At the end Redbird took flight, leaving the stage to applause that was as thunderous as the performance was low-key.
-- Buzz McClain
Graham Coxon
Graham Coxon sported a crisp blazer and thick-rimmed glasses when he took the stage Wednesday night at the Black Cat. Looking both boyish and stately, the former Blur guitarist had dressed as if to remind everyone that he was one of the founding fathers of Brit-pop. But by the second encore -- with coat and specs long gone -- Coxon's Brit-pop Dr. Jekyll had transformed into a power-pop Mr. Hyde, delivering guitar solos on his back, kicking his feet skyward in a tantrum.
And while he might be revisiting the prickly, punky energy of his youth, it's impossible to ignore the deft songwriting prowess he developed during his Blur years. Throughout the 70-minute set, Coxon consistently trumped each vibrant verse with an even catchier chorus. His deadpan cockney delivery was always at the center -- charming and surprisingly versatile on the bluesy "Girl Done Gone," the billowing "All Over Me" and the stuttering "Hopeless Friend."
Coxon's band also got more wound up as the set wound down, crashing through highly caffeinated versions of "Gimme Some Love" (a new tune that could have been lifted from the Rezillos' songbook), a taut cover of Mission of Burma's "Fame and Fortune" and another sneering new romp called "I Can't Look at Your Skin." Tellingly, Coxon downed heavy swigs of Red Bull between each of these numbers.
Although the half-capacity crowd had dwindled by set's end, delighted fans still cheered Coxon with a wave of eager "whoo-hoos." It's safe to say they weren't requesting the old Blur tune.
-- Chris Richards
Backstreet Boys
It's been five years since the Backstreet Boys released an album, but not much has changed for the quintet. At a sold-out show at the 9:30 club on Wednesday night, the Boys danced in perfect sync while fans screamed the words to such hits as "I Want It That Way" and "Shape of My Heart."
The Boys are performing at smaller clubs in preparation for the release of a new album this summer. In addition to brushing up on older songs, they tried out a few new ones, which flowed seamlessly in their set. The new track "Climbing the Walls" featured their trademark mushy lyrics ("I can't let you go / You're a part of me now") and that same climax-signaling key change as on older songs like "I'll Never Break Your Heart."
The group's formulaic songwriting may be an easy target, but it has resulted in a number of catchy, hard-to-forget pop songs. The Boys flashed wide smiles as they danced all over the stage, even interacting with their five-piece backing band. Despite all that movement, their vocals blended effortlessly as they crooned to the ecstatic audience.
They closed their 90-minute set with "Everybody (Backstreet's Back)." The eight-year-old track summed up the night's energy with the triumphantly repeated phrase "Backstreet's back -- ALRIGHT!"
-- Catherine P. Lewis
'Failing Kansas'
There is no standard vocabulary adequate to describe "Failing Kansas," which was performed Wednesday evening at George Mason University's Harris Theatre. It is a one-man show, a collage of music and film clips, a stream of consciousness that circles around an episode of bloody horror. For full appreciation, it should be seen more than once, with a study of composer-performer Mikel Rouse's notes and its nine section titles.
Unfortunately, it had only one performance for an audience that was enthusiastic but much too small to provoke a repeat.
The subject of "Failing Kansas" is the murder of the Clutter family as described by Truman Capote in "In Cold Blood" and the movie of the same name by Richard Brooks. "Because of these works," Rouse explains in a note, "I was able to move beyond a narrative approach and toward the effect of pure sound: the sound of many conflicting voices assembling the story."
In the end, it is an effort to put the audience into the minds of the killers, Perry Smith and Dick Hickock. Predictably, it is rather chaotic, with Rouse's voice live and recorded, fragments of hymns, popular songs, poetry and quotes from the murderers arranged in patterns of obsessive repetition.
As a visual background to Rouse, who plays the harmonica and sings in a quasi-monotone using four strategically placed microphones, a large screen shows repeated film clips from New York moviemaker Cliff Baldwin's "50 Films in 75 Minutes," which has no perceptible connection to the Clutter murders.
-- Joseph McLellan
