PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER / PHILLY - Whole lot of Lowery at World Café Live by A.D. Amorosi David Lowery is an industrious fellow. Only two years after the laid-back singer/songwriter ended his influential, smart-aleck, folk-punk-world music ensemble Camper Van Beethoven in 1989, he started another group, Cracker, whose riff-rocking take on still-sarcastic lyrics inspired indie bands from Gogol Bordello and Pavement to My Morning Jacket and Dr. Dog. Lowery reignited Camper Van Beethoven in the early 2000s and had them open for Cracker on subsequent tours - such as Saturdays double bill at World Café Live - thereby leaving no Lowery stone unturned. Thats a whole lot of Lowery - 30 songs worth, not counting Camper Van Beethovens brisk mod-pop cover of Status Quos Pictures of Matchstick Men. The funniest thing about Saturdays show was hearing how the differences between Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker have narrowed, how Camper sounds less coy and more linear, and how Cracker opened its arrangements to a yawning country sound in accordance with its recent Berkeley to Bakersfield. On Camper Van Beethovens side of the ledger, there were Baltic tracks, jaunty with Jonathan Segels sawing gypsy violin (Balalaika Gap), ballads slow and sad (Summer Days), and a ska-dub break within the Byrds-ish Good Guys & Bad Guys. For the most part though, Camper Van Beethoven played it straighter with the buzzing psychedelic (Were a) Bad Trip, the winsome, bouncing Northern California Girls, and the ominously thumping All Her Favorite Fruit. Beyond pop, Lowerys mellow voice and sarcastic lyrics were better suited to the countryish Sweethearts, with its sighing pedal steel guitars, and the twin-guitar twang of It Was Like That When We Got Here. With Cracker, Lowery started alone on stage with just an acoustic guitar and the Pete Seeger-esque Torches and Pitchforks before adding electric guitarist Johnny Hickman for the softly tangoing noir of Dr. Bernice, and the rest of the ensemble for the pastoral folk of Almond Grove. Though Cracker tackled its anthemic hard-pop classics Low, the mangy One Fine Day, and the fast, caustic Teen Angst (What the World Needs Now), they did their most innovative work on the soft Spanglish country of Where Have Those Days Gone and the hillbilly, honky-tonk pluck of King of Bakersfield. philly/philly/entertainment/20150119_Whole_lot_of_Lowery_at_World_Caf_Live.html
Posted on: Mon, 19 Jan 2015 14:16:46 +0000
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