Jenny Lewis & The Watson Twins
10 out of 10 - Flawless.
Friday, February 03, 2006
Swedish American Hall
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She’s been lauded as rock's premiere pin-up girl, the primary cause of indie boys' wet dreams. Well I submit we let the shoegazers stick to lusting over the 7" inches they haven.t gotten their hands on and give this lady her due as a fiercely accomplished songwriter. Anyone who managed to get a ticket to the Swedish American Hall in San Francisco last Friday will tell you that it wasn.t just a pretty face that landed Jenny Lewis on the covers of both the SF Guardian and Weekly.
The bare-bones performance was only the group's second live show together and was threatened by a chemical spill on I-5. The van pulled into the parking lot three hours late to an enormous cheer that could be heard for blocks down Market Street. Telling tales of radioactive disaster, they sped through sound-check and the doors swung open.
After ascending a few staircases to the straining notes of Drag the River (There is nothing better than a sound technician who knows how to choose good entrance music), the Swedish American Hall is a soaring room more like a church than a night club. The stage was an altar filled with enough candles to hold a catholic mass. An enormous red velvet backdrop was dramatically uplit. The setting was awe-inspiring and absolutely appropriate given the Gospel influences of Rabbit Fur Coat.
Jonathan Rice made his way to the stage at 9:45 pm for a thirty-minute spot. Having caught my first glimpse of him in the Johnny Cash biopic, Walk the Line as the young Roy Orbinson, I was looking forward to hearing what he could do in person. Between the white t-shirt, acoustic guitar and hair falling into his eyes--this guy had heartthrob written all over him. Suffering through shouts of "I love you" and "You.re hot" throughout his set didn.t seem like a struggle. He must have already gotten used to it. Finally, he took a stand against one particularly annoying admirer, responding with " Well, you don.t hardly know me, Sweetheart." and led right into "It is best to keep it all inside…" winning him points for witty stage banter.
His songs conjure up Ben Nichols of Lucero, a little Stephen Merritt and even Conor Oberst himself. Which is appropriate for the Saddle Creek-signed musician with the thick-jagged voice full of aching experience and bleeding youth all at once A must-see on his own merits, Rice and lap steel accompaniment Farmer Dave set the somber tone for the headliner beautifully.
After the lights went down a refrain of Run Devil Run was heard from the back of the house. In absolute darkness, a ghost-like choir moved down the aisle towards the stage--and if there were any non-believers in the crowd they believed by the time Jenny Lewis and the Watsons floated up the stairs in full evening dress.
The Watson twins looked damn near Amazonian with voices to match. Their harmonies were full of "ooohhhs" and "ahhhs" that lingered in the room throughout the entire performance. Not many modern-day acts can pull off this cross between Detroit R&B and Southern Gospel, but these ladies aren.t just any act. Haunting is the word that kept goose-flesh on every member of the audience that night.
Jenny Lewis has a voice that has won her comparisons to Patsy Cline and Dusty Springfield. A honey-soaked tremor that sounds more world-worn than could possibly be her years, that voice took us in from the first refrain and didn.t let us go until well after the encores. The remarkable thing is that her voice isn.t even her strongest point. Her songwriting suggests she may have taken some bartering tips from Robert Johnson. Every member of the audience was given a program upon arrival that included lyrics and fantastical biographies of each performer. This lyric booklet was itself worth the admission and hours in line.
That first delicate mention of the Rabbit Fur Coat saw Jenny alone on stage, the lights had dimmed and that voice pushed through the 100-year stale air of the hall with all the sing-song catchiness of a child's cautionary chant.
"A lady says to my ma you treat your girl
as your spouse
You can live in a mansion house
And so we did
And I became a 100,000 dollar kid"
The somewhat autobiographical title track is woven with all the tears of a child starlet who beat the odds. With every repetition of "Rabbit Fur Coat" Jenny seemed a little younger until finally we were looking at the adorable little redheaded girl from Troop Beverly Hills and wanting to wring her mother's neck. By the last mention of that damned coat I wasn.t sure whether to grab a bucket of paint and give PETA a hand or to put my head between my knees and weep.
After the final song, Jenny and the Watson twins floated back through the house on one long note. The obligatory encore began with Jenny, her guitar and the sleeper hit of the record, It Wasn.t Me. Featuring such lyrical gems as;
"In Hollywood and Washington
They shake and smile through
the harm they.ve done.
But it.s your little red wagon
and you got to pull it"
and the crowd-pleasing;
"We made love in the Tower of
Babel and it fell down."
Soon the Watson twins made their way back to the stage to join Jenny in a flurry of clapping acapella sweetness before the grand finale of Born Secular. Adding Jonathan Rice and Farmer Dave back into the mix and there may have been a gospel choir in the joint. With five distinct voices ringing like bells and Lewis and Rice sharing a microphone they could have sacrificed a lamb onstage before passing around the collection plate and hell, we would have paid!
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