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March 19-25, 2009
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• The lyricist
After a career of covers, Madeleine Peyroux is singing her own words
by Elliott Johnston
• Unintelligible Bohemia
The Akron/Family blur the hipster/hippie divide
by Elliott Johnston
 The lyricist
After a career of covers, Madeleine Peyroux is singing her own words
by Elliott Johnston
Madeleine Peyroux loves lyrics. You can tell as much by her breakthrough album, 2004’s Careless Love, and its related predecessor, Half the Perfect World. With these two records, Peyroux (say Peru) reached the rarified position of popular 21st-century jazz singer. The vocalist and guitarist did so by interpreting songs from a range of artists — Bob Dylan, Elliott Smith, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, Hank Williams and more — who are known for being bone-deep songsmiths; songwriters who plumb the depths of existence and resurface with wise, sad and pretty words you can live in for the rest of your days. Not everyone listens to music for words, and not everyone who listens to music for words listens for heavy words like these, but Peyroux does.
Peyroux’s gently weathered, blues-soaked warble and patient phrasing immediately recalls Billie Holiday, a jazz chanteuse, who, like Peyroux, has an appeal that cuts past the fences of jazz music. An American-born art that most Americans don’t listen to anymore, jazz seems to most pop music fans either too purist or too puff, somewhere between over-cooked intellectualism and the dreaded adult-contemporary bin. Peyroux has managed to largely avoid both poles thus far by transforming songs like Bob Dylan’s Blood On The Tracks deep-cut “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go” into nostalgic springtime-countryside reveries that are just a smidge too hauntingly heartfelt for the mere soundtracking of dinner parties.
Peyroux’s new record, Bare Bones, is an act of bravery. She’s ditching the covers completely, writing or co-writing each track with longtime producer Larry Klein and others, like Steely Dan’s Walter Becker and postmodern crooner Joe Henry. This isn’t the first time Peyroux has penned tracks on her records. She’s peppered her own songs throughout her three previous albums — most notably to Peyroux newcomers, her 1996 debut album Dreamland, which features Living Colour guitarist Vernon Reid and has a much more rambunctious sound than her recent, more gently flowing efforts. Bare Bones is, however, the first time Peyroux has made an entire album of new material, and that makes it a different listening experience. Stepping out from behind Mitchell and Cohen? Now that’s vulnerability.
In recent interviews, Peyroux has explained that the album’s concept comes from reading Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön. Songs like “Instead,” “Damn the Circumstances” and “Homeless Happiness” all stand up for a stripped down, less complicated life up against the mellow, drum-brushed jazz backdrop of her other ’00s releases. Because we are used to hearing Peyroux sing the songs of some of the best phrasers in the world, her lyrics can land comparatively flat, sometimes clumsily reaching for the profundity that she clearly loves in others’ songs. Other times, her lines drip with well-articulated emotion. Ironically, despite the heavy collaborative writing on Bare Bones, the album’s best song, “I Must Be Saved,” is the only track credited to Peyroux alone. As she moves the gently finger-picked tune along with a Dylanesque swagger, she poignantly rattles off a poetic list of things the song’s subject can leave behind.
On Bare Bones, Peyroux lets go of the formula that gave her fame; the safer move would have been another album of cleverly chosen covers. Her drive for self-expression is valiant, and it gives her music, imperfections and all, a different kind of engagement, a different kind of slow beauty.
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On the Bill
Madeleine Peyroux performs with William Fitzsimmons at 8 p.m. on Saturday, March 21, at the Boulder Theater, 2032 14th St., Boulder, 303-786-7030.
 Walk this way
White Tie Affair finds popularity in pop
by Alan Sculley
Lots of musicians say everything they do starts with the music. But Chris Wallace, singer of the White Tie Affair, can make that claim in the most literal sense.
In summer 2006, Wallace and guitarist Sean Patwell were in another band, the Chicago-based A Perfect Gentleman, when they decided to try writing a different kind of song.
