|
| |
|
|
Jewel abandons electro-pop, plus Emm Gryner at Club Passim and more
BY CARLY CARIOLI
|
|
|
|
|
Remember last June? Liz Phair was getting in touch with her inner Avril. And Jewel was unleashing the Kylie within. If the Alaskan folkie’s surprise electro-pop hit "Intuition" seems to have been either forgotten or forgiven, that might be because she’s been sticking to solo-acoustic shows since the sudden death (from a brain aneurysm) last fall of her touring bassist, Terome Hannon. No surprise, then, that as Rolling Stone reports, she’s working on a "lo-fi" follow-up. The neon synths of last year’s 0304 (Atlantic) will be absent again when her latest solo tour hits Lowell Memorial Auditorium (978-454-2299) on Sunday. A former backing singer for Rob Zombie and David Bowie, Emm Gryner hit upon the perfect ratio of coffeehouse folk to pop polish on last year’s Asianblue (on her own Dead Daisy imprint). Following up her covers album Girl Versions (which included a wrenching version of Fugazi’s "Waiting Room"), Gryner’s singer-songwriterly piano ballads balance Top 40 sheen with indie heart. Michelle Branch, take notice. Gryner is at Club Passim in Cambridge tonight (May 6) and at AS220 (401-831-9327) in Providence on Saturday. We preferred Gryner’s Girl Versions to Tori Amos’s Strange Little Girls, but we dug the way each took its shot at restocking the Great American Songbook. Yet another pianist is on her way down the pike with similar intentions. Charlotte Martin has opera-trained pipes that make her sound like a brassier Kate Bush. Her RCA debut, On Your Shore, is due this summer, and though she’s yet to shed her starched Broadway affectations, that hasn’t stopped her from including dorm-room faves like Soundgarden’s "Black Hole Sun," U2’s "I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For," Peter Gabriel’s "In Your Eyes," and the Cure’s "Just like Heaven," alongside Jerome Kern & Oscar Hammerstein II’s "Ol’ Man River" in her repertoire. Martin’s own tunes are somewhat less remarkable, though her first-person stalker tune "I’m Normal, Please Date Me" makes a nice iPod segue into the Dresden Dolls’ "Missed Me." This good but not great Charlotte plays the Paradise (617-423-NEXT) in Boston on Wednesday, where she’s opening for the Norwegian indie-pop wunderkind Sondre Lerche. The 21-year-old singer-songwriter is touring behind his superb Two Way Monologue (Astralwerks), an album of endearingly romantic tunes cut from the cloth of Bacharach-like sophistication and Beach Boys–ish whimsy. Meanwhile, the pianist Christopher O’Riley does his part to add Radiohead to the classical repertoire, playing his inscrutable transcriptions of "Karma Police," "Everything in Its Right Place," and other tunes (see last year’s True Love Waits: O’Riley Plays Radiohead, on Sony/Odyssey) at the Iron Horse (413-584-0610) in Northampton on Friday; he’ll also host a Mothers’ Day taping of his acclaimed NPR radio show From the Top on Sunday at Jordan Hall (617-585-1260) in Boston. And Stephin Merritt, the Cole Porter of his generation, brings Magnetic Fields to Northampton’s Calvin Theater (413-584-0610) on Friday to celebrate the release of the band’s new i (Nonesuch).
|
