Allan Carl Newman @ Bowery Ballroom
Monday, 16 March 2009 17:47
The evidence continues to mount that Allan Carl Newman is simply
a better breed than your average Joe Indie. The former New Pornographers
frontman represents a time when songwriting was an old-world craft, when
musicians felt a responsibility to portray the places they came from,
whether physically or emotionally, and then stop at nothing to present those
songs in the truest and most authentic way possible in front of a live
audience. And with every move he makes, he inspires the rest of us to strive
for a higher plane.
Even his hecklers are smarter and cleverer. At the Bowery
Ballroom on Sunday, between selections from his 2004 masterpiece *The Slow
Wonder* and this year’s *Get Guilty* (which proves to be both fussier and
more self-assured), they matched wits with Newman about classic British
sitcoms and inside references to high-brow benefit shows the rest of us
weren’t privy to. The encore was the cerebral “There is a War,” by Leonard
Cohen. And like the British aristocracy (he himself hails from Canada)
there’s something timeless about his trim, reddish beard, well-built frame
and absolute refusal to cut corners, even if it makes things more difficult.
Traveling with a six-piece band, Newman seemed to determine the
deliver the intricate, orchestrated sound that’s been his signature on all
of his records, and solidified on Get Guilty. But it’s just not just about
painstakingly recreating the records – Newman, like the best live
performers, makes his songs sound *better *onstage – bigger, fuller, and
more complex, the kind of show that makes you want to go home and listen to
the album with new ears. This was the case with Get Guilty’s title track,
whose “change your mind” chorus sounded crystalline enough to have come
straight out of Abbey Road Studios in 1969.
It’s clear that recently-married Newman is coming from a cozier
place emotionally than he was when he wrote “Drink to Me Babe, Then” and
“The Cloud Prayer,” so his hushed presentation of these heart-searing jewels
was even more, like Newman himself, representative of time gone by – both in
Newman’s own narrative and those for whom his music continues to be
indicative of how generous to his listeners the aristocratic Newman is.
-Claire Shefchik
a better breed than your average Joe Indie. The former New Pornographers
frontman represents a time when songwriting was an old-world craft, when
musicians felt a responsibility to portray the places they came from,
whether physically or emotionally, and then stop at nothing to present those
songs in the truest and most authentic way possible in front of a live
audience. And with every move he makes, he inspires the rest of us to strive
for a higher plane.
Even his hecklers are smarter and cleverer. At the Bowery
Ballroom on Sunday, between selections from his 2004 masterpiece *The Slow
Wonder* and this year’s *Get Guilty* (which proves to be both fussier and
more self-assured), they matched wits with Newman about classic British
sitcoms and inside references to high-brow benefit shows the rest of us
weren’t privy to. The encore was the cerebral “There is a War,” by Leonard
Cohen. And like the British aristocracy (he himself hails from Canada)
there’s something timeless about his trim, reddish beard, well-built frame
and absolute refusal to cut corners, even if it makes things more difficult.
Traveling with a six-piece band, Newman seemed to determine the
deliver the intricate, orchestrated sound that’s been his signature on all
of his records, and solidified on Get Guilty. But it’s just not just about
painstakingly recreating the records – Newman, like the best live
performers, makes his songs sound *better *onstage – bigger, fuller, and
more complex, the kind of show that makes you want to go home and listen to
the album with new ears. This was the case with Get Guilty’s title track,
whose “change your mind” chorus sounded crystalline enough to have come
straight out of Abbey Road Studios in 1969.
It’s clear that recently-married Newman is coming from a cozier
place emotionally than he was when he wrote “Drink to Me Babe, Then” and
“The Cloud Prayer,” so his hushed presentation of these heart-searing jewels
was even more, like Newman himself, representative of time gone by – both in
Newman’s own narrative and those for whom his music continues to be
indicative of how generous to his listeners the aristocratic Newman is.
-Claire Shefchik
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|