Listen & Be Heard Weekly Archives

I went to see My Morning Jacket at The Fillmore in San Francisco on December 30 intending to write a review of the audience. The show, however, was too good to waste cyberwhimsy on it. How good was it? See for yourself at www.archive.org: click on either �bands with mp3s� or �new arrivals� and find the above-mentioned show. It�s all there, it�s all good, and it all rocks. Think of Neil Young with Crazy Horse playing Allman Brothers songs and vice versa.

Not only did the evening�s featured band deliver an outstanding set, so did its opening act, Elvis Perkins In Dearland. My Morning Jacket�s frontman Jim James took a moment between songs to thank them for their contribution to the evening�s music and described them as �wisps of cotton candy come to life.� I was not sure whether he was being facetious or condescending. Cotton candy tends to be cloying after a few bites; after a few songs by EPID, I was forgetting about another band following them. Playful, Dylan-meets-Beatlesesque, even somewhat exotic, but never cloying. Let us assume James was being facetious.

Elvis Perkins In Dearland is a group fronted by Elvis Perkins on vocals, acoustic guitar, and harmonica; Wyndham Boylan-Garnett on electric guitar, keyboards, and harmonium; Brigham Brough on acoustic standup bass; and Nicholas Kinsey on drums.

Their set began when a slender, bespectacled, maybe even wispy young man with an acoustic guitar walked to the microphone and said �Hi, I�m Elvis and some of my friends will be introducing themselves as this song progresses.� I assumed those friends would not be Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, or any other 1950s rock icons. I also assumed the singer was being ironic, since he neither looked nor sounded anything like Elvis Presley.

I knew things were going to be different with this band when Kinsey sat down behind the drum kit during the first song and I noticed he was wearing a harmonica holder and playing the harmonica solos. This feeling was confirmed when Boylan-Garnett joined the band members on stage and added a harmonium part to the final minute of the song. Boylan-Garnett switched to electric guitar for the second song, Kinsey took off the harmonica holder, stepped away from the drum kit, and strapped on a marching band bass drum, which he played with a mallet in one hand and a bell tree in the other. Two songs into their set and I was hooked.

The band played in this fashion for about forty minutes, switching instruments between songs, playing music more suited for listening than dancing, all held together by the common ground of Perkins� voice. Their set was made up of songs with titles like �Sleep Sandwich,� �May Day,� �Emile�s Vietnam In The Sky,� and �While You Were Sleeping.� The songs in their set were part of their 2006 self-released CD �Ash Wednesday,� which had been available at gigs and has been picked up by XL Recordings for a February release (maybe on the 21st, this year�s Ash Wednesday?).

Their set ended, the group left the stage, and a male twentysomething member of the audience made his way up to where my wife Dariece and I were standing, about ten feet away from center stage. He tapped on my arm and asked me my name. I told him. He mumbled something about me not being who he thought I was and walked away. I watched him return to his friends while Dariece mentioned that he probably thought I was somebody�s dad. I can always count on her to say the right thing in any circumstance.

To order �Ash Wednesday� and for additional information, visit www.xlrecordings.com.