“Sean and I had played in bands in the past, and we always played kind of rock-based music,” Wallace said in a recent phone interview. “We kind of came up with an idea to do more pop-based music, more along the lines of throwing in some Prince elements and Michael Jackson elements, all these things that get lost in playing rock music, I guess. Then we incorporated that with the rock, and the first song we wrote was ‘Mr. Right.’”
That song (its full title is “Allow Me To Introduce Myself… Mr. Right”) was all it took to put an end to A Perfect Gentleman and create the White Tie Affair.
Wallace and Patwell posted the song on their MySpace page Oct. 31, 2006, and within a couple of weeks, it had attracted a flurry of hits. That, in turn, got the attention of Epic Records, which in 2007 signed the White Tie Affair on the strength of that one song.
“I thought it was a breath of fresh air, even when we were doing it, writing it and stuff like that,” Wallace said of “Mr. Right.” “Then we kind of got the attention and put the band together and wrote the rest of the album. But it all kind of started with an idea.”
The opportunities came at a good time for Wallace. A Perfect Gentleman was playing shows around the Chicago area, but the group’s career didn’t seem to be going anywhere. This had the singer thinking he was reaching a crossroads in his professional life and maybe it was time to move on from music.
“I had signed up for college, for school and stuff,” Wallace said. “I was going to finish my degree. All this kind of came together all at once. It all just kind of made sense not to go to school and to just keep writing music and playing.”
Now Wallace, Patwell and bandmates Tim McLaughlin (drums) and Ryan McLain (keyboards) are getting to see if they can expand on the online popularity of “Mr. Right.”
Walk This Way, the debut album from the White Tie Affair, arrived in stores in spring 2008 and the band is continuing what has been pretty much a non-stop run of touring.
What’s interesting about Wallace is even though he is obviously passionate about his music and believes there is an audience for the White Tie Affair, he openly acknowledges that the band’s music isn’t for everyone. While the positive online response to “Mr. Right” launched the group and its career, he said the music draws its share of detractors.
“There was probably more hate than love (at first), to tell you the truth, just because it was something different, really poppy,” he said.
“They kind of saw it as like a boy band. I mean, it’s catchy. It’s kind of infectious, and that’s what we were going for. It’s more of a guilty pleasure, I guess.”
Actually, the White Tie Affair may not sound so poppy in concert. Patwell (in a separate interview) said the band in a live setting brings a different slant to its music.
“It’s not that we try to go for a different sound,” Patwell said. “But it just comes out a lot edgier live. A lot of people have actually commented on that point to us. The stuff on the record, it’s very pop and it’s very dancy, and it still comes across that way. But also, some of the songs come across with a lot more edgy, a lot more rock and roll. It has a lot to do with just the energy that we put into it.”
On album, the White Tie Affair’s music is plenty poppy, and brings together a diverse range of influences. A strong electronic/techno edge comes into play on songs like “The Letdown,” “The Enemy” and “Scene Change.” The White Tie Affair also puts more emphasis on dance elements in its songs than many of its modern rock peers.
Still the group’s affection for rock music is apparent as well when it busts out hearty guitar-driven choruses on “Candle (Sick And Tired)” and “If I Fall.”
In making Walk This Way, the group found a production team — Matt Mahaffey (formerly of the band Self) and Jeff Turzo (formerly of God Lives Underwater) who understood the vision Wallace and Patwell had for the CD and helped the group take its songs to a new level.
“They actually did the Hellogoodbye record,” Wallace said. “Hellogoodbye was kind of one of those bands that in a sense told us it was OK to do what we were about to do with this band, because they’re real poppy. It’s poppy and kind of cheesy, like over the top, I guess. I can honestly say that bands like that kind of persuaded us to say, OK, we can do this. This isn’t so far away as we think it is.”
On the Bill
White Tie Affair, Chester French and Cinema Bizarre open for Lady Gaga at 7 p.m. on Saturday, March 21, at the Gothic Theatre, 3263 S. Broadway, Englewood, 303-788-0984.
Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com
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