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To the outside world, Ann Arbor’s musical reputation is largely one of blare and squall, from the Stooges all the way through to the current international darling/dirtball status of Wolf Eyes. Of course, anyone on the inside knows better: Ann Arbor is a singer-songwriter town. There are way more hushed performances in lofts and living rooms than punk freakouts going on underground, and we get way more folk on the ground level than loud rock. Thus, this city is a perfect environment to nurture a talent like Chris Bathgate, a University of Michigan student who also happens to be a skilled and prolific singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. Bathgate’s sound leans toward tender, bittersweet melodies steeped in various folk traditions, his releases usually coming in the form of beautifully handcrafted CDRs. His style is accessible yet idiosyncratic, a fact that endears him to the older, more established folk set as much as it does to the twentysomethings-with-beards basement-show crowd. His previous releases have been largely bare-bones affairs (“The last one I did was just baritone ukulele and voice,” he notes), but his upcoming LP Silence Is For Suckers takes a different tack, with somber vocal melodies and plaintive strumming now complimented by an array of instrumental/production touches, from xylophone tinkles to distorted bass throbs, adding up to what is quite likely Bathgate’s most varied and compelling work to date. With that in mind, the release of Silence is set to be celebrated in a more grandiose fashion than previous efforts, with a performance at the Arena Theater (in the basement of the Freize Building on U of M’s campus) on Saturday, March 19th. Up to eight other musicians will be joining Bathgate on stage in an effort to replicate the new album’s fleshed-out sound; video projections (coordinated by friends Claire Skowronek and Louis Dickinson) will play throughout the set, which is planned to include all the songs from Silence in the order that they appear on the album. This is a marked difference from Bathgate’s usual solo performances, but he has his reasons. “I’ve been working on [this album] since August, and it’s probably the most creative thing I’ve done up to this point,” Bathgate says. “I wanted to do something really special for it, since I’ve invested myself so much in it.” Bathgate does indeed invest much of his time in his solo material, but he also does time in bluegrass-inspired trio the Ambitious Brothers. Bathgate started the band with friends Karl Sturk (also of The All-Night Push and Dropjaw) and Michael Beauchamp (of the Dumb and Ugly Club) to perform at Ann Arbor’s infamous art fair, but they have soldiered on since, forging a loose-limbed ensemble sound that local fans of folk-inspired music are doing themselves a disservice to ignore. The same can be said of Bathgate’s own work. There’s not much of what the International Underground associates with Ann Arbor to be found in these sweet, sad songs, but luckily, there’s not much of what Bathgate refers to as “hokey-folky music” to be found, either. Don’t let the ukuleles and banjos scare you.A2P Chris Bathgate will perform in the Arena Theater (in the basement of the Freize Building) on Saturday, March 19. Seating will begin at 11 p.m. Admission is free. |
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BOOKS Stefan Fatsis The author of Word Freak on Scrabble fanatics and becoming one of them, by Davy Rothbart Reviews MOVIES MUSIC MUSIC
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