XL REVIEWS

Fiona Apple, 'In On It,' Duo Turgeon, Kathy Dunn Hamrick

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Punk music

RANCID RULES THE SPOTLIGHT

The heat was melting Mohawks, but a sold-out crowd of spiky punks still rallied around Rancid on Sunday for the first of two crowded nights at Emo's.

Following energetic sets by local rockers Black Star Brigade and Seattle mod-punks the Briefs (with a guest appearance by local Riverboat Gamblers singer Mike Wiebe), Rancid sparked its set with "Time Bomb" and quickly blurred into "Nihilism."

Tattooed from neck to knuckles, the Berkeley, Calif., band that once was courted by Madonna's Maverick Records label in the mid-1990s still has the snarling, warp-speed energy that brings more danger than such 924 Gilman Street peers as the Offspring and Green Day.

Fronted by swizzle-stick guitarist Tim Armstrong, Rancid stirred a sweaty cocktail of slur-it-out-loud punk rock that was driven by the carpal tunnel throb of bassist Matt Freeman. Infectious as a wet sneeze, Rancid knocked 'em dead with "Fall Back Down" from the criminally overlooked 2003 album, "Indestructible." Co-guitarist and vocalist Lars Frederiksen arrived smartly dressed in a three-piece suit, but quickly lost the layers to soften the sting of the spotlight sunburn.

Cooking despite sound quality that was raw and muddy, Rancid's trade-off vocal duties were handed to Freeman, who served up "Tenderloin" as a video backdrop flashed images of Rancid album covers. The pogo pit continued with "She's Automatic" and the "Whirlwind" dedication to Black Star Brigade. "Roots Radical" pitched the fever meter into the cardiac zone before an oddball acoustic version of "The 11th Hour" eased the tickers to a steady pulse.

When Frederiksen finally thanked the audience for 15 years of punk-rock loyalty, the assembled pack of salty dogs howled like wolves. All said, the night was stinking hot, and Rancid was on fire. --David Glessner

Pop music

FIONA GETS IT RIGHT, MOSTLY

Fiona Apple put on the show of a lifetime at the Backyard on Friday. For fans, it was a concert to remember. For Apple, it was a night to extinguish old flames and perhaps ignite a new one.

The show kicked off with "Get Him Back," from Apple's recent "Extraordinary Machine" CD. Apple looked frail, with dark eyes and a slender frame. And unlike many of her female contemporaries, she performed the whole show in a simple green dress, forgoing numerous costume changes.

Commenting on the heat, Apple said, "You guys must be eating each other's sweat. I hope it tastes good."

The heat, along with the weeks on the road, seemed to have taken their toll on Apple. She had trouble reaching false-alto, and her vocals were crass in comparison with impeccable opening act Damien Rice.

The show turned odd early on, as Apple often would step away from the microphone either to run and sit behind her piano to rock back and forth or to scream silently what seemed to be arguments with the ghosts of past lovers. Apple also proved to be a semi-perfectionist, stopping one song midway through and insisting the band start over after she got a lyric wrong.

The show's biggest highlights were pianist David Palmer's solo in "Limp," as well as Apple's performance of "Extraordinary Machine" with singer-songwriter David Garza. The biggest shocker came when she gushed: "I want to introduce you to a beautiful, beautiful man: Quentin Tarantino," who waved from the side of the stage. Apple may have come to the concert as a woman spurned by past loves, but she left with a famed director in the wings.

— Virgil Dickson

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Theater

THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT IT

In the new production of "In On It," written by Daniel MacIvor and directed by Lowell Bartholomee, the Dirigo Group has IT.

IT: witty and ebullient comedy; slow-burning and explosive tragedy; inspiration; and one of the best all-around productions I've seen in a while.

"In On It" tells three stories centered around two lovers -- This One, played glumly by Scotty Roberts, and That One, played gamely by Robert Faires: the story of how they met, a play written by This One and their current lives. Don't get to thinking the characters are mere postmodern stand-ins, though. These are people, just nameless and, like the rest of the play, left open to flexible interpretation.

