Matthew Sweet

​Matthew Sweet | Miles Zuniga
Blueberry Hill's Duck Room
October 16, 2011

Your feelings on the current wave of twenty-years-gone nostalgia could have indicated your level of excitement for this weekend's Matthew Sweet show at Blueberry Hill. Sweet has been touring behind the twentieth anniversary of his breakthrough album Girlfriend, playing it front-to-back while leaving a little space at the end for a few other hits. In a fall that's been largely dominated by Nirvana's Nevermind and, to a lesser extent, the long-awaited DVD release of the documentary 1991: The Year Punk Broke, you could spend all of this month's disposable income reliving 1991. (And, speaking of that doc, how many of you felt like your parents just announced their divorce now that Thurston and Kim have split?)

But Sweet's story is a little different. His critically (and cultishly) adored Girlfriend never had anywhere near the mass impact of Nevermind, nor did it spawn a generation of sound-alikes. It's not a perfect album but a damned great one. His best, most enduring songs are found there. It's been Legacy Edition-ed and adored for years, so it's hard to fault Sweet for revisiting it in full. And judging by the sold-out room (tickets were gone as of a month ago), plenty of people saw reason to celebrate this power-pop gem.

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Welch and Rawlings in 2009

​Gillian Welch and David Rawlings
The Pageant
September 3, 2011

When the mechanics of a rock & roll concert get thrown out of whack -- when the lights flicker, when the bar service halts, when the A/C sputters off -- you become grateful that the night's performers are not at all beholden to the mechanics of a rock & roll show. Gillian Welch and David Rawlings' masterful performance in front of a packed Pageant crowd was never really in threat of being scuttled by the power surges, which came after the early-evening storm that knocked out power to half of the Loop. Had push come to shove (and the Pageant powers-that-be allowed it), the always-acoustic duo would have soldiered on without mics or stage lights. But as it was, some behind-the-board wizard allocated enough juice for the PA, the spotlights, and the bathrooms -- and you'd be hard pressed to find anyone in the crowd that minded the slight inconvenience.

And thank God the show did go on -- Gillian Welch fans, a patient lot, had become tired of waiting. It had been eight years since her last record and four years since her last St. Louis show at the Duck Room. The upgrade in venue size suggests that her absence has increased her audience four-fold, or that this year's The Harrow & the Harvest brought some new fans. Whatever the case, first-timers and long-timers were treated to two sets, two dozen songs and some great stage banter in the face of the impending power outage (including a spitballed definition of a "brown-out" and a pretty amazing story of Welch locking herself out of her hotel room, in nothing but a towel, during the day's tornado-like storm).

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Joe Budden played an 80-minute set at Fubar last night -- his first solo effort in St. Louis.

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Joe Budden
Fubar
August 26, 2011

Joe Budden is not an asshole -- or at least that's what his merch would have you believe. (Literally: "I'm Not An Asshole" screams from the t-shirts he's selling.) While an obnoxious slogan probably won't be enough to convince anyone who's been following his career for the past few years, a small crowd of his devoted fans came out to support the New Jersey rapper for his first solo performance in St Louis.

The undercard lineup started a little before 8 p.m., making the show a five-hour-plus event. The roster included several low-profile local acts: Man of Destiny, K.F.P., Plane Mode and Ryda Click, to name a few. There were varying amounts of skill and experience on display, but the standout set came from an emcee from south city, who (appropriately enough) goes by the name Prospect. A good chunk of his music was mixtape material - the artist rapping over other people's songs. His stage presence and slick bars compensated for the lack of original beats.

Joe Budden inconspicuously rolled up to the venue in a black minivan around 11:15, with his hypeman and what appeared to be his current ladyfriend. He stopped briefly outside to huff a cig and take a few pictures before heading into Fubar, and the place started to buzz as the hardcore fans staked out their spots near the front of the stage. Budden's DJ, Killa Touch, tried to get the crowd warm with a few east-coast classics (Mobb Deep, Biggie) during the sound check, and then Joey B. finally took the stage at around 11:40.

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Photo by Jason Stoff

​Blink 182 | My Chemical Romance | Manchester Orchestra
Verizon Wireless Amphitheater
August 19, 2011

Let's review last night's Blink 182 concert by the numbers: The total number of Boomer masks sporting a mustachioed Tom Delonge's face: approximately one million. The amount of times someone offered me pot: four. The number of times someone asked me for it: three. The number of times Tom changed the lyrics of our favorite Blink 182 songs to focus on sex (usually with other men): seven. Total number of "yo mama" jokes between Mark Hoppus and Tom: thirteen. The number that centered on Mark's mom's ass cheeks: three. The number of times Tom called attention to his penis: seven. The number of things we should be surprised by here: zero.

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Fans line up in the St. Louis bake oven for My Morning Jacket. Photo by Robin Wheeler

​My Morning Jacket | Delta Spirit
The Pageant
August 2nd, 2011

Considering it's been almost five years since My Morning Jacket played St. Louis, it's only fair that the band began the current leg of their tour to a sold out crowd at the Pageant. Even if it was on the hottest night of the year.

Opener Delta Spirit hasn't neglected St. Louis; it played the Firebird less than six weeks ago. Not that this caused the band to slack -- Delta played like it was headlining the show with a wild and raucous set. Lead singer Matthew Vasquez aims for Jim James' vocal range, and nearly succeeds, although his voice is more punk rock than James' ethereal falsetto. It has to be to keep up with his band's double drum onslaught. Sometimes that's not enough, so they whip out the trash can, banged with a tambourine.

