all photos: Josh Sisk.com
all words: Michael Byrne
Phew, Jamie Lidell’s getting awfully close to being one of the college-town white boy funk-soul acts I’m forced to listen to/open press releases from every week at my day job. Everyone dressed up…like that (see pictures) and Lidell’s once prized electronics rack collecting dust on the corner of the stage while his live band played, loosely bordering on raggedly (jumpsuit guitarist, we’re looking at you), tracks off this Springs Jim. The record is some legit blue-eyed soul and, for it, I was willing to look beyond the fact that it was coming from a dude that once made tracks with Cristian Vogel of way-back minimal techno fame, and designed his own looping/live performance software. (The latter only came out a little—basic beatboxed loops and some fun sampling his sax man, mainly.) On Thursday Jim was just beat.
Seeing Lidell do his thing live several times before, sans band and in tech geek mode (read: eye-crossing live looping/self-sampling), and absolutely gush energy, heart, and soul onto the stage until he had to sit down for a slow song and then pop back up grinning, he just looked exhausted on Thursday. I’d even say unhappy. Maybe we can chalk it up to this being the last tour stop, but this show felt feigned.
And, dude, that gold lamet jacket is not hiding the fact that you’re looking kinda skeletal these days.
all photos: Josh Sisk (.com)
all words: Michael Byrne
jumpsuit guitarist was actually playing bass. and “lamet”? not really a word that goes after gold.
June 15, 2008 at 3:55 pmgold lamet: http://www.pbase.com/robinwalker/image/46292659
June 15, 2008 at 8:23 pmI think the word is spelled lamé.
June 16, 2008 at 7:17 amI know that. The one above me doesn’t.
June 16, 2008 at 8:37 amIf you knew it was spelled lamé, why the heck didn’t you spell it like that? Just so you could demonstrate that it’s misspelled elsewhere on the web? I was going to say “lamet” isn’t even a word, but apparently it’s a Laotian ethnic group. While we’re setting the record straight, you’re missing a possessive apostrophe in “Springs” (which I’m not even sure needs to be capitalized).
June 16, 2008 at 9:00 ambaconfat - different Michaels. Confusing, ain’t it?
June 16, 2008 at 10:12 ammaybe this will fix it.
June 16, 2008 at 10:25 amonly on BYT could this become a brutal flamewar about how to spell a fabric name.
June 16, 2008 at 10:48 amoh and how do i get one of those stylish “byt”’s next to my name? svetlana, save me!
June 16, 2008 at 10:49 amjoshsisk - pester the everlivingfuck out of svetlana….
June 16, 2008 at 11:19 amwe will have a BYT bubble blitzkrieg later this week.
whoever needs it AND deserves is, WILL get it.
Well if everyone gets one then I won’t want mine anymore.
June 16, 2008 at 1:25 pmNot EVERYONE but everyone WHO deserves one (right now, only 10 people have it total)
June 16, 2008 at 1:28 pmWell, then can I get one in red or something?
(ducks)
June 16, 2008 at 1:29 pmHurray for bubble blitzkrieg!
June 16, 2008 at 2:10 pm
I’ve got to disagree with the reviewer. While I’ve seen Lidell do the one-man-band thing before (it’s fucking exhilarating stuff), I think the new material was served EXTREMELY well by the full band treatment. Bonus points for getting a bunch of band members that have enough personality that Jamie doesn’t totally overshadow them. The dude on sax was especially on point — what the hell was that vocoder sax thing? I think Jamie met the audience halfway — he mixed enough of the old technophile stuff with a more traditional — but still HUGELY energitic — soul outfit. dude can’t be expected to do the solo electronics thing when he just put out an album of straight up soul.
June 14, 2008 at 1:56 pm