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Review: About Blank at Lucky Lounge
Words are meaningless when you have a trumpeter, a trombonist, two saxophonists, two drummers, a conga player, an electric guitarist, an upright/electric bassist, a DJ, and four female dancers with headdresses that the aforementioned bassist, Kyle Clayton, dubbed the Skanks.
It wasn’t that the dancers were “easy” — they wore modest spaghetti-strap tank-tops and long, flowing dresses — but their name hit the spot for “About Skank,” the gleefully spastic ska song Clayton’s instrumental jam band played while the girls busted a move. That song title was in turn a play on the band, About Blank, who at this point in its CD release show for its debut album, “Rise,” had swelled way beyond its normal size.
It’s not exactly kosher to play in Austin and not have words. Sure, Explosions in the Sky pulls it off. But they have a built-in audience from “Friday Night Lights.” Then there’s Ephraim Owens. He makes it happen. But he’s practically a novelty act, in that he’s playing a dying form, traditional jazz. After that it gets pretty thin. This is a singer-songwriter’s town.
No one seemed to know that, though, Saturday at Lucky Lounge. The place was choked with people bobbing their heads in time—and chances are the majority of them came for the drink specials and hadn’t a clue who was playing. There’s hardly a more complimentary acknowledgment of a band’s virtuosity than to win over a crowd without any advance hype.
About Blank did it with endless grooves. And with the dexterous hopscotch matches between the trumpeter, Erik Telford, and the tenor saxophonist, Kevin Gibbs. And, most emphatically, with the avant-garde guitar work of Danny Anderson, who veered with facility between tonal precision and industrial combustion, as on the mind-erasing “Black Magic Marker.”
It’s almost hard to believe this glorious night of accessible fusion was free of charge.
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By austexcal
July 2, 2010 10:44 AM | Link to this
About:Blank is great local fusion. We saw them with trumpet Shane Pitsch and Saxman Ponder East and they were pretty smokin’ group along with the rest of the group.