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Sad bastard music
Jonathan Rice prepares to assume Bright Eyes' mantle, plus Dido at the Fleetcenter and more
BY CARLY CARIOLI
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"I was 16 when I opened my mouth to sing," 21-year-old singer-songwriter Jonathan Rice has said, "and was quite surprised to find out that I sounded like a 65-year-old man." That voice got Rice signed to Sire, but he spent two fruitless years recording his debut before scrapping the sessions and turning to Mike Mogis, the de facto house producer at Omaha’s finest indie-folk label, Saddle Creek. Connor Oberst better watch his back. Recorded in Nebraska with members of Rilo Kiley, the Faint, and Head of Femur, Jonathan’s Trouble Is Real (Sire) sounds like a cross between Bright Eyes and Damien Rice. Songs from the album have already appeared on The O.C. and Six Feet Under, and tonight (June 17) at the Paradise (617-562-8800) in Boston, Rice opens for Rachel Yamagata, a Carole King–style folk-pop gal whose RCA debut, Happenstance, was recorded under the tutelage of former Dumptruck guitarist Kevin Salem. Rice gets around: he’s also opening for Dido at FleetBoston Pavilion (617-931-2000) on Saturday. And while we’re on the subject of Eminem’s favorite Brit-folk chanteuse: sometimes we wish she had a little more Stan in her. Her hits — "Thank You" and "Here with Me" — have been wounded but unvengeful; we like her better when she’s being mean. She’s good at it, too: "See You When You’re 40," from last year’s Life for Rent (Arista), includes one of the nastiest kiss-offs since the Magnetic Fields’ "When You’re Old and Lonely." "See you when you’re 40," she sings, "lost and all alone/Comforted by strangers you’ll never need to know" — and then, lowering the boom: "You think misery will make you stand apart from the crowd/But if you had walked past me today, I wouldn’t have picked you out." As it happens, the Welsh singer Jem is being touted as Dido with edgier beats. There’s a definite vocal resemblance between the two — they’re both husky-voiced, stonewashed folkies at heart — but Jem isn’t waiting for Slim Shady’s people to call. Working with producer Guy Sigworth, she landed a songwriting credit on the last Madonna album. And on her own debut, Finally Woken (ATO), she cuts out the middleman and heads straight for the dance floor, cooing over dancehall wobble, bubblegummy boardwalk soul, Wu-Tang xylophone plink, and toxic violins — not to mention, when push comes to shove, Avril-strength rock guitars. Already making inroads into alterna-rock radio, Jem plays T.T. the Bear’s Place (617-492-BEAR) in Cambridge on Tuesday; the Iron Horse (413-584-0610) in Northampton next Thursday, June 24; and the Call (401-751-2255) in Providence next Friday, June 25. The cryptic folksinger Devendra Banhart is apt to include covers of songs by Yoko Ono and Elizabeth Cotton in his sets, and his own songs are a strange amalgam of the avant-garde and the ancient. See "Off the Record," on page 26 of Arts, for our review of his new Rejoicing in the Hands (Young God), or see him at the Unitarian Meetinghouse (413-584-9592) in Amherst on Friday; the Brazilian Cultural Center (617-497-7669) in Cambridge on Saturday; and AS220 (401-831-9327) in Providence on Sunday.
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