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SXSW review: Pyeng Threadgill
Singer Pyeng Threadgill won critical acclaim for her 2004 debut, “Sweet Home: The Songs of Robert Johnson,” but at the Elephant Room Thursday night, she stuck to newer, original material that showed a sinuous, cerebral melodic sense that sometimes recalled Patricia Barber.
Threadgill, who pronounces her first name “pie-eng,” is the daughter of jazz giant Henry Threadgill. With a backing band that featured deft coloration and texturizing from Kevin Louis on trumpet/percussion and Mike Gamble on guitar, Pyeng Threadgill melded jazz with echoes of soul, blues and light funk. Her alto was warm, lovely and assured, her phrasing easy yet elegant.
Threadgill still seems to be developing as a lyricist, combining some cliches — roads leading back to you, the climbing of mountains — with some very interesting ideas. She introduced the new “Igloo” by explaining “Igloos really bug me out.” With Gamble playing wintery, languid fills, she sang ‘How can snow keep me so warm?” “Mining for Sapphires,” she explained, was inspired by friends who wanted to take the ultimate do-it-yourself route to designing wedding rings, but since they couldn’t find a gem mine in New York, they ordered dirt with sapphires in it and sifted through it in their living room. In the chorus she mused “All you do is dream and dream — drive yourself crazy.”
In the percolating “Inner Lining,” from her last album, “Of the Air,” Threadgill sang the oblique line “No money — lots of time — my man must be some kind of gold.”
Threadgill sometimes took a turn at the keyboards, where her playing didn’t have a great deal of presence. However, she showed more of an instrumentalist’s intuition as her voice interacted with Louis’ jabbing trumpet on “Igloo.” There were no great revelations in the set, but Threadgill is an appealing performer who shows considerable promise as a writer.
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