Charming Hostess live in a coffee shop
Thursday, March 9th, 2006A couple nights ago I got to see Charming Hostess live. They performed for about an hour, singing songs almost exclusively from Trilectic and Sarajevo Blues. I like the big-band version of this group better (who doesn’t?), but they were certainly an incredibly entertaining trio to watch even just a cappella. They call themselves “nerdy-sexy-commie-girlie music” or something like that, but it wasn’t until I saw their live performance that I realized just how nerdy they really are. This is something that really appealed to me: Jewlia introduced every single song, regaling the audience with background details on the songs’ subject matters (which tended to the esoteric: a 1920s love affair between a Marxist revolutionary and a German philosopher, or the siege of Sarajevo). It was nice to see all three performers really get into the songs — clearly, even though they sing in multiple languages, they really know what all their lyrics mean, and they feel them as they sing them. Fun show.
A quick roundup of some interesting reading from the indie-rock sites recently…
- There’s an excellent live review of Masada at Pitchfork that includes a broader discussion of John Zorn generally.
- Dusted has reviews of the new Kayo Dot and Ruins‘ Pallaschtom.
- You might not think to look there, but All About Jazz has a review of Univers Zero’s new live album, as well as reviews of many other Cuneiform releases.
- Reviews of the new Mogwai at: Pitchfork, Stylus, Tiny Mix Tapes, Drowned in Sound, Delusions of Adequacy. Most of these are kind of middling… hmm.