thao with the get down stay down

well, my day was just made.
thao with the get down stay down, one of my favorite bands, will be playing at the bowery ballroom on may 14th. i've seen them twice already, but i'm absolutely going again, and i encourage everyone else to check them out. the openers seem not bad: samantha crain, a perfectly listenable neo-folk/americana outfit, and sister suvi, who i suspect will either be FANTASTIC live, or unspeakably pretentious. (y'know, either way...or both?)

and then there's TWGDSD. i'm pretty prone to girl-crushes, but the one i have for thao is of a particularly flustered, breathless type...so i'll try to get the basics out of the way before going all rapturous: you can snag a few free songs on the daytrotter website, but i seriously recommend getting their albums, at least we brave bee stings and all, if not also like the linen. both are pretty great, but, in my opinion, bee stings, their second, is a more varied, polished, interesting album. i would definitely be sure to score "moped," "tallymarks," and "chivalry" off linen, though.

TWGDSD is spring music for me. can't really pinpoint why, except that maybe it's that their literary, guitar (and sometimes banjo)-based brand of indie folk rolk is so light-footed and (mostly) sunny, good-natured even when in distress. regardless, it's gotten me through 2 senior theses and graduating college, so maybe that speaks for itself. or, specifically, bee stings did. like i said, i like the first album fine, but the second is far better (i've just destroyed my hipster street cred if i ever had any). one improvement on like the linen that's made on bee stings is the addition of more varied forms and eclectic components, like the horn bass line under the stripped down snare drum and acoustic string on "beat (health, life, and fire)". just...so...catchy.

the lyrics are the real gems here. what thao does most often, and quite well, are verses that meditate on situations that have just not gone quite as someone expected: regret leavened with resignation and self-deprecating humor ("you can't build cathedrals out of finger steeples" or "my, my mouth, a confessional canon/run away with me with the most reckless of abandon"). i'll say though, she's energizingly great on the occasions when she gets fierce, like on her feminist anthem (woot!) "swimming pools". the lyric "you've got to push all the doubt/to the side of your mouth/and we, we brave bee stings and all/and we don't dive, we cannonball" gives the album its name, and the rest of us an oft-needed general exhortation to ballsiness.

thao croons and sighs and growls and wails her way through these lyrics in a way that makes you feel like you're in the middle of your third glass of wine with a perfect stranger. you're both a little drunk, but certainly sober enough to be self-conscious about it (not to mention the fact that you're spilling self-revelation to a complete stranger). and then she says something wry and self-reflective and just exactly what you've been trying to articulate, even if the actual situation she's describing has nothing to do with yours.

at her live shows, thao is far more wail and growl than croon and sigh. even at an intimate gig/talk i saw, her twiggy limbs jerked and thrashed along with the beat, and most songs were played half again or even twice the speed of the album versions. like a manic-depressive in a manic phase, her energy, her hurts, her wryness, are all as distilled as the whiskey she's been known to sip while performing. live, thao is like that stranger a couple drinks (and maybe a few lines) later. she wants to find a way to break onto the roof of the nearest, tallest building, or steal a fast car, and while part of your brain thinks you may have gotten something completely different than what you bargained for, the rest of you is pretty much along for the ride.