Boom!

The Double/Feist/British Sea Power Bowery Ballroom NYC 9:00 PM Set/10:10 Set

It's exciting to see two of the most promising artists stacked on top of on another as support acts. When it's a good night, you get that great one-up attitude where the players look at their hands, shuffle the deck and throw it out to the audience. Then the headliner plays and you have some time to reflect on what just went down. And with that, we jump.

Forewarning: Nothing against them at all, but I skipped on writing on BSP's set. They were competent and cool and stuff, but there's only so much time, ya know?

The Double are one of those bands that you just need to see live if you want to get a true sense of where they're at right now, which if you are a fan of weird rock, is a good place. The Double have always had a lot going on in their textured, arty, rocking music: organs, synths, jerry-rigged amplified cymbals as well as standard rock instruments, which they run through so many effects that they sound like anything but. While this can sound like a mess in the hand's of less rock, more art rockers, the band's not so secret weapon is their instinct to lay off each others grooves and let the sounds find their own space in real time. At last night's show, you could hear the group's restraint amongst themselves, but it didn't comprise the undeniable power of the new material's effect on the crowd. Throughout their set, the band came out on the attack around singer/bassist David Greenhill's falsetto vocal hooks and converged killer bee style around the melodies, only to fall back into moments of clipped introspection ala the verses of the Doors' "The End", updated by their usage of feedback and drum triggers. Greenhill's no Morrison, thank god, but the band does have hints of that unholy organ boogie in many of their new songs. I wish I knew the names to them, but I don't, so I can sum it up by saying that when they opened the flood gates with a cymbal crash and a major chord, the room was awash with sounds that made your arms uncross to shake the rush away.

There's no clean way to compare the Double to Leslie Feist, so I'll just dig in and let you know that this was a very different show from her performance with a full backing band at Joe's Pub last month. Accompanied only by her guitar, some tape loops of vocal and guitar tracks and her charm, Feist was there to take over as she stood alone before the crowd. That's part of her charm. Words like chanteuse and enchantress get thrown around to describe the moods she's able to create with her voice, and if you listen to her excellent record Let It Die, you can see how they fit, but last night, she was more of a cross between a headstrong entertainer and a struggling nightclub singer who happens to be performing beautifully naked and imperfect music for people expecting spells to be cast. Feist's range as a singer and her remarkable chops as a guitarist can do that, but she can also crack jokes about fucking up a lyrical turn in the middle of the song or step away from the mic and put her hands in the air as the prerecorded guitar tracks loop to show you that what you are hearing is partially fixed—the notion of Feist becomes demystified and the audience is invited in to hear the real thing.

Drawing from clawling blues, French pop, straight disco and the kind of confessional pop that made Fleetwood Mac millionaires, Feist's music is one of possibility. How to embrace an idea and its opposite. She opened with her snarling "Appalachian death blues song", "When I Was A Young Girl" and sang it with such frightening conviction that weren't quite sure if you could make it through the whole show if it was going to be like this. But as the show went on, the black forests became Parisian rooftops and school yard four square games, the world she brings you into on her single "Mushaboom". She was a little too sure that the crowd knew the hook, so when the chants of "Mushaboom, Mushaboom" that were supposed to follow her "wa-aaa-a-ater falls" bridge turned into a amusingly tuneless mess, she just winked with the knowledge that you'd be know how to sing it properly next time around.

Feist is very good at making due with what's got, but a few of her songs, like her ode to one night stands "One Evening" and her cover of the Bee Gee's rounded disco song "Inside and Out", both of which are brought to life by spectacular accompaniment from her band on her album, fell short when stripped down. That's not too deep though, because for 45 minutes, Feist owned the room and commanded its silences and outbursts, which often came not only before and after, but during her songs. She took it all in and gave it back, plus a little extra. A good formula for achieving the kind of Universal mass success she seems to be on the road towards. Right now, Feist is upwardly mobile yet grounded and—I can't believe I am going to write this—sensible. The chanteuse with the voice that kisses and kills who encourages her audience to derail her songs and sing them themselves when all she's got is her astonished command of sound is sensible, insanely sensible. She's know what's got and how to flip it for her audience—even when it's the opposite of what she's supposed to be (cue earnest woman with guitar no talking while the music's playing and don't you dare call her chick cliches.) The possibility of an enchantress you can yell at and crack jokes with in between falling under her spells. Imagine that. Leslie Feist does.

Elliot Aronow

Comments

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Arek