Weekend Reviews

Mann saves our memory of her with a soulful show

Singer-songwriter: Aimee Mann
Symphonic music: Austin Symphony Orchestra
Chamber rock: Rachel's
Art: "Suspended Narratives"
Country music: Merle Haggard

Web posted: Oct. 24, 2005

Singer-songwriter

She's also known for moodiness.

Last March, a grumpy, stone-faced Aimee Mann gave a yawn-worthy performance at South by Southwest that was downright insulting to both Austin and the potentially superb artist herself.

Something must have happened to Mann in the seven months since her previous visit to the city. Friday, a relaxed Mann gave the most intimate performance that Austin could have expected. And yes, she revived "Voices Carry," which hasn't rusted one bit.

It was a more amiable Mann, so to speak.

Perhaps the change of attitude can be credited to the venue. Hogg Auditorium proved itself as a cozy space for Mann's storytelling, request-taking interaction with the audience. The opener, "Going Through the Motions," wasn't the strongest starter, but Mann quickly found her wind with "Save Me," a mesmerizing croon from the pits of loneliness and desperation, or as Mann called it, "the one that lost an Oscar to Phil Collins and his cartoon monkey song." In fact, her most powerful selections came from the "Magnolia" soundtrack. "Wise Up," haunting with its simplistic piano melody, and "One," her taunting Harry Nilsson cover, most feverishly embodied Mann as the woman who loves to obsess over loss, regret and isolation.
— Jeff McCrary

Symphonic music

SYMPHONY SHINES WHEN IT SLOWS DOWN

Peter Bay and the Austin Symphony Orchestra, in their concert Friday at Bass Concert Hall, were often excellent, though not always convincing. Joining them for Mozart's Piano Concerto in A major, pianist Marc-André Hamelin played beautifully, and with restraint. His fast passages brought to mind a favorite metaphor of many piano teachers: They were like strings of pearls, right down to the muted glow of each gem. The melancholy slow movement in Hamelin's hands spoke intimately, both sad and beautiful. But my eyebrows rose in the last movement, played at a tempo so fast that the woodwinds had trouble fitting in all of their quick notes. That choice needed rethinking.

Flanking the Concerto were two symphonies, first the Symphony No. 2, "Island of Innocence," by University of Texas composition professor Kevin Puts. Completed in 1999 but particularly meaningful after the events of Sept. 11, 2001, this one-movement symphony comes with a simple three-part structure. Starting in a richly intricate E-flat major that becomes almost tedious near the end, the work's sense of equilibrium is disturbed in the central portion, building to a cataclysmic climax. Bay and the orchestra clearly devoted considerable care to their performance, which balanced numerous melodic lines and instrumental colors and made a persuasive arc of the work.

Bay, in the last movement of the Dvorák Eighth Symphony, convincingly judged its many changes of mood, giving a slight pause for breath as sections ended and finding ways to let the music subtly push and pull. The preceding three movements, however, felt stiff and rather hurried. The symphony's opening movement felt like a drive through a gorgeous and varied Czech countryside — with the cruise control locked on full speed. While well-played, this marvelous symphony needed to be savored more.
— David Mead

Chamber rock

NOT YOUR GRANDFATHER'S CHAMBER MUSIC

"Public Enemy was playing shows when we started," Rachel's leader Jason Noble said by way of introducing his chamber-rock ensemble Sunday night during a standing-room-only concert at the Cactus Cafe.

Man, has it really been that long? (That hip-hop group hasn't been a public force in years.) The Louisville collective of rock musicians and string players dates back to 1991, but didn't release an album until 1995, when players in Noble's groundbreaking rock band Rodan went its separate ways. Many of these artists, as well as filmmaker Greg King — whose movies played in the background while Rachel's performed — worked with Rodan, and one gets the impression that this group is nothing more or less than a long-standing community of friends and neighbors that happens to make often-riveting, hard-to-classify modern music.

New York "chamber-core" (their tongue-in-cheek term) string quartet Invert opened the show with a nuanced set of dissonant themes and striking moments. Known for bringing rock dynamics to the centuries-old format, Invert alternated between its own compositions and discreetly chosen covers. A passage from Umebayashi Shigeru's score to "In the Mood For Love" was the prettiest moment, while their own piece "The March" was the most dramatic, a spectral theme and military-sounding base resolving into thunderous overtones.

