Labour of love

Angie Hart and Guy Blackman at the Toff, 5 May 2009

Caught the tram downtown and wandered around Swanston Street looking for the Toff. It is still silly to be worried about being late since nothing ever starts on time. But this one didn't start too awfully late. The Toff is up a few flights and seems like a pretty cool lounge/club. $7 for a beer though, ouch.

Guy Blackman was on first. He is a friend of C's and I wasn't quite sure what to expect. It wasn't at all what I expected. I knew it was an acoustic show. Nothing against that, although I tend to like music that sounds more like people getting beat up or things being destroyed. He alternated between acoustic guitar and an electric piano and occasionally played some pre-recorded backing music from his iPod. It was quite gushy confessional with a touch of lounge thrown in. He sheepishly throws in a Dusty Springfield cover at one point, how dare I presume to cover Dusty, the rest of the songs being almost exclusively about his failed or past and current romances or just generally throwing yourself into it all. It is nice and quite sweet while hovering so very close to unbearable schmaltz without quite descending into that.

Angie Hart was the voice of Frente and her voice is such a huge part of their sound. They had a song on the Melrose Place soundtrack, so she is super famous. Ahh, Melrose Place, do you remember that episode where Brooke drowns in the pool then comes back as a ghost and haunts Billy and Billy gets this stupid look on his face because he is a horrible actor and being haunted by a ghost is just totally out of his range, ahh, good times, but I can't get caught up in Melrose Place here.

Angie has a guy with her, Sam, on acoustic guitar. He is quite good, plays loud and gets a lot of sound out of it with just a edge of classical guitar. I've listened to a few of her new songs online and they have lots of instruments and lots of production, but I guess what I really liked about Frente was the sparseness. With her and an acoustic guitar tonight, it has that and is good. She has a great voice. She plays lots of new songs I've never heard, a few old Frente songs, and does a fun duet (tri-et?, Sam played too) with Guy coming back to play along on Book of Love (Magnetic Fields) while she forgets a lot of the lyrics and screws up a bit in the middle. Then comes back for an encore, ending with Bizarre Love Triangle. It is funny, New Order can play that whenever they want but Frente really owns that song now. To me, it is the way to do a cover, either take a loud, complicated, or electronic song and make it super simple and quiet or take a quiet song and totally kick its ass, either way totally remaking the song in your own image.

Then home and in bed by 11:15, that's the way to do a show, no fuss, just music and quick in and out.