(I swear I saw this headline on CNN.com on Friday. “Everybody Hates Chris. Why?” I ask that question all the time. Nice to know that international news services are also looking into the matter.)
I’ve spent the past three nights having some of the best concert experiences of my life so I’ll be writing concert reviews for the next two nights. Tonight it’ll be about the Richard Buckner show on Thursday (the one that resulted in my incredibly late post). Tomorrow will be on Alejandro Escovedo’s two night stand at Davey’s. Even if you’ve never heard a note of either guy’s music (and trust me, you have, you just don’t know about it yet), you’ll want to read the reviews. And Super: I will address your comments some time this week. I need a few days to craft a response, though the evidence of the loyal female blog followers is definitely lacking. Anyway, music review time.
You might not know the name Richard Buckner but you have heard his music. Back during the summer Olympics Volkswagen started playing a commercial that was a simplistic at its core. Just a couple driving through the wilderness with this acoustic guitar and a voice singing in the background “But, O, where you lay your head tonight, I’ll roll away alone and close on down.” That song seeping mysteriously into the background was Richard Buckner’s “Ariel Ramirez” off of the brilliant album Since. Well, an edited version of the song taking all of the references to death and despair, which are probably not what you want in your car ad.
See, Richard is an incredibly peculiar artist. His music is dark and mysterious in a way that is really unopposed. It is the opposite of what death metal bands and all of those hard rock bands who try to show that they’ve seen evil. All of those bands make it a farce because unless the devil’s weapon of choice is hairspray (and after spending enough time in suburban malls, it very well may be), they are all much to upbeat and energetic to truly be dark. Richard, on the other hand, he looked into the darkness of his own soul and it looked back. And that’s what his music is about.
He’s grown more inventive and creative as the years have gone by. He’s basically ignored song structure, I don’t believe that he’s written a song with a chorus in it for ten years. No straightforward lyrics either, I’ve listened to songs while reading the lyrics and puzzled over what they actually mean. In my heart, I know from the notes and the timber of his voice that it is about heartbreak and despair and in rare occasions, rebirth. He’s nearly given up on even tracking his discs, he lists the lyrics in one big block with no notation as to where one song begins and another ends. This was emphasized in the album The Hill where he interpreted a number of Edgar Lee Master’s poems, placed them to music, and recorded it as a single track on a disc.
His show on Thursday night was the culmination of this path that I have watched him on for nearly seven years now. A bare stage with only two acoustic guitars at his feet. He sat down and without speaking a word to the audience, plugged in a guitar and started to play. He finished his first song and then started to loop some acoustic playing. Then, with the loop going on in the background he unplugged the guitar, picked up the other, plugged back in, and started playing over the loop, eventually stopping the loop and going into the next song. He did this non stop for the entire set.
You couldn’t tell where a song started or ended. The crowd had to pick moments to clap in appreciation. There was no stage banter, no requests from the audience, just continual music for an hour and fifteen minutes. Then, with a loop going in the background, he said “Thank you all for coming. Good night” and walked off stage. We all clap for an encore so he steps back on stage (with the loop still playing) and goes into two more songs, finishing with Fater, an essentially acapella track. He stops the loop and again thanks the crowd and that ends the show. A full set and an encore in which the music never stopped.
There’s a lot of people who say that you can’t do anything new in music. There are only so many notes and when people like Mozart had first crack at them there really isn’t much room for innovation. But I’ve never seen anything like that, an attempt to reinterpret what a concert is. Especially what one person can do onstage. It’s as if we all peered into the shadows and left with the euphoria of coming out alive. Maybe it’s not what everyone is looking for in a concert experience but it is definitely unforgettable.
(One side story: while Richard’s music is quite possibly the darkest stuff I’ve ever heard, he is a completely different guy offstage. I was next to him at the bar for a few minutes before the show and was joking about life in Austin and he is a great guy. Just laughing and joking around. But when he steps on stage it is truly a metamorphosis. Singing with his eyes closed, sometimes unleashing what almost seems to be a guttural roar, it’s like a totally different person.)
The five random CDs for the week:
1) Guster “Lost and Gone Forever”
2) U2 “Live at Notre Dame”
3) Jack Ingram “Jack Ingram”
4) Allison Moorer “The Hardest Part”
5) Old 97s “Early Tracks”
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