Invert joined Rachel's for part of the latter band's set, which Noble said meant this tour was the first time the group had enough string players to perform some of their more detailed compositions, such as "Warm Body" and "Moscow/Clusters" — at one point, nine musicians were packed onto and in front of the tiny Cactus stage. With King's films of silent cityscapes as the background, the core band quintet traded off instruments — various pieces included viola, laptop, drums, vibes piano and organ, cello, guitar and electric bass — for rockish pieces that had yet to be recorded ("F# Haze") and more dramatic themes (the deeply melancholy "And Keep Smiling," the warm, acoustic "Frenching"). Here's to 15 more years of the world's coolest chamber music.
— Joe Gross

Art

IN THE BEGINNING, WE'RE LOST

Sometimes starting something is half the battle. Gaining entrée into individual visual artworks — works that directly and indirectly refer to film and literature — is a hurdle one must surmount in the exhibition, "Suspended Narratives," on view at Lora Reynolds Gallery.

Even if one is familiar with the work of these artists (many of them heavy hitters), deciding exactly where to enter their stories is tricky. As a whole, they certainly elicit context, appropriation, artifice and time. Still many of them are only partially penetrable. You might not know Douglas Gordon's vinyl letters affixed to the wall ("it's back") are fabricated in specific lipstick shades, or Fiona Banner's white round sculpture "Times" represents a period in the typeface Times set at 1800 points. One wonders not only how and where, but if, many viewers can find can find points of entry. And is it worth it? What's the payoff?

A relatively accessible (in no pejorative sense) offering is Gregory Crewdson's "Untitled (house fire)," a large digital C-print. It depicts an eerily staged scene of young, casually clad adults/refugees, making their way down railroad tracks adjacent to a house engulfed in flames. The house with flames shooting out the windows seems at least familiar and at most iconic. Crewdson's image is mysterious, unresolved and complex. It also pulls the viewer in, encouraging interpretation. (Part of this accessibility might result from the photographic medium.)

In her short statement, "Suspended Narratives" exhibition curator Maureen Mahony explains that these works are "deliberately open," inviting "both personal and universal interpretation."

Capitalizing on the idea that visual art narratives are not always fixed, sometimes progressing, pausing and or abruptly shifting, some of Mahony's selections are more "open" than others.

"Suspended Narratives" continues 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Tuesday-Saturdays, through Nov. 19, Lora Reynolds Gallery, 300 West Ave., No. 1318, free, 215-4965.
— Erin Keever

Country music

HAGGARD STILL LEGEND AND EVERYMAN

The Glenn is a great venue — clear, clean sound, lots of mall-style parking (because it is, in fact, right next to a mall), plenty of comfy rocks to sit on. The Glenn's one of Austin's best outdoor venues, but baby, it's cold outside, a fact that a fair percentage of the audience at Tuesday night's Merle Haggard show either forgot or chose to ignore. Beer is lovely, but hot coffee would have been welcome.

But this is Merle Haggard. We can gut up for one of the greats.

Opening the show was the Bastard Sons of Johnny Cash, they of the eye-poppingly presumptuous band name and alt-country that's more country than alt these days. They're still sassy enough to park a few lines from the Velvet Underground's "I'm Waiting for the Man" into an otherwise twang-powered set.

After a few songs from Freddy Powers with Haggard's crack 8-piece band, the Hag himself walked out — black fedora, leather fringe jacket, looking every inch the workin' man's legend.

It only takes a few songs to remind you that this singer also maintains a musical personality — nearly all of the songs he played dealt in some way with his obviously complicated relationship with freedom, in all of its meaning and guises. "Big City" pines for wide open spaces, while "Workin' Man Blues" longs for liberation from the clock. "I Think I'll Just Stay Here and Drink" looks to oblivion, while "Natural High" seeks relief in love and "Time Changes Everything" recognizes its limitations.

But his chops and everyman vibe made the contradictions work (or convinced you they weren't contradictions at all). His America-love-it-or-leave-it souvenir T-shirts and "The Fightin' Side of Me" are balanced by his new anti-war anthem "Rebuild America First." And when his eternally swinging band of Strangers makes the natural move from Bob Wills to "As Time Goes By," Haggard reminds one of another guy with a unique worldview, also torn about hippies and obsessed with freedom, the Hag's opened for many times: Bob Dylan.
— Joe Gross