Dawn Landes
w/ Jason Isbell, Will Hoge
Wednesday, February 27 @ Georgia Theatre
originally published February 27, 2008
Dawn Landes
It isn’t often a studio rat realizes his own musical visions beyond a lot of gee-whiz knob twiddling, and, with the exception of say, Daniel Lanois’ solo albums, few apply the arcana of their craft to pastoral themes and sonic ingredients. But singer-songwriter Dawn Landes, who cut her teeth engineering recordings for the likes of Ryan Adams and Joseph Arthur, has done just that with Fireproof, her debut on the Cooking Vinyl label.
A Kentuckian now based in New York City, Landes’ voice evokes slick indie stars Cat Power and Feist, tempered with a little artless down-home honk. Appropriately for such a voice, Fireproof summons up an array of sounds and moods equally appropriate for jamming an El Camino through the Painted Desert, or guiding a Prius through the glass and steel canyons of the metropolis of your choice.
The album opens with the paranoid banjo funk of “Bodyguard,” an impressionistic rendering of the real-life burglary of Landes’ Brooklyn apartment, during which thieves made off with a computer containing an album’s worth of her recordings. But in the song, the burglars become stylized, metaphorical: “I had a dream that we were robbed / They took the moldings off the walls / Erased our signatures from things / I heard them singing …” Although many of Landes’ songs revolve around relationships (like “Goodnight Lover”), her imagination proves a darker one time and time again, in lines like “Your next life’s a pony show / and ponies turn into glue.”
That said, Fireproof tends to groove rather than brood, with the occasional joshing Casio sound lightening the heavy atmosphere. “Twilight” cops the gentle pulse of Harvest-era Neil Young, with pedal steels like wailing suspension bridges, while “Private Little Hell” lopes along a roadbed of junky Latin percussion and glockenspiel, broken glass and gravel. Overall, it’s a promising release from a worker-in-song we’ll certainly be hearing from in the future - from both sides of the control-room glass.
Dawn Landes will be joined by Jason Isbell and Will Hoge at the Georgia Theatre for a special performance presented by HARP magazine.
Modern Skirts
w/ The Old Ceremony, Jukebox the Ghost
Friday, February 29 @ 40 Watt Club
originally published February 27, 2008
Modern Skirts
Due to their literacy in harmonious, genre-bending rock and roll, the guys in the Modern Skirts get compared to the Beatles at times. But those Brits put out more than an album a year, while our Athenians haven't dropped a new record in three years. That looks likely to change by year's end, as the pop band is currently cobbling together a follow-up to 2005's debut Catalogue of Generous Men.
"It feels really good to be getting some new stuff together," says vocalist-keyboard player JoJo Glidewell via email. "Three years. We've been writing and recording a lot at home, more just for fun, but a lot of the stuff made it into the studio and everything really sounds great."
The band spent a week in Richmond, VA, at the Sound of Music studio operated by Cracker's David Lowery, no stranger to Athens music. "That turned out really well," says Glidewell. After the Virginia sessions wrapped, the Skirts headed down to New Orleans for more recording. "We had the opportunity to experiment a little more," says Glidewell. "It's exciting. We're positively giddy about what we've accomplished on this record so far."
And while the rest of us were here in Athens watching the Super Bowl and voting in presidential primaries, the Skirts were living it up in New Orleans. "We got a lot of work done there, too, aside from taking in the, um, culture… Lundi Gras/ Mardi Gras was the time of my life," says Glidewell. "Best food I've ever eaten; best time I've ever had."
The rest is up to your imagination. Bug the band at this weekend's 40 Watt gig for more stories, or maybe just for previews of some new tunes.
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