Don't Miss Paula Cole

[Mike Mendelson <MJM@zylab.mhs.compuserve.com>]

Well, since Paula Cole seems to be getting some attention in
gaffa, I'd crosspost this review.  Apologies to those in ecto
and folk_music who've already seen it...

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Paula Cole blew into town last night, and proceeded to
blow my mind.  Her live performance at Schuba's in Chicago 
was punctuated with a creative, dynamic singing style, 
homespun, earnest percussion, and envelope-pushing arrangements 
for acoustic guitar, singer, and plastic mayonnaise drum.

I reel in incredulity when I recall how hesitant I was regarding
this artist all of a week ago.  I purchased Harbinger 
and Somewhat Slightly Dazed by Jeff Gaines on a whim and 
reserved two tickets to their combined show (Paula ended
up opening for Jeff but it could have easily been the
other way around) hoping that I would come to appreciate
their music in a week's time.  Talk about payoffs.  Now I
know what winning at the racetrack is like.

The best word to describe the overall show is simply `intense'.
Paula is a serious stage presence, distinctly focused on the
singing and the lyrics, bobbing deliberately across the stage
and keeping time with frequent thigh slaps.  She is unafraid
-- unencumbered -- and from the stories she told, it is
evident her music is a tonic, a release, an escape, a means
of expression.  She succeeds in at once disarming, shocking
and enjoining her audience to partake in the nuance and her
strong vulnerability.  

Watch the Woman's Hands was one standout, in which hand claps and 
cross-rhythms were used as effectively as I have ever seen.  
The literalness of the interpretation injected this invective with 
an immediacy and a temporality inevitably absent from the studio version.

I Am So Ordinary and Bethlehem both addressed the unfairness and 
inequity of life, the quiet losses that we all suffer, the strength
that we muster to liberate ourselves from the seemingly relentless 
thrashing our selves and our souls undergo at the hand of the
insensitive, or moreover, oblivious masses.  "She is your
Star Spangled Banner, and I am your Frere Jacques" colours
with subtlety the throbbing sense of real life that Cole
exquisitely conveys in her writing and performance.

If Paula was not enough to drain our hearts and psyches,
Jeffry Gaines completed the frontal assault.  Unlike the
full rock band flavour of his latest recording, Gaines' onstage
artillery was even less sheathed than Cole's.  Alternately
standing and sitting, hands smothering his electric guitar,
Gaines bared his mind and enveloped the listeners in a
self-aware, ambient live-in.  Spirited by songs like Safety
in Self, in which his two parents' cancer-induced deaths
force he and his siblings to redraw their "safety in home"
into a "safety in self", Gaines paints from a palate of
personal observations and transcends the performer-audience
boundary like a giant mirror.  

Paula Cole recently toured with Peter Gabriel, singing backing
vocals.  As if to complete this evening full circle,
Gaines ended his set with an interpretation of In Your Eyes
which succeeded on all levels.  I don't know if they are touring
together or if Chicago was just a chance union, but on their own
these two talents are larger than life.  If you get a chance to
see them together, you're in for a rare, musical odyssey that
will leave you questioning how you spend your time outside
of the live music venue.  Do take Paula and Jeffry up on their offer.

-mjm