Jean Grae
By choosing to give listeners flashes of brilliance rather than thigh, indie-rapper Jean Grae has distanced herself from her oversexed hip-hop sisters. And the South Africa-born, New York-bred MC takes her role as champion of fully clothed, free-thinking feminist rap seriously. At the Black Cat on Friday night, Grae announced that the concert, which also featured the District's S.P.P. and Chicagoan Diverse, proved that a female headliner can pack a hip-hop show.
But Grae is more than a positive role model for girls with dreams of transferring verses from wide-rule to wax: She is one of the most versatile artists rhyming today. Whether complaining to the crowd about the horrible feel of stiff new jeans, referring to Tom Selleck's facial hair, or waving her middle finger for the bilious "Hater's Anthem," Grae switched topics and tone with seamless ease.
Jean Grae, who headlined the hip-hop show at the Black Cat but tried to show a softer side of her music as well.
(Craig Wetherby)
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The audience preferred the more aggressive material. A fiery freestyle set to the music of Ashanti's "Only U," and an excerpt from "Jeanius," Grae's still unreleased but widely bootlegged project with producer 9th Wonder, were met with wild fist-pumping.
But when Grae showed a softer side, the crowd left her stranded. During "Not Like Me," a looking-for-love song from her 2004 disc, "This Week," hands were jammed into pockets. After Grae yelled at the audience for eschewing the sensitive stuff, they let down their guard. And before the night was over, Grae led the crowd in the "largest Electric Slide ever done at a hip-hop show."
-- Sarah Godfrey
Colin Meloy
Colin Meloy is a playful fellow, a wordsmith who seems just as enamored with the sound of syllables colliding as what it means when they do. He can, for instance, use the words "pinioned," "minions" and "opinions" in a single line. He's a sharp, clever singer-songwriter who will keep your attention even if you're not always quite sure what it is he's singing about. He's also an entertaining storyteller even if you don't always believe his stories.
At a sold-out, overstuffed Iota Friday night, the frontman of the indie pop band the Decemberists played a charming solo acoustic show that was an enthralling exercise in modern folkie fun and fancy. With its ornate orchestration and spillover romanticism, Meloy's band can sometimes come on too strong and too silly. But when his songs are stripped down as they were Friday, they brim with an undeniable sweetness, odd charm and mystery. They are less pretentious -- and more compelling -- than they first appear. Every once in a while they are absolutely perfect.
Meloy's voice sounds like a cross between Phil Ochs's winning earnestness and Morrissey's heartbroken yearning. Actually, Meloy doesn't sound like Morrissey so much as channel him. After admitting his Morrissey obsession to the crowd, he went on to cover "I've Changed My Plea to Guilty" and "Sister I'm A Poet." It was his own songs though, like "The Legionnaire's Lament," "Red Right Ankle" and the surreal mini-novel "My Mother Was a Chinese Trapeze Artist" that excited the audience most. As a closer for the nearly two-hour show, Meloy reinterpreted Cheap Trick's "Southern Girls" as a traditional-sounding folk song and got the crowd to sing along. Now that's brilliant.
-- Joe Heim
Badfinger
Snow didn't stop Badfinger's Saturday night show from going on at Wolf Trap. Given all the band has survived through the decades, that's to be expected.
The group now appearing under the Badfinger name has only one member, guitarist Joey Molland, who was on the scene back when Paul McCartney served as a patron and released its records under the Beatles' Apple Records label. Badfinger banged out a string of hit singles in the early 1970s, backed up all four ex-Beatles on early solo projects and played George Harrison's Concert for Bangla Desh.
But the Badfinger story included some of the saddest chapters in rock history, with chief songwriters Pete Ham and Tom Evans hanging themselves about eight years apart in the same London neighborhood.
Given that those two wrote or co-wrote all of Badfinger's biggest hits save one -- McCartney donated "Come and Get It" -- some might quibble with Molland's decision to keep the Badfinger name going. But there was no quibbling among the 40- and 50-somethings who ignored the travel advisories and made it to Wolf Trap. (Though officially a sellout, the house was about half full at showtime.) They came for the songs, and if it takes what is essentially a Badfinger tribute band to keep these classic cuts alive, so be it.
Molland, a Liverpudlian who looks a whole lot like McCartney, happily led his quintet through a 90-minute set highlighted by the singles "No Matter What," "Day After Day," "Baby Blue" and "Without You." The melody of the latter tune, a power ballad by Ham and Evans that was a No. 1 single when covered separately by Harry Nilsson and Mariah Carey, overwhelms the downer lyrics, which, like much of the Badfinger catalogue, seems to foretell the writers' fate: "It's only fair that I should let you know what you should know," Molland sang. "I can't live, if living is without you."
