Conway Savage - Maurice Frawley - The Small Knives

With just a guitar and organ the Small Knives contrived to pierce my heart with ethereal music but to then miserably gore it bloodily. Their first song was achingly beautiful, a single note held throughout on the organ while the melody subtly unfolded with acoustic guitar and harmonious singing. Bearing witness to the majesty of this piece was well worth the door fee. But to my utter dismay on the next song the small knives abandoned their organ opting instead for a dual guitar attack. For the rest of the set they played the insipid, uninspired chord and lyric based music so many bands play, never again matching the promise evident in their opening.

Conway Savage as you may know is one of Nick Cave’s Bad Seeds. He played piano with an acoustic guitarist and keyboardist. The guitarist was content to faithfully strum whatever chords the tune happened to be in while the keyboardist did her best to enrage me by playing every song with the same tremulous, loitering organ effect while also keeping the same chords. Conway Savage played his keyboard well as would be expected but consequently was rather boring as he played and sang songs about god or whatever. I’m not saying that Conway Savage doesn’t make good music, he does. In fact the music he was playing was actually very good but it just wasn’t particularly new or interesting. This fact was evident in the fact that the patrons of the Empress hotel tonight were predominantly middle aged. When I‘m old myself I will no doubt listen to comfortable, amiable music. But for now at least I prefer (yes I know I’m sounding pretentious and condescending) music to be new and challenging music.

Maurice Frawley and his Yard Hands are a straight up country band. After recovering my senses from the idiot depravity of their opening number I decided to give them one more chance. Aghast I listened as Maurice issued the opening acoustic strums and as the listless bass player started his impertinent plucking and the drummer began to keep an empty, steady rhythm. By the time the lap slide guitar began it’s inevitable cliched phrasings I was out the door.