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Todd Owyoung

An enigmatic Sade captivated the Scottrade Center crowd last night.

​If a lead singer can ever be a cipher, Sade Adu certainly inhabits that paradox. As an artist, she resists both interpretations and expectations. She rarely grants interviews; she's released two albums in the past eighteen years; she only tours when necessary. And the songs she sings with her eponymous band -- at times moody, evocative, sensual and mysterious -- convey strong emotion in the most impressionistic way. If last night's Sade concert at the Scottrade Center had to be boiled down to a symbol, it would be the gauzy, translucent curtain-slash-projection screen that occasionally wrapped around the stage. It created a veil, one that sometimes obscured the singer even as it amplified the mood of the songs.

And the songs sounded spot-on, from the militant snare rolls that attended opener "Soldier of Love" to the note-perfect solos from the band's catalog. In its first St. Louis show in 10 years, Sade (the band) showed a cool precision that matched the steely grace of Sade (the singer). She came up a little flat on both the opening number and its follow-up, the joyful sax explosion "Your Love is King," but she quickly found her footing.

It's hard to think of another soul or R&B singer quite like Sade -- she rarely pushes volume, never goes for dreadful note-bending melisma, and jumps octaves sparingly (but beautifully, as on the stunning "Pearls" late in the set). At 52, she looks and sounds amazing. Even as a new singer, at 24 years old in 1983, she never sounded anything less than adult. That's helped keep the band's sound rooted in flexible but identifiable style, even when the rhythm and instrumentation changes.

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Jon Gitchoff

​Elvis Costello & the Imposters
The Pageant
July 1, 2011

When Elvis Costello finally sells out, quits working as a tireless singer, songwriter and music scholar, and takes over Celine Dion's gig in Las Vegas, he'll have a great stage show to fall back on.

Costello and his backing band of nearly ten years, the Imposters, brought its "Spectacular Spinning Songbook" tour to the Pageant last night, and its garish, over-the-top kitsch provided an alternate entry into Costello's peerless catalogue. Rather than write a setlist the old-fashioned way, Costello has been allowing his fans to come to the stage, spin a red-and-yellow game-show wheel with song titles printed on its sections and let the hits fall where they may. Oh, and after the contestants spin the wheel, they can have a cocktail in the "Society Lounge" or take a turn in the "Hostage of Fortune" go-go cage. This is how brilliant songwriters cope with middle age, right? Pat Sajak impersonations and a little sexy swiveling? It's a testament to Costello's good-hearted showmanship and tongue-in-cheek demeanor that the show, with its self-knowing hokeyness, never detracted from the breadth and brilliance of Costello's songs.

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​Consider, for a moment, the ways in which Jack White's unseen hand has guided certain events and happenings in St. Louis in the past few weeks. First and foremost was the announcement that hometown heroes Pokey LaFarge & the South City Three would be releasing a White-produced seven-inch on the man's beloved Third Man Records. White's production acumen also led him to produce rockabilly queen Wanda Jackson's latest, and she'll be performing at the Duck Room this Sunday night. But at last night's Greenhornes show at the Firebird, White's imprimatur perhaps accounted for the good-sized turnout -- after all, he snagged the band's rhythm section (drummer Patrick Keeler and bassist Jack Lawrence) for the Raconteurs, and even the Greenhornes' biggest fans were pleasantly surprised that White's golden touch didn't signal the end of the Ohio-based garage-rock band. Touring behind last year's **** (a.k.a. Four Stars), the band proved that a largely disengaged performance can still produce primal, chest-thumping grooves.

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Image via

​On Saturday, March 19, about 30 people - a mix of middle-aged-and-older Dylanheads, Hellenic Studies and Classics scholars, and a couple of students - gathered at the University of Missouri-St. Louis for a conference exploring connections between Bob Dylan and ancient Greece. Titled "Bob Dylan at 70: Immigrants, Wanderers, Exiles and Hard Travelers in the Poems, Songs and Culture of Ancient Greece and Modern America," the all-day event featured five guest speakers -- four scholars and one poet, Stephen Scobie -- and emphasized Dylan's as the poetry of the human search for home.

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​We receive dozens and dozens of local CDs a year at the RFT. Although we review many in our weekly Homespun column, there just isn't space to touch on all of them. To remedy that, here are brief reviews of ten more releases that crossed our desks this fall.

The ChalkBoyz
Chalk Dirty to Me
Besides having the cheekiest local-album title as of late, rap/hip-hop group the ChalkBoyz also recruited some of the city's best talent for this release. Prince Ea and Bryant Stewart contribute rhythm- and note-perfect accents to the well-constructed pop highlight "Out Here On My Own," while Ruka Puff adds brashness to the midnight-inky underground lope "They Know." Dirty veers between ominous sounds and lighter fare; the title track samples AC/DC's "Thunderstruck" and the group raps new lyrics over the melody and piano line of Mariah Carey's "Always Be My Baby." (Props as well for the line, "Wasted like rollover minutes.") The album falters when the ChalkBoyz go for ballads -- the mellower "Day Dreamer" and "Get It How I Live" don't quite work - and Dirty's clipped beats and dark synths can sound tired and monotonous. But on songs such as "Back to the Traphouse" - a cartoonish, bouncy hip-hop number with swirly synths and lively rhymes - the ChalkBoyz hit the creative jackpot.
-- Annie Zaleski

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