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Sam Shaber, Melting Point, 1/17/07

by Alexander Dimitropoulos
02/02/2007



Don't go to see singer-songwriter Sam Shaber perform in a coffee shop. She doesn't play background music, and you would run the risk of laughing, choking and spitting coffee all over yourself, possibly sustaining an injury.

Thankfully, the Melting Point brings music and meals together, and a singer-songwriter shock to the system only demands that you stop the dinner chatter and listen.

Shaber, who performed as part of the "Uncorked & Unplugged" series on Wednesday, January 17 at Melting Point, was wearing glitter pants, a Roxy shirt that I initially mistook for a Roxy Music shirt, hoop earrings and a piercing in her left nostril. She opened with "Tempting," a song about sex, during which she deadened the strings, strummed them forcefully, and eventually sang, "It's hard not to rise up and let you in."

Shaber, who moved to Los Angeles from New York, hesitated to tell me her age, I assume because she feared it would conflict with her outfit or her attitude. She doesn't come off as a disingenuous member of what comedian David Cross called "the nonstop parade of delusion" in Los Angeles, and I got the feeling that she is actually as quirky and entertaining in person as she is on stage.

For instance, singer-songwriter Kyler England, who performed with Shaber, told the audience that "you can only wear one fancy" item of clothing.

"I tend to wear two fancies," Shaber responded.

Shaber is an amiable atheist who sometimes sounds like Alanis Morissette, and she says that she's often mistaken for actress Sarah Jessica Parker. She's also really, really funny.

She was telling the audience that "Solitaire," a song about her late father, will be featured on a primetime television show called Wildfire, which she said features "horses and really pretty 20-somethings."

"Nobody sleeps with the horses," she said. "It's not that kind of show."

Between Shaber and England, it was clear that England was more there for her singing than Shaber, and that's not a criticism of Shaber. England had an incredible range and strength behind her voice that belied how soft spoken she was onstage. She was not as deft lyrically, however, and though she can write catchy songs, some seemed derivative. When the two singers harmonized, Shaber provided a lower, quieter backing vocal that lent some songs a depth of meaning that the originals may not have warranted.

The performance and the songs weren't perfect. Lyrically, some songs by both artists cast a very wide, weak net, and filling in the gaps in the images with a variety of personal experiences or emotions might have only struck a chord with fans of sentimental pop music.

"If you're too obvious, then you lose your audience," Shaber said.

Also, in concert, she and England did something unconscionable while listening to the other's songs. When both weren't singing the same song, the other would sit in a chair nodding her head wistfully to the other's music. I'm fairly certain that while doing so, at least England had her eyes closed. Eww.

It wasn't entirely fair that Amanda Kapousouz of Tin Cup Prophette was playing the same night. Though she did perform alone, she looped several tracks of herself playing violin to give the pieces a greater sonic complexity than an acoustic guitar could provide. She announced Wednesday that just before coming to perform she found out that she would be opening for Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, Uncle Tulepo, Loose Fur and Golden Smog fame twice this year. Her first performance with Tweedy is January 30 in Knoxville, Tenn., and the second is January 31 in Charlottesville, VA.

Shaber said that she had heard people loop themselves into a performance before, but she added, "Amanda's writing is amazing."

Minor criticisms aside, Shaber is an easy artist to admire. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (CYHSY) received a lot of press last year for their do-it-yourself approach, but almost any indie artist or lesser-known singer-songwriter must have to do a good bit of the grunt work on the self-promotion side. I believe that CYHSY eventually received so much press because they were already relatively successful without that mainstream press, and they didn't even have a record label. Shaber deserves some of this attention. She no longer has a booking agent and, two interns aside, practically does everything on her own.

"In a way, at this level, it's such a person-to-person business," she said.

She says that in my bones (live in chicago), her second album with live material, was pressed, duplicated and shrink-wrapped three weeks after the performance. She also knows how to use Pro Tools, among other computer programs.

"I'm as tech savvy as I have to be," she said.

Shaber said that she liked the Melting Point and "would wanna do this night again."

If she comes back to Athens, keep in mind that you will really get two performances for the price of one. Shaber can turn a room into a comedy club and a music venue, and I'm pretty sure that little of this concert, if any, was part of an act.