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Claire Campbell/Josephine Foster, Tasty World, 5/17/06
by The Bridge Campbell is always at home onstage, but not in some cheesy, palpably cultivated "show" persona way. Nope, she just seems like one of those people who's at home wherever they are. Tonight's performance boasted plenty of that cozy confidence, despite the fact that she was apparently being stood up by her sister. "Is Paige here yet?" She asked hopefully, after the third song or so. Apparently, she was planning on some duet-action. Due to the no-show, the set was abbreviated, and Campbell never really got a chance to cut loose, although she turned in a charmingly joyous cover of "Ain't Nobody's Business (If I Do)." Only Campbell (in this town, at any rate) can pull off this kind of soul-slinging song without sounding like an affected white girl. Partrick Carey, frontman for Ginger Envelope, followed with his band minus two (drummer Jason Robeira, who took in the show civilian-side, and bassist Steve Miller) and plus a couple: Chuck Bradburn (bassist for Southern Bitch) and Julian Derocher. Bradburn supplanted Miller's usual electric bass with a huge, who-you-lookin'-at upright bass, offering Carey's lightweight tenor an honest, mellow anchor. Jason Trahan abandoned gee-tar duties this go-round, instead manning the bells and various percussive trappings, while Matt Stoessel stuck to the pedal steel. So, kind of a Ginger Envelope, Version 2.0. The boys played light but tight, sounding casually studied. Julian Derocher joined the band on banjo for two songs, including the closer, a cover of Loudon Wainwright's "The Swimming Song." (Carey forgot to mention that it was a cover, and expressed his regrets later: "I really want people to know, so they can go out and buy it and see how great he is. I was just too fucking high." Isn't that cute.) They erred only in playing it too briefly - this kind of song demands a little "One more time, now!" and some foot-stompin' - although I suppose the latter is traditionally the audience's responsibility. Next time you here them play it, don't be shy: hoot and holler; they'll thank you for it. Next up was Josephine Foster, a lady about whom I had next to no knowledge of prior to the show. I did overhear some guy talking her up outside a coffee shop the day before: "She's like Joanna Newsome, but way better!" Which made me growl a bit - I dig on some Newsome, weirdo Orphan Annie voice and all. But this was a radio guy, so I figured it was forgiveable - radio trains you to think of music in lumps. And Ms. Foster is one of those resolutely Unlumpables, a woman you can compare to others that defy description, but why bother? She ain't anything like 'em. She does, like Newsome, play the harp. In another uncanny coincidence, both Jimi Hendrix and Avril Lavigne play the guitar. (Or does she play the bass? Whatever - you get my point.) How to describe Foster's voice, then (without comparing her to someone else and sounding like a big fat hypocrite)? I remember attending a party years ago, as a teenager, at a friend's cavernous suburban split level. I had a fever of at least a hudred but there was no way I was missing this - the parents were A) rich, B) gone, and C) negligent as all get-out, which meant a well-stocked wet bar and tons of adolescent shenanigans. It was not to be, though. I passed out, mildly delirious, I think, in the dining room, whose ceiling must have been twenty feet high. There was music (in the form of several drunk kids and one grand piano) wafting from the rec room below, as well as some album or other blaring from the master bedroom, and a television on somewhere - auditory bedlam. But something about my feverish state and the house's strange acoustics delivered the wanly pretty sound of my friend Greg, sitting at the bottom of the stairs and playing "Greensleeves" on a cheap plastic recorder, to my ears above all else. It struck me then, that song, how eeriely heartbroken it was, entrancingly mournful. Josephine Foster's music is like that. Just like that fever-fuzzed party, I found it hard to focus while listening to Foster, and I thought of Welsh fairylore I've read: fairy music is deadly hypnotic to mortals, enslaves them. I recall Foster's songs only as vague moments and phrases, floating, semi-lucid. "Sally... in the bushes... my dear..." - that's my best recollection of one of my favorite numbers. The lyrics were hard to discern at times, mostly because when Foster sings, you're too awestruck by her range and control to note the words. It's an impossible high, Walt Disney soprano she's workin', with vibrato so finely tuned it's like she's a danged human therimin. Her stage presence is of the shy genius variety, but, like Campbell, this doesn't feel like an affectation at all. At the end of her set, she sweetly invited anyone in the audience "with an instrument hiding in your pockets" to come up and "jam," if one can really "jam" to Foster's feral daydreams. Well, apparently you can - she got a flutist, some bells, a zither, an autoharp, and something called a "shrewy-box" (I think - it's a tiny suitcase thingy that sounds like an accordion) out of her request. I ran into Foster coming out of the ladies' room, post-set, and, like a dumbass, asked her some pointless question about one of her lyrics, the only one I managed to write down (why the hell didn't I ask her what a shrewy box is?!): "There is no end to sorrow/It will come again tomorrow/And all the leaves are gone." I wrote it down because it reminded me of that precious melancholy that "Greensleeves" is doomed to register in my cheesy ass, and I asked her some bright thing like, "So, that's really sad sounding? Like, why?" Seriously, I shouldn't be allowed in public sometimes. I dug her response, though. "It is, yeah," she said, smiling shyly and edging for the door. "That's my religion." The night ended with last-minute addition Telenova, who did a quick acoustic set. I'd never seen them live, but, judging from tonight's tunes, they well be worth a look. They're fronted by a young girl with an endearingly nervy, birdlike soprano, and their songs are poppy and, I dunno, kind of knobby kneed? Coltish. Bear in mind, at this point I was getting sleepy. A decent set from some young whippersnappers, though, and I'm sold on any band that introduces a song thusly: "This next one is about deeply seated spiritual dejection (slightest of pauses). It's kind of fun." And it was: a jumpy ditty about ennui, as far as I could tell, and it wasn't boring, which is a neat trick when you're singing about being bored. Comments [post a comment]Comments are closed |
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Wednesday, February 08, 2012
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