Our (fairly) regular roundup of Music & Arts related news from Chicago-based web media, featuring thoughts and insight from some of the city’s most dedicated writers.
- Neil Young phones home
Having hyped the alleged higher audio fidelity of the Pono system a few months ago at South by Southwest—without ever bothering to play it for the crowd who assembled to hear him speak—in typically perverse fashion, Neil Young has released a new album recorded with some of the most lo-fi equipment he’s ever used: the antique direct-to-vinyl Voice-o-Graph at Jack White’s Third Man complex in Nashville, to be precise. Crammed into a what’s basically a converted old phone booth, we get Neil at his most intimate: just his voice, his acoustic guitar, and his harmonica, tackling a set of mostly pre-rock folk standards that he used to sing with his family in the parlor (hence the album title).
As such, A Letter Home is a spiritual bookend or companion to Americana (2012), though some might argue that tunes such as Phil Ochs’ “Changes,” Bob Dylan’s “Girl from the North Country,” Tim Hardin’s “Reasons to Believe,” and the Everly Brothers’ “I Wonder if I Care as Much” have the edge on the earlier disc’s renditions of “Oh Susannah” and “She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain,” Crazy Horse or no. At first blush, the scratchy quality might be off-putting. But as often is the case with Young, his passion for the material and unfettered joy in making a glorious noise ultimately carry the day, and the pleasure he takes in the material, the recording technology, and hanging with White is palpable.
Neil Young, A Letter Home (Third Man Records)
Rating on the 4-star scale: 3.5 stars.
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@JimDeRogatis, join me on Facebook, and podcast Sound Opinions and Jim + Carmel’s TV + Dinner. - Katey Red’s Chicago Debut Will Bring Bounce Music Back To The City
Katey Red has watched the bounce grow both in her hometown and abroad by leaps and bounds in the fifteen years since she first got on the mic. [ more › ]
- Review: Elbow & John Grant @ House of Blues, 5/19
It’s been six years since Elbow played Chicago. At the time, they were riding the wave of The Seldom Seen Kid, which took that year’s Mercury Prize. Since then, the band have put out two albums and evolved their arty Britpop sound behind the strengths of Guy Garvey’s heartfelt lyrics and vocals, and the band’s growth as songwriters and performers. But on Monday, all that concerned the sold out House of Blues crowd was hearing the pristine pop that Elbow churns out in spades.
Early in the set, they went often to their recent The Take Off and Landing of Everything album. But once they got to older songs, things naturally began to click with the crowd, from “The Bones of You”‘s sweeping chorus to the raw emotion in “Scattered Black and Whites” to the titanic “Grounds for Divorce” singalong. Between those, Garvey was talkative and charismatic, telling short stories that often punctuated points about the next song. To close, they went for “Lippy Kids” and their anthemic “One Day Like This”, which a girl in the balcony had been yelling about the last 15 minutes. Even though the latter can be a little repetitive, Elbow’s played it so often that they know how to keep it fresh with Garvey encouraging the crowd to sing boisterously.
John Grant may have been relatively unknown, but that may not last long. His imposing presence ingratiated himself to the crowd almost immediately. And it seems like he is taking frontman cues from Guy Garvey on this jaunt across America. His short set (barely a half-hour) featured a nice set of songs, mostly from last year’s way underrated Pale Green Ghosts, that feature his best attributes as a writer. The lyrics paint pictures and, even when they’re a little goofy, they tug at heartstrings with universal themes. There’s a little Richard Buckner in his delivery, too. Unfortunately, the synths that stand out so much in his music came off a little flat on Monday, but it was all that kept his set from being top-notch.
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