Back Up Against the 'Wall'
July 17, 2008 - M.J. Fine, Jewish Exponent Feature |
| Reaction to Tilly and the Wall's "o"? Oh! |
If Jamie Williams' peculiar brand of percussion were just a cheap hook, it would have gotten stale by now. But three albums in, Omaha's Tilly and the Wall -- with two lead singers, a guitarist, a keyboard player and the tap-dancing Williams -- are making the most fulfilling music of their career.
Their first full-length album, "Wild Like Children," was an instant charmer when it came out in the summer of 2004, and the group sounded great when it played the Academy of Music the following winter.
But, frankly, their next effort, the unfortunately titled "Bottoms of Barrels," didn't do much for me on first listen, and I tossed it right back. Second chances are a luxury you can't afford when you have an endless stack of new releases to plow through and thousands of tried-and-true stuff.
Fast-forward to June. It's been a disappointing year -- in music and in other things -- and it had been far too long since something really grabbed me. And in a summer already this hot, it's hard to hear anything over the roar of the fan. A decent DVD is just as good with subtitles turned on, but CDs just don't work that way.
So it was fortuitous that the first album I tried to listen to, during a break in the heat wave, was Tilly and the Wall's new "o."
That's "o" as in "outstanding."
Much has changed since their last go-round. For one thing, the instrumentation is far more varied than in the past, with Nick White's keyboards, producer Mike Mogis' bass guitar and even the occasional horn piled higher in the mix. And while Williams' tap shoes are as integral as ever, now she's dancing on different surfaces to bring a richer variety of textures for the rest of the band to build upon.
He's Scaled Back
In another major development, guitarist Derek Pressnall has scaled back on his singing. With all due respect to Williams' husband for his musical contributions -- which have grown considerably -- it's the ladies' voices I want to hear.
Neely Jenkins and Kianna Alarid sing of haunted waters ("Chandelier Lake"), crushing physical chemistry ("Falling Without Knowing") and hostile border walls ("Poor Man's Ice Cream"). Their voices are pretty and angry, all at once, and they're never more than a track or two away from a line about flowers or rock 'n' roll.
A short storm of distortion transforms "Tall Tall Grass" from a sweet reminiscence into a conflicted bid for forgiveness, while "Pot Kettle Black," a sassy garage-rock shouter, may be the best girl-on-girl smackdown since Lush's "Hypocrite" in the mid-'90s. With friends like these, enemies are extraneous.
But despite all the intense sentiments inspired by their toxic associates, the band managed to cobble together quite a cabal of pals to belt out "Blood Flowers."
"You'd better watch where you're walking," the cacophonous choir demands. "You'd better watch what you're doing."
All right, all right. I may not have been watching closely enough before, but I'm not taking my eye off Tilly and the Wall again.
Check them out on Sunday, July 27, at First Unitarian Church in Philadelphia.
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Also worth a listen is singer-guitarist Noa Babayof, a sabra whose debut album came out in the United States in June.
Her first U.S. tour brought her to First Unitarian Church recently, but she's no stranger to our city. She made "From a Window to a Wall" in North Philly last year at the home studio of Espers frontman Greg Weeks, and local folks like cellist Margie Wienk, flautist Jessica Weeks and harpist Jesse Sparhawk provide gentle backing for Babayof's soft, slow and deep vocals.
Romantics will embrace "Loving You," while listeners more skeptical of love can search for meaning in the lyrics of "Before Sleep" and "Mid Town Fair."
On the Italian-accented "One Song," Babayof yearns to reconnect with a lost love, even as she does whatever she can to disconnect from the futility of it all.
