Went out last night to see critic-friendly, Portland, Oregon-based alt-country band Richmond Fontaine play at my top favourite London venue, Bush Hall (which, apart from being a lovely, intimate place with intricate plasterwork and chandeliers, is also just 10 minutes' walk from my flat - bargain).
I wasn't sure what to expect from this band, but on the strength of the one album of theirs that I own, I had a sneaking suspicion that the entire audience would be composed of lonely, geeky, single men. It turned out that I wasn't far wrong. In fact, swap the cowboy boots ("an indicator of lacklustre sexual performance," according to my companion - no wonder there's so much wife-beating in the American Midwest) for sandals and we could just as easily have been at an Open Source convention.
Not being an Uncut-reading muso type myself, I felt a bit out of place, but that didn't matter. The band were really, really great. Completely unpretentious, engagingly self-deprecating proper musicians, with beautifully written but almost exhaustingly sad songs. In fact, during one crushingly miserable number - The Janitor (theme: wife-beating) - I drifted off into a reverie of such intense sadness that when I came round I found I was having some sort of terrible panic attack and had to go outside to calm down*.
At this point I also forked out a tenner for their latest album, The Fitzgerald, which the record-company chappie described to me - somewhat oddly, I thought - as "completely non-metaphorical". He wasn't kidding. These songs are all bleak, straightforward tales of misery, alcoholism, death, poverty, gambling, domestic violence and all the other depressing things that would appear to go on in small-town and trailer-park America. Not joyful stuff, by any means. In fact, just reading the lyrics this morning made me weep. I can't imagine that singer Willy Vlautin's début novel is going to be an uplifting read, either.
Still, if there's too much happiness in your life and you want to inject some exquisite misery into your otherwise euphoric existence, this is the band for you. If you're already of a depressive turn of mind, though, they might just tip you over the edge.
* Just realised that this makes it sound like I am - or have been - a battered wife. I assure you that nothing could be further from the truth.
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5 comments:
We "take" Uncut in our house and in itself it is a depressing experience. It makes me feel even older than I am yet at the same time guilty because I haven't developed a liking for grown up music involving confessional lyrics and acoustic guitars. Every month there is yet another Neil Young interview. This is what puts me off the likes of the Richmond lads, but it is probably my only small-minded prejudice. Sorry.
I went to see the Beta Band last year hoping that the crowd would consist of be-spectacled, bookish 30-something men (with hot bodies)
I was disappointed. Frigging students bloody everywhere...
Hello there spinsterella, and welcome. I very much like your blog, will be visiting regularly to read about all the kinds of things that I'm way too uptight to commit to the blogosphere!
Patroclus,
you need to be like me, and have multiple blogs with varying levels of up-tightness.
Oddly enough, it's the blog featuring all the jism that gets most attention...
You have other blogs? They don't show up on your profile. Could be the reason. But let's face it, it probably isn't.
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