Just a Few More Minutes

A quick bit of lunchblogging from Schlotzky's:

Great Big Sea has a new album coming out in a couple of weeks (in the States; Canada gets it today, I believe). The Hard and the Easy is exclusively Newfoundland trad, reinterpreted in their typically no-holds-barred pace. You can hear a snippet of their first single, "Captain Kidd," at their website if you're using Internet Explorer. I'm looking forward to this album, but at the same time wish that they'd been able to continue their trend of mixing original work with trad classics. Something Beautiful, the previous album, suffered a bit from having only a couple of trad tracks to ground the disc. A couple of the weaker pop songs like "Sally Ann" could have easily been replaced there. Now we could have the opposite problem, with a lack of creative songwriting. On the other hand, the tracks I've heard are good so far (especially "The River Driver," which I heard in full at Wolf Trap this summer). GBS will be in Charlotte this April, and I'm likely to be there.

Carbon Leaf continues to impress, especially with their willingness to avoid being pigeonholed. Shannon and I saw them at Cat's Cradle last month, and they turned in a thoughtful, mellow set that included a quiet, philosophical song called "Porpoises." The drunken fratboy behind me who screamed during that song gets to go to the "special Hell," but the band carried themselves well through that and the desperately-shouted requests -- during other songs! -- for a couple of cover songs that have just gotten too tired. Good for them for not buckling under -- they turned out a great show without pandering to the drunkest and loudest in the crowd.

Steven Kellogg and the Sixers opened for Carbon Leaf at that show, and they were an amiable, funny bunch -- professional musicians with a fratboy cover band facade. What was the most striking about their set, however, was the generational divide from their closing cover tune. Shannon and I were amused to see a bunch of college kids surrounding us completely confused by why the thirty-somethings were laughing with delight over "Footloose."