Dawn Landes live!

Dawn Landes
Hideout, Chicago
Thursday, June 19, 2008

Dawn Landes’ music and performance were so lacking in artifice Thursday night, she had to invent some by having her backing band wear sequined accessories.

The Brooklynite’s candlelit songcraft, in all its glory on this spring’s re-released Fireproof (Cooking Vinyl), also found itself at a disadvantage when her opener, Balthrop Alabama, unleashed a Decemberists-sized case of the giddies upon the Hideout. Inviting Balthrop frontman Jemison Thorsby onstage during her set tripled the effect in a way — he’s nearly three-times her size. Since Landes’ stature already suggests she could be bullied by Laura Cantrell or Rosie Thomas, this could have been a problem.

Fortuitously for her, it wasn’t. Though lacking some of its recorded charm, “I Don’t Need No Man” bristled with confidence, the syncopation of her guitar strums taking on as much importance as the chords she rang. “Picture Show” could have used a little more kook; at times Landes seemed unsure of her performance’s effect and refused to gamble that it was, and concentrated on its punkish outro. Tellingly, her most insistent moment was a Cat Powered cover of Peter Bjorn & John’s “Young Folks,” reducing the track’s summertime-auto-commercial tediousness to a quiet rebellion.

The Christian forecast “the meek shall inherit the Earth” seems less and less likely for the rest of the world, but tonight Dawn Landes eventually overcame her shortcomings.

— Steve Forstneger

Category: Live Reviews, Weekly