Suspended in a peculiar time a palindromic date falling one year and a day after his most recent release, reflective, instrumental album Life After Infinity, and two months before his next artifact, memoir 1967: How I Got There And Why I Never Left, comes out Robyn Hitchcock predictably ignored his immediate past and future at World Cafe Live in favor of a set that plumbed a deeper and more fractured history.
The mighty Pylon Reenactment Society rocked the Khyber Pass Pub’s intimate upstairs stage with a set equally split between Pylon classics (“Beep,” “Cool,” “Danger,” “Weather Radio”) and songs from PRS’s rad debut, Magnet Factory (“Educate Me,” “Fix It,” “No Worries,” “Messenger,” “Heaven (In Your Eyes)”). Old and new material worked together seamlessly.
The only thing more welcome than hearing the once-shambolic live sound of Jason Isbell And The 400 Unit grown and honed to fine, aged-whiskey perfection was the surprise (to me) opening set from Aimee Mann, an artist Isbell called “the finest songwriter.”
Michael Shannon doesn’t sing R.E.M. songs like he’s studying to play Michael Stipe in a movie; instead, he inhabits every phrase with the fervor of a fan who’s worn deep grooves into his brain with years of close listening.
Rosanne Cash and John Leventhal made 1993’s The Wheel when they were first falling for one another, so it’s no wonder that the couple wanted to do something special to celebrate its 30th anniversary.