Bobby Long + Trevor James @ Le Divan Orange

Newsday, as quoted on Bobby Long’s Myspace (which is, of course, the most accurate and trustworthy source of the 20^th and 21^st century combined), describes Bobby Long’s music as having “the intensity of a young poetic Dylan, mixed with the storytelling of Eliot Smith [sic].” Essentially, that translates into a flavourless, sad sack cocktail of “stab-yourself-in-the-stomach” lyrics and generic, barely noticeable bar band instrumentation… and a harmonica. That’s fine, whatever. By the end of his set I had virtually no opinion of him in terms of his role as a performer, but I’ll get into that a bit later. What I certainly, undoubtedly DID NOT LIKE was his opening act, local singer-songwriter Trevor James. Yikes-o-rama, did that performance make me cringe straight to the depths of my soul.

However, as I never fail to mention, any performance that evokes some sort of feeling is infinitely better than getting absolutely nothing from an artist whatsoever. That being said, I must say that Trevor James’ set was the most enjoyable of the evening because, unlike Bobby Long, after seeing one or two songs I didn’t feel as if I had gotten the gist of it and could leave without missing anything. Even though the majority of James’ songs sounded similar and generic, I didn’t want to chance missing any of his ingeniously clichéd, indie-tastic lyrics; you know, the ones impressionable females find cute yet “totally deep” because the songwriter basically regresses to the state of a child at play or whatever and then writes about this revisited perspective? And all the ladies in the crowd are like, “Tiffany, isn’t it weird how much we see as kids that’s like, so totally untainted that we so superly miss out on when we grow up?“ Then Tiffany’s all, “OMG Stacey, for sure! This guy totally thinks like a seven year old, it’s totally deep.”

Okay, so this is how it actually all went down on February 23 at Divan Orange: I walked in a little too late, so Trevor James has already started. I thought to myself, “Holy shit, Kevin Smith is doing the music thing now? Oh well, at least later we get to see Red State!” Soon after, Trevor James said something along the lines of, “Hi, I’m Trevor James.” I was obviously disappointed that I wouldn’t be rewarded for sitting through this pap. Apparently it’s too soon to use “Canadian Indie” as a genre of music, but I don’t know how else to describe James’ music. From the sound (one man on an acoustic guitar and weirdly guttural voice) to his twee-Bear (not the animal, the sexual preference) physical appearance, he is pure Canadiana. Our country has not had a stereotypical representative this embarrassing since the Barenaked Ladies. At the time, that was the only musical comparison I could draw. James jokingly sings about moose (or is it MEESE? HAHAH!) and driving through the Canadian wilderness, “turning off my lights and turning on the stars.” Yeesh. He also sings songs about his dreams and, of course, “the bottle/the drink.” What is with these Canadian indie/folk guys and “the drink?” In my recent experience with this sort of live music, the most prominent recurring theme is hardcore alcoholism. You know, “loving the drink,” or, “fall asleep next to the drink,” or whatever. My ultimate word of advice to Trevor James and other such alcohol-obsessed indie dudes is this: talking to a crowd that is 95% females about falling asleep next to your one true love, the drink/bottle, is not going to get you laid, and isn’t that was making music is all about?

Bobby Long was next. I did take into consideration that my recent penchant for British groups from the early to mid 2000s may sway my opinion of this UK import in his favour. Turns out it didn’t matter whatsoever; Long and his band ended up playing maybe the most classically American sounding set I’ve ever heard (acoustic guitars, a lap slide, clip-cloppy Western drumbeats with no trace of European sensibility whatsoever). For some reason, I deemed this troubling. I spent the majority of the set contemplating its socio-cultural implications; I felt like I had never really seen this sort of thing happen before. I was really struck by the idea of this British guy who moved to New York a short while ago creating such unabashed Americana. And it wasn’t like a Bob Dylan sort of thing at all (aside from the harmonica and good looks); it was more like a better than average bar band you’d see in Texas or something. However, I just found out he’s on the Twilight soundtrack and a friend of Robert Pattinson; suddenly, everything makes sense: the legion of giggly girls, the record deal, the tour, me running into girls I went to high school with. As if I didn’t know this earlier!

Bobby Long and his band are talented, there’s no doubt about that. The lap slide was a great addition to the group and was essentially the only thing that kept the set borderline interesting (not counting Long’s personal style of dress). I’m sure the band lived up to the sound of their equally boring (from what I’ve heard) record, which will make déjà fans of his music and the film Twilight happy. That’s nice. However, for those of us who don’t scream or faint when an attractive person walks into a room, there wasn’t much to be excited about during Long’s set. It was fine, and fine isn’t good enough when it comes to live music. The best part of the band’s long set was, strangely enough, Long’s stage banter. This consisted mostly of him talking about a song, girls in the audience responding inappropriately loudly, and Long retorting, mildly confused about the enthusiasm, but genuinely charmingly. For example:

Long: This is a song about bad women… like, black widow spiders-

Girl: EEEEEEK OH MY GOD I HATE SPIDERS NOOOOO!

Long: Um, uh, well I mean not really spiders…. Figuratively.

Girl: HAHAH OH THANK GOD!

Long: Okay… as I was saying….

Summary: This show kind of blew. Trevor James made me uncomfortable; he’s fun to watch (in a sick kid of way), but only for a short period of time. And no, Red State will not be playing after his set, not even if you buy his EP or book of poetry. Bobby Long is a Twilight superstar and that’s probably the only reason anyone cares about him. He seems like a nice enough person, but that doesn’t mean his band is good – or interesting. However, he does get bonus points for making grown females turn into 5-year-old girls, because that’s always funny.

-Kelly K hosts Cut Your Hair and Get a Job every Tuesday from 1-2pm