The Tris McCall Report

Swinging into full curatorial mode.

Thursday, April 3

Baby Dayliner @ Club Luxx, 9 PM (with the Epoxys)

Ethan "Baby Dayliner" Marunas recently described the experience of performing/attending at Luxx as "like going in to the office", and it's no surprise it feels that way to him. This is a home game for one of Club Luxx's most notable success stories, a performer/beatmeister/songwriter who has regularly driven the normally-impassive Grand Street crowd to abject delirium. But Baby D doesn't pander to least common denominator tastes (well, not usually) -- he's a thoughtful and sophisticated writer with an idiosyncratic project that bears only a superficial resemblance to the already-tired "electroclash" movement. With an album slated for release later this year and the reissue of the fantastic High Heart And Low Estate on the not-too-distant horizon, Baby Dayliner will probably be pushed out of NYC and on to the road by his own popularity, so this might be one of the last chances you'll get to see him in the environment where his legend first began to build. At this point, Luxx probably needs Baby D more than Baby D needs Luxx -- his reputation is more or less assured, while they need all the intellectual acts they can shoehorn in to prevent willful rock stoopidity from completely possessing their spirit. It'll the first day of the baseball season, so you're sure to hear "Beatdowns", the greatest song ever written about the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry -- even if Ethan does insist it's about Seattle.

Like Moving Insects & Elizabeth Harper @ Williamsburg Publik House, 8 PM (with American Altitude and Brad Lauretti)

Some Jersey rockers bail to Brooklyn, and others, perhaps those with less of a careerist motive, gravitate toward Philadelphia. Todd Starlin's Wahoo Moment were among the handful of most interesting groups to emerge from Rutgers and New Brunswick, but their hybrid of pastoral meandering, indie-pop mysticism, and occasional electronic jamming proved too weird for terminally conservative Central Jersey. Something of our own homegrown Gomez, Wahoo Moment stole the show at the 2001 Wilmington Exchange Festival with a breathtaking set highlighted by Starlin's impassioned and frequently trance-like vocal performance. But aesthetic success didn't hold the band together, and now Starlin is trying again with Like Moving Insects. I haven't heard them yet, but as long as he's fronting the project, they're worth going well out of your way to check out. By coincidence, the Insects share the bill with another remarkable original -- Lower Manhattan's breathy, plaintive, formidably expressive Elizabeth Harper. I'm not sure if Harper is playing with a band or on her own, but in either case, she's a joy to watch, and there's something simultaneously dizzying and liberating about her slurred, madly-romantic melodies and arrangements. I'm really not much for transcendence, since I consider it a bonehead's value, but both Harper and Starlin manage to turn the trick of creating a captivating, otherworldly, quasi-mystical vibe with their music while remaining extremely literate. If you can get transcendence and intelligence at the same time, well, that's an unbeatable combination. Plus, the show is free.

 

Friday, April 4

Tris McCall Presents: Sabado Domingo, Tris McCall, Milton, and Paula Carino @ Pete's Candy Store, 8 PM

Yes, I'm previewing my own show. This is a big night for me -- I've never put a bill together before -- but it's bigger yet for Milton, who is officially releasing Milton/Scenes From The Interior, his first album, and one that'll probably set the standard for local singer-songwriters for the next few years. The packaging alone (borrowed as it is from old Vanguard folk albums and Fifties jazz records) is worth whatever he'll be charging for it. Sabado Domingo hasn't put out any new material in a while, but in case you haven't heard the old stuff, here's a chance to play catch-up to Brooklyn's answer to Neutral Milk Hotel. Paula Carino's songbook is deep and varied, and her set will probably draw heavily from her excellent Aquacade, but if we're really lucky, she'll give us "Things Hidden..." and/or "With The Bathwater" from the impossibly blue Robots Helping Robots. She's a short-story writer with an eye for detail and an occasional swami-like ability to present listeners with musical and lyrical riddles. As for me, like Chuck D, I don't rhyme for the sake of riddling, nor do I rhyme for the sake of sake (Japanese rice wine). Expect off-the-wall silliness, absurdism, hectoring, moments of penetrating clarity, big words that I shouldn't have used, drones, synthesizer madness, exhortations to action; all the usual components of a Tris McCall solo show. And some good beats, too.

