Hollering gruff folk ballads every inch cribbed from Delta blues standards—down to his strained, impassioned vocals, bare-boned acoustic guitar and enviable ability to spin a lonesome tale—William Elliott Whitmore is a revivalist if you’ve ever heard one. Perhaps trying to distinguish himself from the coterie of progressive free-folk musicians saturating the indie underground, Whitmore makes no qualms about his source material and refuses to muddy it, save light organ and drums, with artsy genre-bending. While his latest effort Animals in the Dark is a critical turn-off, at times resorting to hackneyed and all-too-familiar neo-traditional blues stock and threadbare lyrics, Whitmore’s stark vulnerability and street-busking persona make him a pleasure.
Sun., May 10, 8 p.m., 2009
Sun., May 10, 8 p.m., 2009
