Carrie Rodriguez Preview

Carrie Rodriguez
Vic Theatre, Chicago
Friday, April 13, 2007
Saturday, April 14, 2007

It’s doubtful Lucinda Williams fans will feel conned into watching the same act twice when Carrie Rodriguez opens these two shows. But to infer a lack of emulation on Rodriguez’s part would be woefully (woe!) inaccurate.

Classically trained but steeped in dusty roots rock, last year’s Seven Angels On A Bicycle (Back Porch) strays lustily but always comes back home in the morning. The title track’s vacant roadway is hardly enough to contain saxophonist Javier Vercher (also Mr. Carrie Rodriguez), and fades out in a way that would make Tortoise proud. “Never Gonna Be Your Bride” is adamantly country with storming fiddle lines crisscrossing like competing lightning strikes.

As the saga continually unfolds, like Calexico attacking a Nickel Creek session, it sounds more and more like Rodriguez doesn’t have any interest in being a singer-songwriter, but a conductor. Her lyrics and singing eschew coffeehouse melody and extended verse, and frequently yield to atmosphere and architecture. Rodriguez’s tendency to moan and draaaawwww her words are what draw the Lucinda comparisons.

What’s surprising is how much of Seven Angels was written by producer (and artist in his own right) Chip Taylor. Of 12 songs he takes or shares credit on 11, while Rodriguez only does the sharing on five. This isn’t significant in a credibility sense — although it would be nice to know she could write lines like “The back of his hand kept my mouth closed” — but dumps all the attention into her competence as an interpreter. In this she is not lacking, and actually sounds smartest on the one track neither she nor Taylor had anything to do with: Dirk Powell’s “Waterbound.”

— Steve Forstneger

Category: Stage Buzz, Weekly