Baroness

w/ American Heritage, The Dumps

Thursday, Sept. 20 @ Tasty World Upstairs

originally published September 19, 2007

N. Crane

Baroness

The book of heavy metal can never be rewritten, but it is constantly undergoing dramatic revision, expansion and annotation. In the past several years, there have been few American bands that have wielded a mightier quill pen dipped in bat's blood than Savannah's Baroness. Back in February of this year, Baroness played the very first rock show held at The Max Canada, and legend has it that the lava that erupted from the band's amplifiers and drums destroyed the club's stage and sound system while simultaneously turning the audience into a unified consciousness of pure light, thus also making it the last rock show to be held at The Max Canada.

On Sept. 4, Relapse Records released the band's first full-length recording (after a couple of meat-packed EPs and a split with The Unpersons). The Red Album sees the band fully capitalize on its explosive Total Metal approach (combining elements of the mysticism of doom, the pomp of the new wave of British heavy metal and the scuzz of thrash) with the prominent addition of tasteful - and still gritty! - melodic vocals in addition to the typical beard-filtered roar.

Baroness has existed for four years now, and in that time has clearly taken great care to make sure that listeners will hear only the exact music that exists within the members' brains. That their brains consist of regular brain goo and not some sort of wizard's breath swirling around a talisman made from a hunk of the sun is unclear. The strength with which these men prove that new and exciting ideas can in fact be brought forth with just guitars, bass and drums grants them a nobility of sound that is at once inspiring and timeless. Forget what you may have read on some message board two years ago - Baroness will not be anyone's footnote.

Jace Bartet

Joshua Redman Trio

Saturday, September 22 @ Melting Point

originally published September 19, 2007

Joshua Redman

It's tempting to generalize about the current state of jazz: The genre's mainstream hasn't recovered since Kenny G destroyed its reputation. The avant-garde spirals further and further into complete irrelevance. There's no longer any room for innovation. And so forth. But none of these oft-voiced arguments holds water; counter-examples abound.

In fact, you can refute any of the claims in the previous paragraph by mentioning saxophonist Joshua Redman. Son of the late Dewey Redman, a reedsman best known for working alongside Ornette Coleman, the younger Redman ditched law school plans in the early 1990s to pursue a jazz career. He quickly landed a major label deal, and jazz purists drooled all over his 1993 debut Joshua Redman, in which he injected a dose of playful soul into traditional bop forms. As his career progressed, he met with about as much critical and commercial success as a jazz musician could hope for in our day.

With 2000's Beyond, Redman began composing more inventive pieces, demonstrating that there was room in mainstream jazz for demanding time signatures. That album also marked the beginning of his partnership with bassist Reuben Rogers and drummer Gregory Hutchinson, both of whom will accompany him at tonight's Melting Point show.

This show date follows the release of Back East, Redman's first album of trio recordings. Back East also marks for Redman a return to an acoustic setting; he spent the better part of the last five years exploring funky fusion with his Elastic Band. Fortunately, Redman's return to his roots is by no means regressive; on his new album, he provides creative interpretations of songs by John Coltrane and Wayne Shorter, and he incorporates hints of Indian music into his originals. Simply put, this is Redman at his best.

Phillip Buchan

Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers

w/ The Alternate Routes

Tuesday, September 24 @ Tasty World

originally published September 19, 2007

Paul Marko

Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers

If there's one positive side effect of global warming, it's that the music of Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers will be the official soundtrack to the (literally) endless summer. Combining the carefree rock and roll of Tom Petty with the light and effervescent feel of Sublime, Clyne and the Peacemakers' carefree sounds are the soundtrack to the waning days of summer - all without slipping into the hokey margarita-drenched self-parodying sounds of Jimmy Buffett.

"I choose to be an optimist and to celebrate the moment, and I think that comes across in my music," says Clyne. "I think we have a good time, and that we have a lot of kinetic energy and a positive vibe." Despite his easygoing manner, the positive vibe is something that Clyne takes seriously. A veteran of the mid-'90s alternative rock boom with his former band The Refreshments, Clyne is most famous for a piece of music he's written that doesn't feature his vocals: the country-fried intro to "King of the Hill." "It's great, and I think it's kind of funny. The song is more famous than the band, and I like that… because ultimately, if a piece of art is going to endure, than it has to be more famous than the artist who creates it," says Clyne.

Punctuating his sentences with "excelente" and "no problemo," Clyne comes across as a hard-partying Bart Simpson instead of a veteran of over 200 shows a year, but underneath that guise lies a hard-working artist who takes his music and his fans very seriously. In fact, according to Clyne, it's a weight that he and his bandmates have to carry. "Most of the people that find out about us come from [personal] recommendations, and those recommendations stick and carry a lot of weight," says Clyne. "So even though we're not being written about and talked about or getting radio play, we're getting introduced to people, so we try to make a good impression."

Jason Bugg