MusiCal (June 2009)

By Don Allred

The Decemberists

The Decemberists’ folk-rock ballads can rise like travelers from the waves, on the moon’s cue. The title track of The Hazards of Love plays its chains like a harp, recalling Led Zeppelin’s mellower moments, right before they’d get much more medieval on us. The Decemberists don’t rip it like Zep, but their plank-walking vibrations might shiver your timbers. Especially when visiting sirens Becky Stark and Shara Worden carry Colin Meloy’s bossy little voice box.

06/01 @ The LC, 405 Neil Ave.

7 p.m.

The Meat Puppets

As ‘80s punk narrowed into “hardcore,” Arizona’s teenage Meat Puppets sideswiped the Holy Modal Rounders’ psychedelic hillbilly love shack and the electrifried Sunbelt garage roots of ZZ Top. Their joyriding vision-quest eventually got them beamed aboard Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged in New York. They re-emerged in 2007 with Rise To Your Knees, tunefully droning, “We are trying to disappear,” like  a healthy Sasquatch should. Their new Sewn Together is uneven, but keeps the faith Meaty enough.

06/03 @ The Summit, 2216 Summit St. 

9 p.m.

Anthony Hamilton

Anthony Hamilton’s pungently smooth vocals are what some older CD store customers  inclusively call “blues,” signifying everyone from B. B. King to Nat King Cole to the Reverend Al Green. Like Green, Hamilton attracts country fans too, while on Green’s Lay It Down, their collaboration is discreetly compatible with hip-hop-schooled producers. Hamilton’s also found fellowship with Buddy Guy’s Hendrix-inspiring “regular” six-string and Deacon Robert Randolph’s sanctified steel guitar. Covering “Lay Lady Lay,” they all sing, “Hallelujah!”

06/11 @ The Palace, 34 W Broad St.

8 p.m. 

Bonnie “Prince” Billy

Kentucky’s Will Oldham was once a film actor, that unsettling blond lad in John Sayles’s dark mountain chronicle, Matewan. He’s still an actor of sorts, patiently patching and re-cultivating his golden-fleece-bearded, familiar/familial-stranger persona, currently billed as Bonnie “Prince” Billy.  This sometimes troubling troubadour’s Beware is an Americana musical medicine show of potions, portents, and even straight talk: whatever it takes to nurture lost love. Lend an ear to this magician, but first put a GPS in it.

06/12 @ The Capitol, 77 S High St.

8 p.m. 

Heart

Heart’s Ann and Nancy Wilson hooked a “Barracuda” in the ‘70s, when these rocking romantics were hailed for stealing boys’ club thunder. Many years later, they demanded their fishy-business-buster back from the McCain-Palin campaign, which perhaps didn’t catch a whiff of the anti-anthem’s righteous irony. Live, “Barracuda” still sounds hungry, patrolling the moat of the castle that Heart built, where “Magic Man” and “Dreamboat Annie” stroll the twilight battlements with “Dog and Butterfly.”

06/13 @ The LC, 405 Neil Ave.

6:30 p.m.

Bruce Robison

Texas singer-songwriter Bruce Robison’s best known via hits provided to others. But Robison’s crisp original recording of “Travelin’ Soldier” replaced the Dixie Chicks’ Top Ten version on some country radio stations, when the Chicks were banished; a number of listeners apparently still felt a need for the song. The soldier’s passing through local festivities, winning the heart of a marching band musician, and disappearing between his lines to her, into history. In that simple, subtle, sometimes strangely unstoppable way, the voice of Robinson’s writing can move through the crowd.

06/13 @ The Maennerchor, 966 S High St.

8 p.m.

Miss Molly 

Molly Winters is the leading lady of local combo Miss Molly. They’re all jazz-wise, and she’s a relatively clear-eyed romantic: post-nostalgic, or getting there. “You speak to me with all your vocabulary/Not particularly extraordinary, “ she notes, before acknowledging she’s “Lost For Words.” But she keeps playing for time, and her old-timey guitar strum casually slices the beat, underplaying/underlining the passing zinger. Winters is equally resourceful when in  “Crashing Love,” and other extreme Columbus weather discoveries.

June 13 @ Skully’s, 115 N High St.

10 p.m.

Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood

A sense of reserve has always lingered behind Eric Clapton’s most passionate outbursts and catchiest hits. Clapton performs best when choosing partners who bring him out of his shell, and Steve Winwood’s own world-weary, wary, hopeful, and dogged spirit, via his stronger voice, can enhance (or at least shadow) E.C.’s blues. On the new Live From Madison Square Garden, they re-charge their Cream, Traffic, and Blind Faith stand-bys, then return to the pyramid of Jimi Hendrix.

06/15 @ The Schott, 555 Borror Dr.

8 p.m.

The Lost Revival

The Lost Revival label their brew “bastardized Americana,” although, on a new track, “I Love It So”, these seven stage-loving sons of Columbus celebrate a rock grandiosity that would make Meatloaf blush. Yet elsewhere in the hobo-stew studio, that ol’ tin synthesizer still stirs a hungry little blue flame (“When I pull you in, don’t let go”), and what could be more of a lost revival than “Jailbait," when you get down to it? So don’t!

6/20 @ The Rumba, 2507 Summit St.

10 p.m.

DJ Z-Trip

DJ Z-Trip’s early mixes were as unauthorized as they were inventive, but the suits gave it up for his “Shifting Gears” collection. He got fascinated with another long-shot last year, and created “Obama Mix.” It’s too long, but nationwide, biting sounds of truth even from unreliable sources. Still, the wryly exuberant “Work It Or Leave It ” reminds us (and him) that shows are Z-Trip’s sporty forte, so go! And vote with your feet. 

6/27 @ The LC, 405 Neil Ave.

9 p.m.

Camera Obscura

The men and women of Scotland’s Camera Obscura have always exhibited pop-smart sincerity and stylized personal disclosure. They initially seemed like post-post-punk descendants of Fleetwood Mac’s most successful incarnation, without the looks or loot. But Camera Obscura, self-defined babes of rock’s post-platinum age, have tearfully and cheerfully expert eyes, ears, and appetites for love’s cruel prize, as presented in their fourth report from the world of (more reckless, but still) classy behavior, My Maudlin Career.

06/29 @ The Mershon, 1871 N High St.

9 p.m.