Laura Veirs (solo) w/ Liam Finn @ Bottom of the Hill, photos, review
Last night I went over to the the Bottom of the Hill to see Laura Veirs (myspace) and Liam Finn (myspace).
I’d seen Liam before, at the same venue, in fact. The set was quite similar, as was my reaction: I liked some of his loop-heavy songs and disliked others and many of my favorites were his more straight-forward songs.
One notable new happening: he ended one song with a solo on an odd instrument. After the song he announced his new “toy”, a Stylophone. To a fan’s cry for “more Stylophone!”, he said “ok”. His next song, his last of the night, was completely improvised and built around various loops of Stylophone along with drums and vocals. It was pretty impressive.
Veirs came out with just her guitar. It was just her, that guitar and looping pedals all night (with one exception, see below). She started with “Pink Light”, one of my favorites of hers. After that first song, the appreciation from the crowd was obvious–this was a very receptive crowd. She even noted it: “Wow, it’s nice to hear that, especially on a Monday night”.
The talented Ms. Veirs continued the entire evening, playing a great selection of songs from her “five good albums” (the last one is “bad”) skillfully. Additionally, she played two traditional songs that influenced her greatly, like Mississippi John Hurt’s “Spike Driver’s Blues”
She brought out the banjo for one song, Cluck Old Hen. She played it deftly in clawhammer style. Here’s a teaching version of that song, first slow and then full speed.
Laura Veirs - Cluck Old Hen (mp3, via stereogum)
May 7th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
You have “five good albums” and “bad” in quotation marks, but… Do you think the last album is bad? Or did she say that? Who said that? I’m curious.
May 7th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
She said that she had six albums, but she was only going to play songs off of the five good ones. I forget, actually, if she said the last one was “bad” or “dumb”. I think it was the former.
May 8th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
Interesting strategy, dissing your own latest disc. Still, I kinda agree with her: it wasn’t the strongest effort she’s put out.
May 8th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
She never said it was her latest that was the dud. (I meant “last” as in the remainder in the set of six, not last chronologically.) I assumed she meant one of the early ones.
May 9th, 2008 at 11:14 pm
I was there and assumed she meant one of the early ones was bad. But she didn’t let on which.
June 2nd, 2008 at 1:18 pm
I hope she contributes a t-shirt design for the http://www.yellowbirdproject.com.
Fingers crossed!