9.23.06: Lambchop, Cibelle

Lambchop at Bowery Ballroom

With the Tosca Strings! Back on the road, girls! It’s about time. The strings sounded great — the Toscas are great players — and people — they added a wistful melancholy to Kurt’s already heartbreaking ruminations. His words, and his unique Sprechstimme delivery, are amazing — very few of the lyrics rhyme, which one would think would be a problem, but in his case it helps the words come across as poetry, poetry of everyday language. Whitman and the great southern writers come to mind — descriptions of commonplace and day-to-day occurrences, ordinary disasters, epiphanies and catastrophes — that stand in for, or are veils for, deep turmoil, peace, love, and terror. Occasionally he would raise his voice, the dam would break, a flood of passion, and then just as suddenly the controlled matter-of-fact description of the beauty and terror of living would go on.

Kurt talked earlier over a beer about how David Dunlop, the artist who did their How I Quit Smoking cover, was a big inspiration.

The band is probably less popular in their hometown, Nashville, than anywhere else in the world — I’m guessing. Isn’t it always that way? They head to Europe soon, where they will be playing large venues like the Vienna Opera house — hey, that’s even fancier than the Grand ole Opry. Kurt says it doesn’t matter, the disparity in audiences and venues. I agree — I’m in the same boat sometimes. Maybe creatively it doesn’t matter, but financially it would be hard to keep a 13-person troupe (their current bus load) on the road unless there were ticket sales somewhere to pay the bills.

[Photo by John J. Brassil]

Cibelle at Joe’s

Saw this innovative Brazilian singer there about a year or so ago, when she was wearing a dress that seemed to be upside down — she rotated the whole dress around her body during that show — like she was squirming to emerge from a cocoon.

This show wasn’t as sartorially innovative, but musically it was miles ahead. I don’t recall the band on the previous shows, but this band, all resident Londoners I think, were great, very precise, but without being fussy.

Her voice is not unlike Bebel Gilberto’s (and others) — a pure uninflected instrument — that in Cibelle’s case easily mixes beauty with strangeness.