Concert Previews
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds Last year, Nick Cave retooled his Bad Seeds into the ferocious, lusty, rowdy Grinderman. Some of that spirit carries over into this year's excellent Bad Seeds album, Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, its songs seething with biblical allusi
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Last year, Nick Cave retooled his Bad Seeds into the ferocious, lusty, rowdy Grinderman. Some of that spirit carries over into this year's excellent Bad Seeds album,
Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!,
its songs seething with biblical allusions, both sacred and profane. Cave's an apocalyptic preacher on "We Call Upon the Author," a randy old man on "Lie Down Here (& Be My Girl)," a moody, creepy balladeer on "Hold on to Yourself." Cave doesn't tour often and he hasn't stopped here in ages, so Tuesday's show - with a six-piece band that includes Mick Harvey on guitar, Warren Ellis on violin and two drummers - qualifies as an event. And opening will be Kid Congo Powers, who played with the Cramps and the Gun Club and, two decades ago, the Bad Seeds.
- Steve Klinge
Damien Jurado
"I'm no lie detector," Damien Jurado rasps on "Gillian Was a Horse," the opener and single off
Caught in Trees,
the eighth album in a vastly overlooked career. Honesty and betrayal permeate this new batch of songs, which are briefer and musically lighter than usual, but as heart-wrenching as ever. This sad-sack Seattle folkie has mixed things up over the years, going experimental for 2000's
Ghost of David
and raucously electric for '02's
I Break Chairs,
but his knack for understated storytelling and wowing refrains has been a constant. And if
Caught in Trees
' "Trials" is any indication, he could be just the singer to succeed Elliot Smith's wounded whisper in so many people's lives.
- Doug Wallen
Graham Parker
After more than three decades, Graham Parker still enjoys summoning the bile and turning it into razor-sharp songs. But there's always been more to the British rocker than the Angry Young Man image that attached to him early and has been something of an albatross: He's never really gotten the attention he deserves. Last year's
Don't Tell Columbus
is the latest proof that Parker is far more than a one-dimensional artist. Amid flashes of that acid wit, he's unabashedly open-hearted, from the redemptive rush of "Somebody Saved Me" to the tenderly romantic "All Being Well" and the sweeping tale of loss that is "The Other Side of the Reservoir."
- Nick Cristiano