Elvis Perkins - Cafe du Nord - San Francisco 03/25/07
Posted by Deniz Kuypers on 04.18.2007
The show didn’t change how I listen to Ash Wednesday, but it did make me respect Perkins and his crew and what they’re doing. They’re just a group of young musicians who love to make music and have a solid first album to show for it.
I suppose I’m lazy. I don’t like Café du Nord much. It has a basement feel to it. The place is small and dark and gets unbearably hot. The acoustics aren’t great; in fact, the smallness of the place muffles sounds and blends them together into an indistinguishable mess. I’ve seen the best of bands (including a young My Morning Jacket) fall prey to it. And for some reason, the ticket person at the door can never find my name on the guest list and argues with me to the point where I’m ready to walk away (too indignant to even consider buying a ticket), at which he suddenly points to my name on the page and ushers me inside with a grin. Perhaps it’s his idea of funny. Yet, I’ve been to a lot of shows at Café du Nord over the past few years, the reason being that the place is basically down the street from where I live, tickets are usually cheap, and shows never really sell out.
So the exciting prospect of seeing Elvis Perkins live was slightly dampened by the fact that he was playing at Café du Nord and, as he was the main act, wouldn’t go on until ten or eleven. As it happened, I was driving home on the day of the show and passed by the venue. Perkins’s excellent debut album, Ash Wednesday, was playing in my car—and there he was, the man himself, looking as disheveled and undernourished as, say, David Copperfield. Like a dork I jumped out of my car (seeing that I live in San Francisco this is a huge overstatement: in all honesty, I spent the next 10 minutes trying to find parking, cursing the fact that you can’t legally take a left turn anywhere in this city), introduced myself, asked Elvis and the band to sign my copy of Ash Wednesday, and inquired what time they would go on. 10:00 PM. I decided to arrive at the venue right at 10:00, as to not spend any more time there than I had to.
Strangely enough, upon arriving the band was mingling with the audience and people were hugging Elvis like this was a wedding reception or the opening of an art gallery. Resorting to the pool table in the back, I decided to bide my time. And finally, the band took the stage.
If it hadn’t been for opener “While You Were Sleeping” I might have left altogether. But the tune, which also opens Perkins’s album, is so undeniably catchy, it had me hooked right away. Ash Wednesday is not a very dynamic album in terms of musical experimentation or screeching guitars. It’s a quiet, contemplative, dark collection of folk songs with a theatrical touch to them. On stage, the songs worked remarkably well. “While You Were Sleeping” gently moved the listener along as it built into a toe-tapping stomp. Perkins & Co. then launched into “All the Night Without Love,” the current single. The sound was remarkably clear. It’s often hard to make an acoustic guitar sound good on stage, but Perkins and his band definitely have the formula down. Though they didn’t radically alter their songs, they did infuse them with that extra spark of energy that a live performance needs.
The band ran through seven of the album’s eleven songs in quick succession, halting, to my surprise, at the album’s last four tracks. Instead of finishing out Ash Wednesday, they began offering new material and covers. When a band is on tour supporting its first album, their performances are always either really short or filled with new material, which can make for a very challenging show when the new songs aren’t very easily accessible. The fact that Perkins didn’t run through his entire album, however, but instead chose to treat us to new songs demonstrates his enthusiasm for his craft. He has come up with new words and new melodies and wants the world to hear them. The old stuff, after all (even if it’s only a few months old), can be found on Ash Wednesday.
The new songs held up well against the familiar material. Admittedly, it took me several spins to truly begin to like Ash Wednesday and during tonight’s performance Perkins did play a few songs that went right over my head. But overall, the new tunes seemed playful and in the same vein of the other songs, though perhaps a bit more affected. They reminded me, in fact, of Rufus Wainwright on an acoustic guitar.
I didn’t stay to talk to the band afterwards. I was out of there before they had even begun to pack up their equipment. The show didn’t change how I listen to Ash Wednesday, but it did make me respect Perkins and his crew and what they’re doing. They’re just a group of young musicians who love to make music and have a solid first album to show for it. They’ve been touring practically non-stop for months now (even landing an opening slot for My Morning Jacket on said band’s last tour) and have a lot more shows lined up already. They do it seemingly tirelessly. Their music is worth it.
The 411: Good first experience of Elvis Perkins live. His renditions of the Ash Wednesday material followed the originals closely, so the real treat was in watching the band enjoy themselves on stage. They wore these tunes like old jackets that fit comfortably. Using a word that seems fitting to Perkins’s pensive—yes, thespian music even: bravo.