This One's play about Ray, a terminal case with an unknown disease, brings out the characters' personalities. That One sympathizes, observing that Ray's wife is terrible to Ray. This One rebuts, "Everybody's terrible to Ray; that's the point."

This One and That One are opposites in the tradition of vaudeville acts, odd couples and yins and yangs. Faires' That One is a study in barely contained energy, seizing the moment. Roberts' This One is a picture of forced hesitation and cautiousness, waiting for something to happen. But neither is limited, exploding in arguments set to heavy metal or tailoring debates for This One's play.

Bartholomee takes a well-written script that combines pure emotion, highbrow thinking and a dance number set to "Sunshine and Lollipops" and keeps the production steadily mixed without becoming sappy, snotty or campy.

In short, the whole experience is a reminder of how moving it is to watch two actors take control of the stage and follow a powerful story. ("In On It" continues 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays through July 29. Off Center, 2211-A Hidalgo St. $10-$17. 371-0554. www.thedirigogroup.com.)

— Joey Seiler

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Classical music

BRAHMS THE WAY HE WANTED

Saturday's concert by the Duo Turgeon — the husband-and-wife duo pianists Edward Turgeon and Anne Louise-Turgeon — presented two "big" works at the First Unitarian Universalist Church as part of the Austin Chamber Music Festival. The performances were intimately scaled in ways that served both compositions well.

Johannes Brahms' Quintet for Piano and Strings is surely one of the angriest of the 19th century's "angry young man" masterpieces. The players wisely avoided pushing the music into blatant histrionics, allowing the music to speak for itself. Edward Turgeon (alone) was the pianist, with a string quartet drawn from the festival workshop's string faculty (violinists Richard Kilmer and Elise Winters, violist Ames Asbell and cellist Margaret Coltman). Generally fleet pacing kept things from getting overwrought or bogged down.

There was, however, an all-purpose balance among the strings, with the first violin always strong and the second violin and viola always in the background, while Brahms mixed these elements in a variety of ways. In the last two movements the string tuning was less good, and there were some slips in the piano. But we pretty much heard the music that Brahms wrote, and that was no small feat.

Anne Louise-Turgeon joined her husband for an arrangement of Dmitri Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony for piano four hands. This was problematic despite the duo's clear understanding of the music. Not only were the tone colors of the orchestral instruments lost, but this particular symphony has a lot of slow, sustained string writing that loses its connection on a piano. It helped that two percussionists — Graeme Francis and Jeff Otto — were added and who covered the original percussion parts sensitively. The result was a reasonable facsimile of the original.

— David Mead

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Dance

COMEDY TAKES FLIGHT IN DANCE SHOES

Attempts at comedy often go awry when movement is the medium. But with "Half Passage," Kathy Dunn Hamrick accomplished the difficult. The work — the only one by Kathy Dunn Hamrick Dance Company's director in its Saturday show at McCullough Theatre at the University of Texas — managed to knock dancers slightly off-kilter with amusing nuance. In front of a projection of Magritte-esque clouds, quick turns often ended with the unexpected embrace. Dancers suddenly clasped each other just below the waist; the lifted dancer's eyebrows rising with surprise. One particularly funny moment happened when one section's cast finished in a bunch, leaving one woman alone, until she suddenly scooted on her bottom to join the rest. Part of the piece's success grew from the dancers' clear comfort with Hamrick's movement, even though many are recent additions to the company.

Another new work, "Recognizing the Angel on My Shoulder" by company member Lisa Nicks, traversed the line of humor less successfully. Nicks' fluid but interestingly punctuated movement style is lovely to watch (particularly when she performs it herself; a solo in the middle of the work was great). But a section of gymnasticlike tableaux looked more Olympics opening ceremony than modern dance for too long, revealing itself as humor far too late.

A short dance film by Cherami and David Steadman, featuring challenges by the latter for the former to complete tasks such as performing 30 popular dances in 30 seconds was both funny and cute. Carolyn Pavlik's "I'm Coming back for My Wings" sent a trio of dancers' arms cycling and rippling from shoulder to wrist, but the work never quite climaxed.

— Clare Croft