 

Saturday, April 5

Tommy Strazza @ Arlene's Grocery, 7 PM

They sure run 'em out there early at Arlene's. I hope there's a nice crowd there for Strazza, an unlikely Central Jersey guitar titan who loves the Boss and sings everything with the conviction of a crusading Middlesex County assemblyman. It's not tough to imagine Strazza storming to the lip of the stage and tearing into the furious solo for "Down And Out Blues"; and it's even easier to envision him doing it in front of an empty house. But hell, maybe I'm wrong here -- Strazza might have NYC fans crawling all over Stanton Street, waiting for this opportunity to indulge in some great Turnpike rock in the heart of the hipster district. And once the show is over, they've got plenty of time to stroll around the corner for...

Tiger Mountain @ Mercury Lounge, 10:30 PM (with Acquiesce, the Blondes, Pilot To Gunner)

Two guitars, one rock-solid bass, Charlie Watticisms on the kit, and some of the most immediate radio-friendly pop-rock Brooklyn has to offer. In the chilly impersonality of the airplane hangar otherwise known as Mercury Lounge, it might take them awhile to warm up -- but they will, and when they do, the guitars slam like sheet metal, and the songs hit their marks with the easy inevitability of a finely-calibrated piston engine. I don't know which singer is which: one brings you the rewrites of "Honky Tonk Woman" and "Tumblin' Dice" (not that that's a bad thing), while the other provides counterpoint with slightly more meditative numbers that recall Joe Jackson before he moved to piano for good. "Song #3" is the hit with the big riff, but "Night Town" is the grandiose rock throwdown that you won't be able to get dislodged from your brain.

Val Emmich & The Blakes @ Maxwell's, 9 PM (with Alfonzo Velez and The Good North)

Maxwell's is still the best place in the multiverse to catch a show, and with its friendly restaurant area and live room, it's a fitting spot to welcome conquering hero Val Emmich home from SXSW. Emmich gets called emo by rock-crits who don't know how to pigeonhole his deeply personal but sylistically varied missives; to me, he's an early nineties-style alternarocker with a confessional streak and a singing voice that owes as much to Morrissey and Neil Diamond as it does to Eddie Vedder. Slow Down Kid, the full-length he released in the wake of the warm reception of his lightly conceptual Fifteen-Minute Relationship EP, certainly does roar at times, but it's the more straightforward rockers like "Privacy Attracts A Crowd" where he clears enough space for his admittedly emotive approach to take hold. In concert, Emmich puts the song first and the effrontery second, and his commitment to communication is refreshing. As for the Blakes, it took the London-straight-outta-Asbury quartet a little while to find their sound, but now that they've struck upon it, you can expect their candy-cane pop mastery to continue to be a highlight of the Jersey scene for at least the balance of 2003.

 

Sunday, April 6

Of Montreal @ Northsix (or some facsimile thereof), 9 PM (with Marshmallow Coast)

Oh, jeez, I remember watching Kevin Barnes perform with Drink Me about a thousand years ago at Maxwell's. Old concept-rockers neither die nor fade away; they just keep spewing out concepts like a berzerk humidifier. As the most genuinely funny touring act in indie-pop, the morbid Of Montreal has a heavy load to carry -- they must manage to be menacing without sacrificing any of the twee-ness and whimsy that's a requirement for the genre. That they ever pulled it off was miracle enough; that they keep doing it, record after record, simply beggars disbelief. Abandoning the sweeping narratives that held prior releases together, the manic, disturbed Aldhils Arboreum proves to be just as acid-drenched and fascinating as their other, more complex albums. At this point, everything Barnes records is part of the overarching concept -- he could do a series of balalaika pieces, and if you've followed him so far, they'd assimilate without friction to his twisted vision. Unlike other indiepop acts, Of Montreal does not dissipate into sophomoric instrumental incompetence in a live setting. I know, I know, if you're already an indiepop fan, you're prepared to pay that price, but I'm here to tell you that you don't always have to.

Did I forget to list your band? Bad turtle, bad! Let me know about it.