Bonus Review: Benevento/Russo Duo

(images courtesy of Greg Aiello)

Bowery Ballroom: 27 October 2006

Not sure if it's genetics or environment, but sometimes you're just programmed that way and that's that. Something comes at you and you either dig it or you don't and not much is going to change that. And so it is for me with this, that and the other and that's how it is for me and the Duo. Are they the greatest thing since fire met cow flesh? In reality, probably not, actually... but as far as my personal DNA is concerned the answer is GATTACA... er, "yes."

I'm not sure that I've seen ever Benevento/Russo offering at the Bowery Ballroom, but pretty darn close. It's all been an evolution, from the first gigs nearly exactly five years ago in the depths of the Knit, to Friday night on Delancey. Very few seismic shifts and very many small ones, a new toy here, a new mind-sticky hook there, and voila! Here is the Duo update ver. 10.27.06 available for download and processing.

The opener was Todd Hamilton's American Babies. Hamilton is a big chunk of the Brothers Past sound, so I went in with a certain expectation, but as you might have guessed, I couldn't have been more wrong. First off, there were some nice recognizable faces in the band -- why look! it's Joe Russo on the drums. Good start. And Kevin Kendrick, someone I've most recently dug putting the groove behind Metzgerville, on the vibraphone. Then there were a couple ladies with acoustic guitars slung over their shoulders and microphones and music stands at attention in front of them and standing front and center an enthusiastic presence on the bass. Hamilton stood off to the side, alternating between acoustic and electric slide guitars. The music was a country/rock hybrid at about 75/25 of each part. The songs were solid, the sound was damn good, twinkling acoustic guitars in heavy layers, a smooth, fat bass underneath, precision, understated drumming from SirJoe and the wild card of Kendricks. It really was the vibraphone that made the music delicious, the thing that clicked one of those chromosomes in my inner iPod and released the warm "note: you like this" memo to my hormones. I recommend.

The Duo took their time coming to bat as any proper headliner knows to do. Amazingly, the stage at the Bowery Ballroom can barely contain this band any more -- the space taken up by 6 in the American Babies was just barely adequate for the two. That would be an apt metaphor for the music itself, as the Bowery in its entirety was barely enough to contain the sounds -- the music, the noise, the electronics whirrs and beeps, the electric audience reaction -- Joe and Marco created. The genes were working overtime processing layers and layers of straight, unadulterated Duo. Sometimes you see a drummer do things your brain can't quite comprehend and you call that dude "superhuman." Joe Russo's playing is as airtight as it gets, but it is all too very, very *human* from limb to limb. The language flows organically between the two and Marco seemed to be in pretty deep trance for much of the night.

Song lists are really a small part of the Duo experience. Yeah, here's what they played and the order they played it in, but Friday it was more of the how and why and that takes too much to get into. Songs seem to occur organically from the whims of the pair and from gig to gig, month to month, take on different forms and really a mind of their own. The energy level in the room seemed to be completely dependent on Joe & Marco's desires, they lifted and let down at will and there wasn't much we could do about it.

I find these two sets of compositions to be not a jam or jazz subgenre, but their own subset of electro-orchestral art pop -- more a descendant of Radiohead than even the more overtly copping wannabes are. "Something for Rockets" was a piece of pure pop perfection, with Joe Russo nimbly cascading triumphant samples while massaging impossible beats out of his "analog" drum kit. Still, they can get you moving, with the I'm-still-not-sick-of-it "Becky" continuing the grow and explore new musical space every time out and the newer "Play Pause Stop" getting a whole slew of guests on stage to bring a vocal wailing section to full effect. Most of the music was from their past two (fantastic, I might add) albums and yet, it doesn't look to the past and the near past -- the music they played at the Bowery was 100% forward looking, already anticipating the next few moves in the Duo's addictive arc. The lone interloper was a "Three Question Marks" which isn't quite the infant of the newer material, but still just a toddler in the scheme of things. The midsection of this one was a complete diversion from the normal proceedings, where the two disassociated altogether and fell into a funky free-form romp for one of those moments that seems to go on forever.

The set was described as short by a couple people on the way out, but I can't imagine it being much longer. As the old "Far Side" cartoon said: 'can I be excused, my brain is full'.


And yet, a month-long Marco Benevento residency at Tonic... better make some room up there and warn the DNA!

Some video of the show.