BARR Preview

BARR
Beat Kitchen, Chicago
Saturday, March 17, 2007

Do NOT go see BARR on St. Patrick’s Day if you’ve been drinking. Repeat: Do NOT.

According to The Departed, the Irish are the only race on Earth impervious to psychoanaysis, but they’re still champions of the barstool confession. With that, Summary (5RC), the second album from BARR, on showcase this Saturday, contains some painfully and potentially embarrassing tidbits that might set off an outpouring of inner dialogue. Over longtime bassist Corey Dieckman, pianist/vocalist Brendan Fowler makes like Arab Strap and spares us nary a spoken detail about his inner machinations, like “Untitled,” which advises a friend not to commit suicide because “there’s not way in hell I’m letting you put me through that.” There are times when you want to laugh but aren’t sure (“Are you screwing my friend? I guess we’re all friends, but if you two are doing it, I wonder/Is he asking the same?”), and, as the insistent pulse of “Context Ender” dictates, times when you definitely shouldn’t (“I say the same things over and over/because I only think the same things over and over”).

Fowler is like The Hold Steady’s Craig Finn without the nostalgia bearing down on him, and a self-imposed obligation to put things right. We prefer a line from a different Jack Nicholson movie and apply it to BARR: “I don’t know if it’s art, but I like it.”

Casiotone For The Painfully Alone will headline.

— Kevin Keegan

Click here to download the BARR “video.”

Category: Stage Buzz, Weekly