Last Town Chorus
Cabaret Metro in Chicago
10/25/07
Though she played with a backup acoustic guitarist, Last Town Chorus is all about Megan Hickey and what wonders she can create with her lap steel. I had seen Last Town Chorus play a couple of years ago at Schubas Tavern and was excited to see Megan garner some critical and commercial acclaim in this time. Megan Hickey now has two albums behind her, a self titled album as well as Wire Waltz and undoubtedly has sustained an ability to captivate an audience while expressing herself.
Though she is based in Brooklyn, it’s difficult to picture Megan living in such an urban environment. One imagines her in a cabin surrounded by wildlife and untamed animals. She comes off as a bit wild and unpredictable herself, much in a way Chan Marshall of Cat Power does. At the same time, she keeps it together for her songs and the pedal steel resonates deeply. She is not quite country and her music falls closer in terms of genre to folk. She makes each note seem part of a stark landscape while her vocals have a sense of rawness to them. The experience puts you on edge, as if you are waiting for anything to happen.
Megan played many of her own songs with her cover of David Bowie’s “Modern Love” thrown in there (a much slower and sadder toned version which made the original difficult to recognize.) As a special treat, members of The Weakerthans joined her for the last song. It may have seemed to be a strange choice for her to open for this band, as their songs sound more sing-songy and polished than ever before, but lyrically there is a sense of the vulnerable individual that many songs of the two bands have in common. Overall, it made for a great night of music, though I could easily see Megan Hickey headlining The Metro in the future as her future releases continue to gain momentum.
October 31st, 2007 at 1:43 pm
[...] at The Metro in Chicago, October 25, 2007. Photographer’s review of the peformance is here. [...]