Friday, March 21, 2008

Citay

When the memo went out that indie-rock bands were not supposed to emulate hippies, well, Citay missed it. And it's fortunate that they did. During their set Wednesday night at the Red & the Black, the San Francisco-based sextet performed gorgeous music that carried Philip Glass-style minimalism deep into the bowels of Laurel Canyon. Songs like "Little Kingdom," the title track to their recently released second album, climbed from a series of gentle acoustic guitar chords into a full-bloom chorus of harmonizing electric guitar leads. Imagine an evening of chamber music composed by Duane Allman and you're part of the way there.

D.C. hipsters, however, were apparently more studious about checking their memos. There were moments -- for instance, if a single person briefly left the room to visit the toilet -- when the number of amplifiers onstage threatened to outnumber the audience. Also, the absence of any local bands on the bill left Citay alone in a desolate room.

Yet over the course of an hour, Citay managed to make the room feel less like a deserted rock club and more like the Winterland Ballroom circa '77. Lead singer-songwriter Ezra Fienberg spent the evening sporting a wide grin and bobbing about like a sleep-deprived Deadhead -- furiously strumming his acoustic guitar while the group performed the blissful stoner waltz "Eye on the Dollar." Here a cascading chorus of "oohs" and "ahhs" paused only long enough for one of the band's three guitarists to stomp on the "underwater" pedal and soar into a solo. It was a spectacle, even if only few people were there to see it.

-- Aaron Leitko

Let's get this out of the way: Liam Finn sounds a lot like his dad, Neil, singer-songwriter for Crowded House.

But while the 24-year-old multi-instrumentalist has the Beatlesesque chops of his pop -- and although Liam is a member of the recently reconstituted Crowded House -- their aesthetic positions are closer to distant cousins than that of father and son. Neil is a crisp and clean pop tunesmith whose '60s guitar-rock melodies are delivered with a lush studio sheen. But Liam is a virtual one-man band whose songs have the same rich harmonies and hooks as his father's, but whose arranging sensibilities on his debut CD, "I'll Be Lightning," resonate with lo-fi earthy energy.

The younger Finn brought his act -- he was joined by singer-instrumentalist Eliza-Jane Barnes -- to DC9 on Wednesday, marking his Washington debut. And though he was the opening artist of a three-band evening, the humorous and engaging Finn played like a headliner. (Judging from the number of people mouthing the words to his songs, he likely will be at the top of the bill the next time he comes to town.)

Crashing through eight songs in 35 minutes, the shaggy-haired and bearded Finn turned the folkier tunes from his album, such as "Second Chance," into raucous indie rockers -- yes, even without a band behind him. Using pedals to loop guitar riffs and bass lines, Finn would frequently build the songs to a certain crescendo before jumping over to his drum kit and bashing away.

He's not a great drummer at all, and there was a bit of a circus quality to all the hopping around, but Liam Finn is already a really good songwriter. Just like Dad.

-- Christopher Porter