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SALVATION AT THE HATCH SHELL
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In a pop-music world of harsh ironies and straight-up anger, there’s something to be said for unabashed earnestness. At the Phoenix/FNX "Disorientation ’03" concert at the Hatch Shell last Saturday afternoon, the earnest uplift of Dear Leader and Bleu verged on the evangelical, and Bleu’s finale, where he was joined by a 30-voice choir, had elements of an Up with People number. But in the best parts of the concert, fetching pop melodies and rock rhythms were enough to make believers out of anyone. Dear Leader are the new band led by singer/guitarist Aaron Perrino after the break-up last year of his group the Sheila Divine. As was the case in his old band, Perrino’s voice and songwriting are the focal point. His songs deal in disappointed love and vague expressions of spiritual longing. If his long-lined melodies over simple static harmonies and fast drum beats (the latter at the Hatch created expertly by Paul Buckley) and his ardent tenor voice all recall Bono and U2, then so be it. Perrino’s songs have titles like "Flames" and "Burned," "My Heart Is a Ghetto" and "Lonesome Together"; delivered in his robust vocals, they conjure the masochistic pleasures of romantic disappointment. "I don’t believe in fate, or the church and state," he sang in "Committing Fusion." "I belong to you." And with an apparent nod to the struggles of the Sheila Divine, he sang on "Burned" about "four years trying to make it in the machine/And then I realized/Fuck the machine." And he vowed "to live by my own words and die by my own sword." Bleu is just as earnest a pop tunesmith, but he leavens his yearnings with rhythmic variety and humor. He likes "na-nah-nah" choruses, dirty Link Wray chords, the guitar-riff-as-hook, and Beatles-esque harmonies. When he sang, "Why can’t I meet somebody else," he sounded more amused than distraught by his lack of prospects. On "We’ll Do It All Again," he sang the repeat of the title line with a nice falsetto on "all" — the repetition compulsion is satisfied nowhere so readily as in pop. The title "Could Be Worse" summed up his attitude perfectly: a sunny resignation cheered by rock-guitar chords. The choir filed on stage in the midst of "Trust Me," singing those na-nah-nahs. On Tears for Fears’ soothing primal-scream anthem "Shout," they joined Bleu for the chorus: "Shout/Let it all out/These are the things I can do without/Come on!" For the closer, the radio single "Get Up" (the chorus and Bleu all wore matching yellow "Get Up" T-shirts with red lettering), they echoed the leader in the title line and added a "babah bahbah" for additional uplift. Come to think of it, don’t Bleu’s trademark mutton chops recall another one-time primal-scream practitioner, John Lennon? There’s more than one way to be Beatles-esque.
BY JON GARELICK
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