One does not conjure a pop Shangri-La of brand-new pasts through the trance of reading fresh broadsheet comics alone -- cueing or loading the incantation of endlessly-hip ear-candy helps hold the spell too. The soundtrack to my second childhood is supplied by The Tall Pines, those pioneering, preservationist genre-splicers of glam groove and country stomp, by way of West Virginia and Calgary to the concrete frontier -- asphalt-kickers, if you will. They burned down the Lower East Side’s Bowery Electric club last night; even for this bunch, it was an uncommonly high-spirited and hell-hounded show. They’ve been re-baptizing themselves in the sacred soundwaves of Nashville and Memphis on a recent tour there, and could’ve laid on hands and made the lame tap their feet if they’d wanted to.
This is a band with the creative bravery and assured instincts to open a set with four new songs, fitting here for a concert-full of favorites it felt like I was hearing the first time. Especially after “Take Me” a few songs in, they kicked up into some Opryland blacklight-poster nirvana and didn’t come down again, the call-and-response fallen-angel chorus between lead singer Connie Lynn Petruk and keyboardist/vocalist Katia Floreska reaching notably unheard-of heights. The Tall Pines are the band taped to the inside of my astral highschool locker door. Tune in their MySpace page at www.myspace.com/thetallpines -- you haven’t lived twice until you do.
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