Monday, January 14, 2008

Anton Sword and the New Word


Ladies and Gentlemen, the new word is MEAN. Who's gonna read you if you don't attack them, right? Who wants to hear about another nice concert of another really good band? Either you find spectacular vocabular to describe how the music hit you, or you go brutally honest. T'least that's what they're telling me in front of Club Midway last Tuesday, where JoeMcGinty welcomed the audience with a bittersweet "Thanks for coming to the real Lower East side, we know you could have had such a nice time in the virtual LES...." So, goodbye to all the nice jingle jangle, lets dish out the dirt. Right. Go. Anton Sword has some really, really bad lyrics. He should listen to Dylan, Cash, Cave, Waits and the likes. He is a romantic beyond help, plucking his inspiration from that horrible phase of literature when they wrote love poems for flowers and had sex on a meadow, ifunowhaddamean. So Keates and Yates are on your side, but Wilde and Weller are on mine. The band is great though, mighty guitars from Kristofer and driving cello lines from Jessica, pleasant harmonies from Joanna. There's even one or two hits in there, ifuaskme, especially "The instrument, your friend" which Anton is making into a video. Come see him and the band at Rose in Williamsburg on January 23rd. Ask him about the bad lyrics and whether his words are important. Opening up will be Kerry Kennedy with her new great band, an spectacle we still dont get to see often enough. Her words are important.

2 comments:

aafine said...

Thanks, Roman. I'm assuming this diatribe is in response chiefly to 'Astronomer's Lullaby," the admittedly uber-romantic song that closed the set. I know you just pretended not to hear the brilliantly cynical image-laden lyrics in the other songs because you were jealous. Or perhaps it was the band being so distractingly good! Anyway, I always take your impassioned criticism as a sign i'm on the right track! :-) Got to keep you paying attention... See you on wednesday!

aafine said...

PS methinks thou dost protest too much. your onstage proposal in september would suggest you're a closeted romantic yourself--your shame about this would explain your vitriol... :-)