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Rating: Excusatio non petita, accusatio manifesta: I beg forgiveness from Mr. Steve Shelley, an involuntary and defenseless martyr of a (verbal) crusade towards the "infidels" Two Dollar Guitar. Treacherous and mischievous, Tim Foljahn's collective clambers onto the stage of Galleria Toledo and—irreverent—breaks down walls, changes the walls' colors, and relocates the furniture.
It changes the game, switching from French cards to Neapolitan ones. On the other hand, the scenery (we are in the heart of the virulent Spanish Quarters) lends itself to deceptions. And thus we are awarded with an abundant 60 minutes of reinterpretations, rearrangements, recoveries, and discards of a sound pattern that originally had (or once dared) pushed some to liken the songwriting of the Hoboken-based nomad to the opus of Olympic divinities such as Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen, and Scott Walker. Quite the opposite (accusatio manifesta, indeed). Perhaps it's neither good nor bad. After all, it's not every day that one finds the drummer of Sonic Youth right under one's doorstep...
Like Chris Brokaw, then. The slow-core and acid blues soul of Codeine and Come opens the evening with a set of about forty minutes, acoustic to the bone (accompanying a soft and reassuring voice with only a folk six-string and a foot tambourine), openly and declaredly inspired by the Canadian buffalo (Brokaw has never hidden his idolatry for Neil Young), proposing and perhaps relaunching extracts from his latest solo work,
"Incredible Love." A dozen sparse yet enveloping ballads in the vein of the best American tradition; but they cry for revenge, as the choice to give up the "E factor" ultimately penalizes and levels a still dignified storyteller production. And it's no coincidence that the audience's first heartfelt applause erupts at the climax of the cover of the glorious "I Remember" by Suicide, in which Shelley and Foljahn participate, energizing it with electric charges and machine-gun percussion—a suitable and faithful tribute to the band of Alan Vega and Martin Rev.
A brief excursion into the mined punk fields which—perhaps unconsciously—convinced the trio to plant the flag of anarchy on the ground of the evening's second "highlight": the (un)expected show of the two-dollar guitar. The start (and even the immediate follow-up) is disarming: an echo of grunge reverberates through the theater rows, Shelley begins to mistreat cymbals, snare, and tom-tom, Brokaw finally finds his best placement, that of a bandmate, and Foljahn's baritone vocal cords make their appearance, only to be obscured by an imperfect mixing (or, more awkwardly, retreat shyly). The result is that as for the lyrics, their comprehension... well, not even worth talking about. And it's here that the entire project is put to the test, that ever-present singer-songwriter philology in studio recordings (for which the lanky Tim is known and appreciated) that didn't reach the sophisticated aesthetics of the audience gathered at the top of Via Montecalvario. De facto, the three spend an hour of their existence engaging in a jam pure as snow, lasting an hour where even fingerprints are barely traceable. And when you notice that the dirty and sweaty road of folk origins seems to have suddenly been taken, treacherously comes the searing and desecrating psychedelic encore, furious, mad, and disjointedly post-rock that closes the performance.
And now I'm going to put on Daydream Nation...
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