| The Undertow Orchestra Park West,Chicago,IL 17/02/06 |
| What do Vic Chesnutt, Mark Eitzel, David Bazan and Will Johnson have in common? Among other things, a profession (singer-songwriter), a manager (Champaign's Bob Andrews), a scruffy, bearded winter look, and now -- as the Undertow Orchestra -- a band.
The brainchild of Andrews and dubbed in honor of his Undertow Management company, this new confederation is loose and fun-loving. Friday at Park West, those fans who braved the frigid night saw the veteran bandleaders not only share the stage but play and sing together on one another's songs. There was Chesnutt on bass and American Music Club's Eitzel on acoustic rhythm guitar; Bazan (of Pedro the Lion) and Johnson (Centro-Matic) switched between electric guitar and drums. Each writer took turns leading the band through three of his compositions, a cycle they completed twice in a roughly two-hour set. It was intimate and informal, with all the players seated, shuffling pages of chord progressions and bantering good-naturedly between songs. Though each is prodigiously talented, only the mischievous Chesnutt is truly unpredictable; all are wordy, and the others can seem monochromatic in concert with their respective bands. But the baton-passing nature of this show meant that wasn't a problem. While Johnson's approach was ramshackle and woodsy, Bazan favored emo's earnestness and pop's concision. His tightly written songs focused on themes, he said; the first salvo concerned "death in transit," while his second referred to "female genitalia," mostly by way of putting down the men in the narratives or, in the exquisite "I Do," commenting starkly on the state of the world: And when his tiny head emerged from blood and folds of skin,/I thought to myself, 'If he only knew, he would climb right back in.' The crooner of the bunch, Eitzel drew from his recent albums "Love Songs for Patriots" (with American Music Club) and "Candy Ass" (a solo effort); he served up disdain for himself and his country in equal measure. Chesnutt, too, used wit as a weapon, most unsubtly in an allegory called "Iraq" in which a man holds a woman down while telling her she's free. He fared better when he turned his barbs inward, as in "Stupid Preoccupations," or when he simply let his wordplay stand alone: Sparkle and spangle, it's all in a tangle/ Watch him wrangle a little something from the dust. Reviewed by Anders Smith Lindall for The Chicago Sun Times February 20th 2006 Return To Touring Page Here |