"Kiss me before you go. I'm going low and lately..."

I have a million lists going at once on this blog. I'll get back to songs I enjoy from commercials eventually. I was thinking today about how my year in limbo has almost come to an end and about some of the shows I've seen and mentally narrowed down the individuals or acts I thought were tops.

So here's a list of my favorite five shows from this past year (and the artists you have to look forward to hearing about these next couple of days):
1. Ray LaMontagne at Maxwell's.
2. Emily Haines at Joe's Pub.
3. Ben Folds at Muhlenberg College.
4. I Am X at the Knitting Factory.
5. Either Shiny Toy Guns at Fearless Studios or !!! at Maxwell's.

Anyway, I'll start with my favorite first.
Ray LaMontagne is battered, soulful, and brilliant. He has a lot of competition from the likes of James Morrison or Amos Lee, but I think he can stand on his own. What I feel separates him from the others of his musical genre is the passion. You can hear the desperation, anger, or pain in his voice while the charged blinking of his eyes take you on a journey of their own. I don't think I've witnessed a person look at the audience less than Ray does, but you don't feel disconnected from it. Rather, you feel drawn in as he is, everyone lost in the music having a quieted individualized experience. He is also the rare performer whose live presence and sound far outshines the recorded material that labels have been distributing.

Maxwell's, in particular, was quite conducive to this type of music. It's dark and somber, one of the smaller venues I've encountered in my concert time. People show up early to have dinner and hang out at the bar down the corridor from the stage, which is great, because a lot of the acts do the same thing. As a fan, you have the opportunity to interact with people you enjoy on a more personal level: buying them drinks, having a good conversation over a newspaper, hanging out before the divide between artist and audience begins. While I didn't do that with the Ray LaMontagne show, it was still the perfect background and atmosphere for his slow singer-songwriter music and allowed him to feel both bittersweet and comforting through the melodies and vocals. In summary, Ray LaMontagne is like an old army jacket: worn through, full of character, comfortable, but precious enough where you can feel so many stories emanating through the very threads that comprise the material.




Ray LaMontagne - Barfly from Till the Sun Turns Black





Ray LaMontagne - Trouble - from the series Live from Abbey Road. (By the way, that series is phenomenal. If you are into the process behind recording in the famed studio and different bands' takes on how they make their music, I suggest checking it out on the Sundance Channel).