Wednesday, June 24, 2009

tommy at the tavern

tom brosseau will be promoting his new album, posthumous success, tonight at the tractor tavern. $10 at the door.

the new tom brosseau album is inconsistent. you would expect him to evolve after his brilliant 2007 efforts, grand forks and cavalier. and he does.



like tom waits, he crafts songs that tell stories about characters more complex and compelling than any singer songwriter could tell about themselves. that is, they are dishonest and kind of creepy. he consciously identifies himself with subjects that are larger than himself. much older.

it looks to me that tom has been looking to expand his sound with a band for a while. last year, he performed at the triple door with hauschka. it struck me funny that tom was looking much more comfortable when the avant garde pianist joined him on stage.

in performance, tom brosseau is one of the few musicians who can hold an audience on his own. while i am happy to see tom expand his sound i am nervous that in the transition, he will loose what makes him so special.

foolish and pretentious of me to see the dylan '67 story arch here. the artist who betrays his roots and reinvents himself as something, like his characters, so much larger than himself.

1 comment:

bRYEnd_of_the_schtick said...

(^ yet it is the way of (r)Evolution.