Kirstiecat | Blog

7/29/7
South Union Arts in Chicago

After waiting for over five years to see Canada’s beautiful Julie Doiron, Friday found me a sense of relief. Julie has just recently put out her ninth full length album if you count her split cd with Okkervil River and her album with Wooden Stars. Though Woke Myself Up starts out with a happy go lucky sounding pop song, it quickly turns somber with songs like “Swan Pond” and “No More.” Unfortunately she didn’t play perhaps the edgiest and most confrontational song of her career, “Don’t Wanna Be/Liked By You.” However, she did play the very bittersweet “Dark Horse,” which was a highlight of the overall very fulfilling set.

One thing about Julie, perhaps enhanced by the fact that she was playing solo without any backing band, is how subtle she is. She doesn’t really draw people in by playing the ham and rocking out on any of her delicate songs. She keeps them as pure as they are on album. No, instead hers is the rare type of beauty that can be enchanting without any flamboyance. She appeared very casual and friendly from the moment she emerged in the South Union Arts parking lot driving the tour van with the clearly marked Ontario license plates alongside Calvin Johnson. And, though many might expect a somber sort of person, she saves all her tears for the lyrics in many of her songs. On stage, the banter was sweet and almost giggly. Towards the start of the set, she rambled a bit about traffic in Chicago, then backtracked a little apologetically and then kidded she didn’t know why anyone had given her a mic. Not too far into the set, she actually received a cell phone call. She thought it was kind of strange but kept staring at her phone before beginning the song again: “Well, I can’t just answer it now…oh, she left a message.”

What this really means is that she wasn’t performing in the way you would expect even a singer/songwriter to do. She was just instead spending the evening with you and hanging out. Still, this seemed much more enjoyable to me than even Feist’s recent performance at The Vic Theater. You couldn’t help feeling like you knew Julie a little more as a person. Consistent with her casual demeanor, she didn’t perform with a setlist but asked for audience requests, the best of which was “Snow Falls in November.” She also encouraged us in a subtle way to let her know how much longer we wanted her to play by asking about the time. We pretended she had three more hours before Calvin was on.

View the complete photo set with Calvin Johnson here

Watch a utube of Julie Doiron at South Union Arts done by a friend here

This entry was posted on Monday, July 2nd, 2007 at 9:18 am and is filed under music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.