MUSIC

Monday, December 18, 2006

Damien Rice

"So, are you depressed enough yet?" Damien Rice asked 75 minutes into his surprisingly lively -- and lengthy -- two-hour set Saturday night at the Lincoln Theatre. Funny thing is, nobody was.

Although the two LPs and the B-sides collection that make up the forlorn Irish balladeer's U.S. catalogue are relentlessly minor-key affairs, his live show was a different beast entirely: generous, humorous, unpredictable and only occasionally meandering, with Rice's superb band a much stronger presence than on his sparely produced records. Singer Lisa Hannigan, especially, was a striking visual and musical foil; her voice, reminiscent of Sinead O'Connor's, offered haunting countermelodies to Rice's. When she took the stage two songs into the set, Rice's early tentativeness -- on "Delicate" and "Volcano" -- disappeared.

It wasn't just Hannigan -- Rice's entire five-piece band was in top form, helping the boss mostly avoid the preciousness to which sensitive alterna-folkies so often succumb. Up-tempo numbers such as "Woman Like a Man" and "I Remember" rocked harder then their too-polite recorded versions, courtesy of drummer Tomo. Cellist Vyvienne Long had a brief, lovely turn in the spotlight when she sang and played a solo-piano cover of the Flaming Lips' "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots."

If that wasn't enough to keep the increasingly rowdy audience guessing, Rice even ended the show with an attempt at a joke, downing two big glasses of red wine in quick succession as he stumbled around the lip of the stage and fumbled his way through an intro to "Cheers Darlin' " as the midnight curfew (which he'd pointed out shortly before) came and went.

Moments later, as the band wrapped up the number, Rice pretended to call a taxi to bring him home. At some point during the long evening, the sad-sack alterna-folkie had morphed into "Only the Lonely"-era Frank Sinatra. And if that isn't a compliment, I don't know what is.

-- Chris Klimek

Jen Gunderman And the Ornaments

If the balmy weather has prevented you from getting into the Christmas spirit, Friday's performance at Iota by the Ornaments would have done the trick. The makeshift band -- Last Train Home's trumpeter Kevin Cordt and a rhythm section of bassist Jim Gray and drummer Marty Lynds -- was fronted by former Jayhawks keyboardist Jen Gunderman, who played with aplomb for Peanuts.

In a bit of a musical stunt, Gunderman and company performed the soundtrack of 1965's TV perennial "A Charlie Brown Christmas" from beginning to end, to terrific effect. Beginning with "O, Tannenbaum" and all the way through to "Greensleeves," the band stayed faithful to composer Vince Guaraldi's jazz score, but with a little more swing.

The audience, captured by the moment, turned "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" into a spirited, all-out singalong.

The familiar introduction to Beethoven's "Fur Elise" led, unpredictably, into "The Christmas Song," with its roasting chestnuts and nose-nipping Jack Frost. "Skating" was all jazz piano and rhythm, as was "Christmas Is Coming," leading to the sad conclusion that it's likely no other cartoon will ever have such sophisticated music.

The show's highlight was the soundtrack's "Linus and Lucy," which the band played with a swinging swagger.

For her part, Gunderman, who spoke not a word (perhaps to preserve the mood), looked genuinely happy to be playing the music, smiling throughout -- and if nothing else, she looked a heck of a lot cuter than Schroeder.

-- Buzz McClain

Gutbucket at Galaxy Hut

"We figure we're good dinner music," Gutbucket saxophonist Ken Thomson told the Galaxy Hut patrons who were still finishing their entrees midway through the band's set on Saturday night. "A nice pan-seared tofu, and us."

The joke wasn't based solely on the name. The jazz-punk group's fierce, complex music and its high-speed mutations stimulate the mind, but it's hard to imagine Gutbucket doing much for one's digestion.

The tricky melodies and rhythms of songs such as "Throsp%" and "Money Management for a Better Life" (from its latest album, "Sludge Test") carve themselves into your consciousness through the band's precise, relentless playing. Yet those materials contain the seeds of their own downfall, as Gutbucket gleefully proves by moving to the next musical place before you've had time to settle in with the first one. The band holds still only to support improvised solos, delivered over the weekend in blistering fashion by Thomson and drummer Paul Chuffo.

Besides the deformed Americana of their originals, they also tossed in the best possible rock cover of classical composer Olivier Messiaen's "Dance of Fury, for the Seven Trumpets," nailing its snaky rhythms and ferocious chords as Thomson bounded back and forth across the floor.

Mosquito Death Squadron made some crackling, lively sounds with its batteries of percussion and occasional three-guitar lineup, but its relatively static grooves sounded plain after hearing Gutbucket. MDS's efforts to whip up a frenzy in faster tunes mostly just felt busy, despite the stalwart drumming of the stage-named Pilesar. Mid-tempo songs such as "Insecurity," however, allowed the band to better integrate its diverse array of influences (from punk to surf rock to country) and to turn up the harmonic heat, resulting in some solid entertainment.

-- Andrew Lindemann Malone

¡Forward, Russia!

Playing the final show of its debut American tour at the Black Cat on Saturday, ¡Forward, Russia! danced on the divide between abandon and calculation. The four musicians wore identical T-shirts emblazoned with the twin exclamation points, one upside down, of the British punk-funk band's logo. The three male members also sported scraggly, if not quite matching, beards. Yet the group played with such force that it blew past its gimmickry (which includes numbering rather than naming its songs).

Although singer Tom Woodhead occasionally contributed some primitive synth bits, the music consisted principally of a walloping rhythm section and a series of trebly, precarious guitar riffs. The vocalist twisted himself into corkscrew postures, often with one arm flapping above his head -- and sometimes looked as if he just might choke himself with that microphone cord.

But then, strangulation is one of the band's musical motifs: Woodhead's voice and Whiskas's guitar sounded thin and stressed, as if grasping for a hold amid the implacable rhythms. On their concluding vocal duet, drummer Katie Nicholls was rather more serene than Woodhead, but the show ended with a vote for anarchy. The musicians beckoned several pals onstage to bash at the drum kit, and concluded when Whiskas hung his guitar from a pipe over the stage, leaving it to howl as the Russians retreated.

Second-billed Snowden had a similar lineup to the headliner, although singer Jordan Jeffares played some guitar, and he and bassist Corinne Lee dabbled in synth. The empty spaces of such songs as "Anti Anti" showed the Atlanta quartet's debt to dub, and the rumbling guitar breaks suggested Fugazi, a band whose influence is less obvious on Snowden's recent album. These are worthy sources, and Snowden assembled a lively racket from them. Yet for all its vigor, the band never quite reached the peak it aimed for.

-- Mark Jenkins