acoustic – District Consonance

First Listen: The Devil Makes Three’s Hand Back Down (Acoustic Version)

The Devil Makes Three’s music is garage-y ragtime, punkified blues, old n’ new timey without settling upon a particular era, and inspired as much by mountain music as by Preservation Hall jazz. Here’s your chance to win free tickets to a TDM3 show in your town. Update: Scroll down to hear the new, acoustic version of Hand Back Down. I love this stripped-down rendition. It’s as if you’re in the room with the trio and maybe, just maybe, you’ll get to do whiskey shots together after the song.

The Devil Makes Three draws from the storytelling traditions and acoustic string-band sound of old-time music and injects sardonic lyrics and an exuberant intensity that propels crowds to their feet to clap, stomp, and dance along. Their style cannot be cabined in a single genre and their lightning energy can hardly be contained within the bounds of a record. You really have to see them live to appreciate their magic — the finger-picked strings and surging harmonies wrapped around the drive of acoustic guitar and bass.

Continue reading “First Listen: The Devil Makes Three’s Hand Back Down (Acoustic Version)”

This Could Be Home: Jesse Terry + Suzie Brown & Scot Sax

Days of rain. Not spring rain, the kind that nourishes new life, but late autumn rain. The kind that seeps into your bones and makes you weary, weary beyond your years, weary of waking up to headlines in which a city name is metonym for all that is fundamentally broken, weary of the emotional output demanded by the holidays, of tallying up mistakes and trying to outrun your own shadow.

The rain tapered to a drizzle mid-day and I laced up for a run. The Reflecting Pool was deserted, the Tidal Basin drew only a few brave tourists. I usually crave these moments of solitude, the grim satisfaction of pushing through the weariness. But that day, the wind whipping through the trees and the staccato of my shoes against wet gravel sounded more stark than soothing.

So I put on some music. Not my normal running playlist of pop and hip-hop, but the music of a singer-songwriter I started listening to a few weeks ago. His name is Jesse Terry. His music is filled with a simple grace, with lyrics that capture beautifully the eternal tug-of-war between head and heart. If you like Josh Ritter, Ryan Adams, or Jackson Browne, give Jesse’s music a try. His soothing voice paired with acoustic guitar is like a gentle sunbeam parting monochrome sky.

Continue reading “This Could Be Home: Jesse Terry + Suzie Brown & Scot Sax”

A storm blowing from Paradise: A night with the Airborne Toxic Event

A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress. –Walter Benjamin, “On the Concept of History”

A spectral bird, its wings outspread, imparts a white glow to the dim stage. The sculptural eagle — a spirit animal of sorts for The Airborne Toxic Event — recalls Klee’s angel, and the music of The Airborne Toxic Event evokes the struggle with the chaos of modern life described by the historian Walter Benjamin. But unlike Benjamin’s angel of history, confronted with the devastation of the past but propelled inexorably into the future, the music of The Airborne Toxic Event encourages us to linger, to rebuild these stunning ruins and piece together the fragments of our compartmentalized lives.

Continue reading “A storm blowing from Paradise: A night with the Airborne Toxic Event”