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Britton: this BU grad maintains a loyal fan
base
CONCERT Review / Peter Koch
On January 27th, Noah Britton and a
troupe of various musicians and non-musicians descended on the Tap Room at
the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence to play a show that was
rather unique.
"I've never played any of these
songs before and after tonight, I'll never play them again," said the
tall, sad-eyed Britton, a Stratocaster hanging in front of him and a dozen
mainly-BU students, some musicians, some not, at his
rear.
Roughly a year earlier, Britton had
spent a cold, lonely night in his hovel of a Mission Hill apartment
penning song after song.
"By the end of the
night I was basically possessed," said Britton in his deep, lackadaisical
drawl. "Yeah. So I figured I'd play some of these songs a year later with
all my friends... Not even all of these people can play instruments, but
they're all people that I love and absolutely
trust."
Britton, who graduated from BU last
year, has gained something of a following for his remarkably low voice,
funny, intelligent acoustic songs, and "hot bod," as he puts
it.
He has shared the stage with the
likes of Jad Fair and Calvin Johnson, with whom he shares some definite
stylistic similarities, and even did a duet with the latter at the last
What-the-Heck festival in Anacortes, WA.
The
makeshift crew (Matt Lerner on saxophone, Alex Billig on trumpet, Brigid
on keyboards, Kate Ferencz on xylophone, Jen Page on cello, Kari Jaick on
violin, Sam Gerlach on flute, Zach Treitz on drums, Pip Ostrewski on
percussion, Reid Hitt on the banjo, mandolin, and ukulele, Peter Naddeo on
guitar, and Rosser Lomax on baritone guitar) were only able to practice
one song before the show commenced, so only Britton knew exactly what he
was doing.
Despite the pressure, the group
performed admirably for an audience of about 40 people. As Britton
fingerpicked and softly sang his sad songs, a big, awful, sublime wave of
sound crested and swelled behind him. At times it was a cacophonous mess,
and sometimes it was something brilliant.
"This isn't what I usually sound like," he remarked during one break
between songs, to muffled laughter from the
crowd.
"Noah's idea was to have these songs
slow down and speed up, in a sexual form," said Zach
Treitz.
For each song Britton would tape a
piece of paper on his back, almost all of which listed chord changes and
instructed the players to start slow, and then to speed
up.
"I thought it was rather lascivious,"
added Treitz.
The band played for an hour with
Britton providing witty banter during the breaks. Britton's show was
preceded by pop group B for
Brontosaurus.
During the opening set,
audience members thrashed about and danced as kids are apt to do at
concerts these days, but when Britton's time came everyone sat down and
huddled close in front of the lanky troubadour. Once the show had
concluded, the general consensus was that it wasn't
half-bad.
"It went well, considering the
circumstances," said Peter Naddeo. "Nobody knew the songs so there was a
lot of potential to fail."
The crowd appeared
to share the sentiments of the band members.
Said freshman Benjamin Safdie, "At points it was lethargic, but at points
they seemed to get moving. It was a fine
experiment."
Senior Jon Rotberg agreed. "It
was an interesting experiment. A little narcissistic, but I liked that
about it," he said.
Britton runs a small
label, HIG Records (higrecords.doesntexist.com),
which puts out three or four small releases a
year.
Next up for Britton is a solo show
on February 24, at 406 Franklin St., Cambridge, starting at 8 P.M. Britton
also plans to tour this summer in his new band, which consists of him and
a friend, Kate Ferencz.
As for the show,
Britton said it turned out as well as he could have
hoped.
"This is the kind of thing that nobody
should ever try again," said Treitz, summing up the whole endeavor. "But
somehow, by some miracle, it worked out."
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