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Solitude
Standing
By Shawn Stone
Suzanne Vega
MASS
MoCA, North Adams, Mass., Nov. 9
It was billed as an “Intimate Evening With Suzanne Vega.”
Vega, joined only by her longtime bassist Mike Visceglia,
held the stage for nearly two hours, singing and telling stories.
(In true folkie fashion, Vega never changed guitars, either—she
just moved that capo up and down the neck as needed.) Vastly
entertaining, it was as intimate as is possible in MASS MoCA’s
Hunter Center, a stark, postindustrial black-box-style performance
space that was filled almost to capacity.
Vega opened with a pair of tunes from her eponymous 1985 debut,
“Marlene on the Wall” and “Small Blue Thing.” As they did
all those years ago, these tunes affirmed what made, and still
make, Vega unique: her ability to examine deeply personal
emotions from a clear, analytical perspective that allows
the head equal time with the heart. Her unadorned vocal style
only reinforces her disarmingly cool point of view.
Vega invited questions from the audience, but, either out
of politeness or unease at shouting inquiries in the anonymous
dark, no one asked anything. Vega didn’t need prompting, however.
The confirmed New Yorker bragged about finally passing her
driving test. She read her short story “My Friend Millie,”
a remembrance of her Spanish Harlem childhood, and followed
it with a sly version of “Neighborhood Girls.”
She talked about the English dadaist with whom she shared
a summer fling at age 17, and then sang both songs that resulted
from this brief romance, “Gypsy” and the soaring, aching “In
Liverpool.” Vega wryly observed: “I go out with someone for
two months, and they get two songs. I’m with someone for five
years, and nothing.”
She didn’t explain whether or not this was a reference to
her ex-husband and former collaborator Mitchell Froom. However,
she followed “Gypsy” with “When Heroes Go Down,” a deft and
telling shift in mood from youthful romanticism to adult disillusionment.
Other highlights included the beguiling eroticism of “Caramel”
(from her underrated 1996 album Nine Objects of Desire),
and a trio of tunes from her latest release, Songs in Red
and Gray—“Penitent,” “Widow’s Walk,” and her answer song
to the Rod Stewart chestnut, “I’ll Never Be Your Maggie May.”
Of course, she played her Top 40 hits: “Left of Center,” “Tom’s
Diner” and “Luka.” She sang “Tom’s Diner” a cappella, naturally,
with the audience clapping the mad beats, as in the DNA remix
of the song. After a well-earned standing ovation, Vega and
Visceglia returned for two more tunes from that first album:
the pensive “Some Journey,” and the crowd- pleasing art song
“Cracking.” A fine finish for a lovely evening.
When
We Was Weird
Frank Black and the Catholics
Saratoga
Winners, Nov. 9
Back when he was a Pixie, Frank Black (known then as Black
Francis) had a near cultish ability to incite frenzy in fans.
At a Pixies show I saw during their last tour in 1991, a friend
of mine recognized the opening strain of their song “The Sad
Punk” in time to know that the audience was about to boil
over. We cleared out of the way; as soon as Black screamed
the song’s central lyric—“Extinction”—the whole club exploded
into a turbulent watch-your-teeth mosh pit.
He may never be as cool as his past. But at his Saratoga Winners
show on Saturday, Black somehow still seemed capable of inspiring
audience bedlam. The difference is that now—more than 10 years
and eight solo albums later—he just doesn’t care to go there
anymore. He still plays Pixies songs: The Winners set contained
five, and the crowd went nuts for them. But Black always pulled
back at the point of combustion. The dirgelike “Wave of Mutilation”
was more of a slow burn. On “Monkey Gone to Heaven,” Black
was accompanied only by a mournful pedal-steel guitar, as
he stood alone in the spotlight and clutched a beer bottle
like a lounge crooner wields a mike. At the song’s dramatic
climax—the pause before Black yelled, “And if the devil is
six/Then God is seven”—the singer rolled his eyes, as if the
lyrics weren’t nearly as clever as countless college-age music
fans have thought they are.
Black is far from angry these days, it’s obvious. Much of
the new material he showcased from Black Letter Days
and The Devil’s Workshop, the two albums he released
simultaneously this year, found him still reveling in the
“Tex-Mex meets the Rolling Stones” vibe of his last album,
Dog in the Sand. It’s a sound that suited Black well,
much like his shiny head and dark, tieless suit. It helped
that he has assembled a band up to the task of resurrecting
Exile on Main Street swagger. His four-piece Catholics
just plain rocked.
Fortunately, Black no longer feels compelled to live up to
his image as a demigod of indie-rock weirdness. Still, he
offered glimpses of his contagiously gleeful malevolence.
The quirky “Jumping Beans” sizzled and sputtered in keeping
with the song’s bounce-happy subject matter; “Black Rider”
re-created Tom Waits’ gothic carnival ride; and Black spared
no venom when he spat out “You are the son of a motherfucker”
during “Nimrod’s Son.” By finding new ways to combine his
innate darkness with his sun-drenched twang, Black kept his
set interesting, even while testing the audience’s limited
attention span with unheard-before material like the country
ballad “Manitoba.”
—Kirsten
Ferguson
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