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Meghan Toohey is playing the Soul Low series at the Lizard tonight, finishing up her month of Mondays. Since it's a holiday, I can actually go. The format is solo (hence the name), informal, relaxed. We get a lot of chatting and some experimental, not-quite-finished numbers. The chat is great--the story of watching Claire Danes hoover a plate of sausages in New York is a high point--but the best part is that the relaxed atmosphere encourages a lot of loose, jazzy timing and phrasing on some of the more familiar songs. I'm used to hearing these played with her band, The So and So's, where she has to stay in time with other people. Now she can play around, stretch out a phrase, and really give free rein to her inner chanteuse. Her voice and her melodies are heartbreakingly gorgeous, and she impresses the hell out of me when she gets ready to play one song ("in the style of Elton John") on piano, but her sustain pedal seems to be screwed up such that it sustains whenever she's NOT stepping on it, so she goes ahead and plays it anyway, adjusting her pedaling on the fly! I would not have imagined it possible if I hadn't seen and heard it myself.
Next, we rush over to O'Brien's, for a lineup I've been looking forward to for weeks. First up are Tristan Da Cunha, and I'm reminded that they're probably my favorite band in Boston right now. They've been on a bit of a hiatus lately while the drummer's been in England, so they play a set that leans on older material. This is great for me, since I know these songs from their records and rarely get to see them performed live, and they're great songs. Catchy, quirky, fiercely complicated, all the things I love about Tristan Da Cunha. I'm sad (although not surprised) to see that they're really hard on themselves, acting as though they'd screwed up majorly after several songs that seemed polished and precise from out in the audience. They close with an ultra-obscure cover; I didn't know it was a cover until told, I just thought it uncharacteristic that it's all in sixteens.
Clickers are next, bringing the rock in an aggressive, noisy, slightly schizoid manner. Their songs are characterized by a lot of shouting and sudden, radical changes in rhythm and mood, and the drummer has a particularly weird, interesting vocal style, but just when you feel like you've got them pigeonholed, they throw in a surprisingly pretty, delicate guitar line or sing a melody. Also very impressive is the broken string break; while it's being changed, the rhythm section launch into an impromptu, surprisingly credible bit of smooth jazz to fill time. Then it's back to the confrontational music. Oh, and speaking of confrontation and equipment failures, I have to mention the most exciting part of the set, when the ceiling fan over the stage suddenly throws one of its blades, hitting an audience member in the head (!) (he's fine, as it turns out) and then wobbling alarmingly for the last two songs of the set. Never a dull evening at O'Brien's.
The Leah Quinelle All-Stars featuring Happy are from New Orleans. Their name is practically the only complicated thing about them: they're a three-piece, with one girl playing the drums while two others switch off on guitar and vocals, and the songs are VERY short punk tidbits with minimal melody and chords. They're a huge lot of fun, and they seem like really nice people, and they're obviously having and engendering such a goofy good time that I can't really hold it against them that they're not very good musicians. Happy has really awful pitch, though she's a decent guitar player, and the other singer is better, but still not great, and a less accomplished guitarist. They also need to tune extensively between every song (which are, like, two minutes, tops, remember, so much of the set is spent tuning) and there is also a broken string, during which the drummer comes up front to do a truly surreal set of jokes so old, familiar, and corny that what's funny is not the jokes she's telling but that she's telling them. But, see, that's funny. The whole set is like that: really enjoyable, in a meta- sort of way.
Then Night Rally come in and just kick every ass in the place. The room gets really crowded for their set (on a Monday night!), which is great to see, and the crowd is rabidly enthusiastic. They start with a fairly straightforward number, rhythmically simple and with Luke, the drummer, singing in his rich, smooth baritone. Then they start to shout, jump around, and crank up the weirdness. The guitar seems to have more delay than reverb on it tonight, so that instead of layering on itself in a spacy, atmospheric sort of way, it layers on itself in a sharp, noisy sort of way. This gives the songs a more brutal, ballsy sound than I've heard from them before, and sets off the smart, melodic bass lines. I like it. Devin's stage presence gets more compelling every time I see him: his pretty falsetto sets you up to be shocked by his fractured shrieks, and his facial expressions and patter are truly disturbing. The extent to which they own the audience tonight is stunning.
