Weekend Reviews
An exhilarating welcome you can eat with a Spoon
Rock: Spoon
Indie music: Rogue Wave
Mystery theater: "Appointment with Death"
Folk: Michelle Shocked
Web posted: June 27, 2005
A glorious homecoming is a beautiful thing to witness. It's an inherent part of the hero's journey and a crucial part of the rock 'n' roll myth: the hometown talent, perhaps scorned in his own land, tours the world and returns triumphant.
In the past, victory for Spoon has meant returning from tour with lead Spooner Britt Daniel's muse intact, in spite of wave after wave of bad luck. Not this time. This time, Spoon ventured into the world with a successful album called "Gimme Fiction" and returned to a sold-out show at Stubb's. For the folks in the crowd who had been following the band for 10 years, it was more than a little moving.
After a set of civilized rocking from Sally Crewe & the Sudden Moves, tour openers the Clientele took the stage. The London-based trio plays an elegant guitar pop, all lush, finger-picked melodies and deft rhythms. Some of us were hoping guitarist Alasdair MacLean would take a few more solos, but it was lovely nonetheless.
"Lovely" isn't quite the right word for Spoon, however. Let's stick with "moving," especially the look on Daniel's face when he walked out on stage to confront 2,000 screaming fans. The 10 seconds before a band starts to play are still my favorite moments of any show. It's a period of pure potential and Daniel's face at this point was a perfect mixture of shock and awe, smiling but totally gob-smacked.
He staggered a step back, picked up his guitar, and the band launched into a jagged version of "The Beast and Dragon, Adored," the lead-off from "Fiction," then "Me and the Bean," from the career-reviving album "Girls Can Tell."
Everyone was at the top of his game, especially jaw-dropping drummer Jim Eno, whose thrifty beats and Swiss timing made everything swing and snap. The space Spoon builds into their tunes gave the crowd more room to scream, especially on fan favorites such as the Bee Gees-esque groover "I Turn My Camera On," "Fitted Shirt," a jucied-up "Jonathan Fisk" and "Chicago at Night." After a few months of touring, the band knew the material inside and out, and Daniel even gave his air-tight songs room to breathe. By the time "My Mathematic Mind" dissolved in a hail of feedback, the homecoming was complete. Welcome back.
— Joe Gross
Indie rock
LIKE A ROGUE CRITIC, I CAUGHT THE WAVE
I'm going out on a precarious limb right here: San Francisco's Rogue Wave is the next Nirvana.
They're both Sub Pop babies, and while Nirvana played grunge and Rogue Wave plays indie rock (of the delightfully hooky kind replete with ohs and yeahs and claps), I would argue that, based on their debut "Out of the Shadows" and their live performance at the Parish on Friday, Rogue Wave is to indie rock what Nirvana was to grunge.
And it's high time that the movement earned a leader. For far too long, Bright Eyes' Conor Oberst has whined like a emo wimp, while Death Cab's (and The Postal Service's) Ben Gibbard quickly sold out to the majors and the "O.C."
Instead, lead singer Zach Rogue's quiet intensity as he sang and strummed had to be the most rewarding musical experience I've enjoyed in awhile. The group itself manages to sound original in an all too easily derivative genre. They're sort of like the Shins — except not cloying at all — with a little whimsy borrowed from Simon and Garfunkel and some atmospheric intensity from Gibbard.
Kicking the show off was "Kicking The Heart Out" — an irresistible pop gem that epitomizes their sunny yet complex sound right down to the peculiar phrasing. For example, when Rogue cooed, "What makes the wild wind whistle?" you heard him nearly trip over his own tongue-twister but he didn't, thus, making his music all the more brilliant.
The next song, "Postage Stamp World," was particularly affecting as Rogue sings of "silky starlets" and societal alienation, though with a slight smirk. Rogue speak-crooned, "Ever since Mom walked out, sis and I can get no sleep. Since then Dad's brought home 13 redheads, a blonde, a brunette and a sheep."
