen struggling to get any sound out of the keyboard, but with the exception of one song stopped and re-started they soldier through very professionally. And if a couple of the songs suffer somewhat from the absence, Sean Connelly steps up with some extra-fine guitar work to fill in the gaps.
The Halogens, whose residency we are enjoying, are next. The room is impressively crowded, considering the dauntingly cold weather. I've never seen this band before, and I am impressed. The songs are intensely composed, sort of Britpop-influenced rockers, with great, sweeping heft to them and lovely hooks. The drumming is safe but good: each song relies on a different fairly intricate pattern that is pretty much repeated throughout the song. The focus here, though, is the vocals. Jason Dunn's voice is rich and muscular, with a whole lot of basic skill expertly deployed, and the harmonies are subtle and add a lot. I'm distressed when they bring in canned drums on one song, but that's a personal predjudice and it's only one song.
Closing the night are The Gasolines. It's really kind of a crime to put them on right after The Halogens. Their first song is slow and droning, which leaves my attention to wander around looking for a focus and settle reluctantly on the lead singer. He has a very approximate notion of pitch, so the song limps along with a lot of sour sustained notes. The second song is faster but not really better, and the third song introduces a laptop and a canned drum track. Three songs is all they get.
