Blame Canada
The Spin did not make it to the Sommet Center to see Celine Dion last week, but damn if everybody and their mom didn't want to tell us about it. So, here's a dispatch we received from the field:
Dion nurtures her songs to maturity using melisma and Intellabeams, but she spends her between-song patter as a goofy spaz who loves nothing more than making silly faces or sincerely asking the audience's permission to perform songs that those very people gleefully shelled out dollars to hear in the first place. If she weren't so completely genuine, it would seem like Gena Rowlands-in-Opening-Night madness, and yet you come away from the Taking Chances Tour with the kind of respect normally afforded to civil engineers or a really adventurous chef.
Her commitment was unquestionable, especially during the didn't-see-that-coming James Brown medley and during a fierce barrel through her 1995 Francophone career-definer "Pour Que tu M'Aimes Encore." But what really struck us was this: The glittery black bell-bottoms, the toreador dancers, the extended Chrysler dance remix that opens the show—even the ceaseless thanking of the audience—you feel like that's just how she is, and she'd be doing it even if millions of people worldwide weren't lapping it up. Sincerity, even strapped to the hood of a Wagnerian Jim Steinman roadster like "It's All Coming Back to Me Now," punches through even the thickest of Lithium and Zoloft hazes.
A more fraught correspondent had these questions after enjoying That Which Was Not Expected to Be Enjoyable:
Can I show my face at rock clubs in Nashville again? Will Mercy Lounge kick me out of their free shows this week? Will everyone see the scarlet C on my chest? Can I squeeze any kind of ironic cool points out of this?
More importantly, how can I convince local rock bands to have multiple costume changes?
Parental advisory
While advertised as one of the coldest of the year, Thursday night still offered a lot of stuff to do, and so The End was not our first choice—that would have been our bed underneath a nice electric blanket. Worse, it's not news to anyone that The Spin has an intense aversion to showing up too early. Well, our worst fears were realized last night when we showed up for what would eventually be a solid uneventful hour before the first band went on.
Chattanooga's Moonlight Bride finally got things going with a dancy brand of indie rock that gave us a major 2003 college radio flashback. Their singer's high-pitched croon reminded us a lot of our own Jon Burr (How I Became the Bomb) if he were perhaps fronting The Fever or Stellastarr. Competent, melodic and by no means offensive to the ears, Moonlight Bride still couldn't keep our attention long enough to prevent a stroll down to the Gold Rush for a shot of whiskey to warm our innards. When we returned, we were pleased to find the room had filled up pretty nicely to about a third of its capacity, providing a little more body heat in an otherwise benumbed space.
Since we were already set up to anticipate an evening of '80s throwback, post-punk indie-rock, we were not adequately prepared for the swift boot to the balls we received from Cactus' first outburst of disjointed hardcore noise punk. With a pants-less drummer between them, brothers Asher and Sam Rogers were in no short supply of attitude, dealing out squealing, scratching guitars, pile-driving bass, sputtering drums and alternating fits of rage and melody.
The night's main attraction was local act Mother/Father, who were celebrating the release of their self-titled three-song EP. Clad all in black, lit from below and looming from inside a cloud of synthetic smoke, Mother/Father definitely achieved a sense of authenticity with their purist approach to late-'70s gothic rock. Plodding drums, high-pitched bass lines and scathing, jangling, intertwining guitars with copious amounts of reverb back up singer-songwriter James Robert Farmer's silky croon. Often breaking into a Jeff Buckley-style falsetto, JRF actually kind of looks like a young Nick Cave with less forehead. Lyrically, we couldn't make out much, but we assume they're depressing and will leave it at that. We payed more attention to the powerfully melodic choruses they were serving up—after all, we were already going to be reminded of what a cold world it is as soon as we walked outside.
When a plan comes together
We don't do the red-wine-and-folk-singer thing on Friday nights very often. It's usually not our speed. We're unsophisticated louts. Rabble-rousers. Hooligans. Troublemakers. Not the types that usually sit in on songwriters sharing emotional stories after we've punched the clock on Friday afternoon—we wanna fuck shit up. But we also make exceptions.
This past weekend we put on our finest Alberta Clipper-appropriate outer-gear and braved the arctic tundra over to The Rutledge for Janis Ian and Gretchen Peters. See, these ladies know how to start some shit, and both have been on the receiving end of some serious (if poorly spelled) death threats—which we can totally identify with.
The nut jobs came out of the woodwork when Ian penned her classic mid-'60s tale of interracial love, "Society's Child," and again in '08 when Peters donated royalty money to Planned Parenthood in Sarah Palin's name. (As politicians are wont to do, Palin used the contextually inappropriate Martina McBride hit, "Independence Day," as theme music. Peters wrote the song and didn't dig the moose hunter. It's pretty frickin' meta.)
The show itself was far more relaxed than you might glean from the war stories, though. Ian really should start teaching the art of stage banter at some of our local music schools: Her lectures would be worth the insane increases in tuition. Seriously, we see so many songwriters playing the Nick Drake I'm-so-timid-I-might-explode-if-you-clap shtick that a performer who ranks as downright hilarious while trenching the depths of human strength and frailty is, frankly, really fucking refreshing. For all of the aspiring First Name Last Names out there: It's OK to laugh. Lighten up a bit, please. Also, kids, if you're going to cover "Wild Horses," please keep it killer. When Ian, Peters and keyboardist Barry Walsh dug into that Jagger-Richards classic, they set a pretty high watermark, by which you will all be judged. It was badass.
Change has finally come to America. Have you seen the new Nashville Cream design? Send a transcript of your tweet feed to thespin@nashvillescene.com.