And the performance Friday continued in that same flawless vein. With a romping bass line and a sing-happy chorus, "Endless Shovel" closed a night that forecast greatness. It also signaled the usual problems associated with crossing over into the mainstream, as Rogue Wave played to a club that was only a third full and to a crowd that seemed to chatter more than actually listen to the music.
— Robert Winterode
Mystery theater
MAKE AN APPOINTMENT FOR 'DEATH'
Some day soon — if not already — a low-impact murder mystery or other brain-teasing crime show will be available to viewers at all hours. And we will watch them. Something deep in the human brain is stimulated by these brainteasers, especially when we, as spectators, make minimal investment in the outcome.
Long before the "CSI" franchise and the infinitely better "Law & Order" empire colonized our attention, there was Agatha Christie, who wrote more than 100 genteel, tightly crafted mysteries before her death in 1976. Many were adapted into stage plays and movies; "Appointment with Death" is a precursor to the beloved Hercule Poirot series, featuring a Poirot-like character in the form of an eminent psychiatrist. (It was later re-written as a Poirot vehicle.)
The doctor, Theodore Gerard, observes an American family on vacation in the Holy Land. Overseen by a tyrannical stepmother, the little group casts a shadow on the other vacationers, including an imperial British aristocrat, a younger psychiatrist just beginning her career and a few male characters, who prove to be distractions from the main mystery.
Different Stages has been offering summer mysteries for many seasons, and director Norman Blumensaadt knows what to do with the form. Squeezing Jerusalem's King Solomon Hotel and the ruins of the stone city Petra into the Vortex's miniscule stage was not easy, but his actors used a combination of practiced smoothness and inevitable awkwardness to keep us interested in the matron's death.
As the despised stepmother and former prison "wardress," Paula Gilbert elicited cheers at her death (a compliment to her underplayed evil), while Nikki Zook could pass as a rosy English movie star from the 1930s as the British psychiatrist. Most astonishing was Craig Kanne, who took over the Gerard role just before opening, and yet played with cool panache and humor, even with a script in hand. "Appointment with Death" continues 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sundays through July 16. The Vortex, 2307 Manor Road. $5-$16. 478-5282.
— Michael Barnes
Folk
SHOCKED BY THE ELECTRIC SLIDE
Like a Texanized Betty Boop (in terms of hair, voice and spirit), Michelle Shocked performed a nearly 2-hour set Sunday in front of an audience of collected faithful at Antone's. Along the way, she crooned sugar-sweetly about bittersweet topics such as a recent divorce and our current president, and she spun her trademark stories alongside her trademark songs. She even taught the audience a thing or two, including the origin of the word "sabotage," -- something about French factory workers and left shoes — and the right way to electric slide.
Yes, decidedly mature Texans were electric sliding. To say Shocked was the master of her audience would be an understatement. She sang songs to promote three new CDs, except she sang selections only from two of them: "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and "Mexican Standoff."
The blues-rock songs were sultry, Texas-style, starting with the understated tune "Early Morning Saturday" that could easily be her crossover hit with its shimmying guitar strums and lazy vocals. Other highlights included "Don't Ask," an almost spoken-word fairytale about a rabbit and a midnight owl that's also about her broken marriage and the bunny hop, and "Weasel Be Poppin," which would be Shocked's approximation of crunk. (The concert's only misfires were the couple of songs that Shocked sang in Spanish. Not only did she endlessly over-enunciate, she also borrowed the most tired traditions in Spanish music.)
The night's absolute masterpiece, however, was "Hi Skool," about higher-education dysfunction. It sounded like Shocked was fronting for the Hives and it pointed to the chameleon-like tendencies that feed her three new albums. Here's a suggestion for Shocked: If the blues ever get her down, she should front her own garage-rock band.
The Shocks, anyone?
— Robert Winterode
