Live! Butch Walker @ Paradise Rock Club (Boston, 3/4/10)

There’s a deep, dark secret I’m going to let you in on: us music critics? We’re also music fans. We have our own biases and tastes. And, for me at least, there are some artists that I am incapable of being even-handed about. For me, Butch Walker is that artist. So you may click over to another review (but for the love of God don’t go to another music site! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!). Under a torrential downpour, though, he played a show on Friday night at the Paradise Rock Club in Boston, and I would think even someone completely unfamiliar with his work would have enjoyed it.

Walker opened his set with a three-song solo set featuring him at the piano. It was his most singer-songwriterly moment: all seriousness in the songs, face tightening into an almost cartoonish cringe for every emotion, fans singing audibly along to every word. The opener “Atlanta” sounded stronger in concert than in its studio counterpart, more subdued with less emotional overselling. It’s the benefit of playing songs so much that they become so comfortable after awhile.

Same goes for “Cigarette Lighter Love Song,” the lone song from his days with The Marvelous 3 in the night’s set. It’s a sign of his fanbase’s makeup, then, that Walker doesn’t need to even play his only hit with the Marvelous 3 (“Freak of the Week”) nor his most notable attempt at a solo hit single (“Mixtape”). If the show is for the hardcore, that’s because all he has is hardcore fans. Thanks specifically to them, every song  became an anthem, making the small club concert feel like a major event.

The thing about Walker’s music is that, however little known it is to the world outside his shows and records, he ultimately makes pop music. It’s easy to embrace, eager to please and always pleasant. Even at its darkest, there’s a bright sheen to all of it that makes it easy, and I mean that in the best way. So even at his darkest, there’s something fun about it all, with Walker attempting a Boston accent in between jokes and his band dancing their way throughout the evening. He bounds along the stage with the energy of someone half his age, especially as the show starts coming to a close, and his band keeps up to give the show some visual aspect.

His crack band, too, brings out the best in the material, hitting all the T-Rex-like backing vocals from his latest record, I Liked It Better When You Had No Heart. They have a great onstage chemistry while still being as professional as hired guns. The group showed versatility in switching instruments frequently, and at one point stripping down for a bluegrass approach to the low-key “Don’t You Think Someone Should Take You Home” and trading off vocal duties for his uber-emo anthem “The Best Thing You Never Had.” It kept the show on its toes and made even the stage feel like a communal experience.

But while the songs from the new record came off fairly well, the night made a great case for his previous album, Sycamore Meadows, having Walker’s best songs. Its “Closer to the Truth” is increasingly becoming his “Thunder Road,” a Spingsteen-styled epic escalating from a solo guitar performance into a full-fledged band blowout. The bigger, bolder moments like that provided the most impact as they could stretch out on the self-admitted “Honky Tonk Women”-rip “Ponce De Leon Ave” or the power pop “Maybe It’s Just me.” His songs have a way of being sensitive ditties on record and becoming arena rock blasts in concert, a side effect of Walker’s past in a hair metal band.

Meanwhile, the encores showed the most range after an evening of singer-songwriterly goodness, including a notably non-ironic (but still fun) cover of Hall & Oates’ “Rich Girl,” the faux-doo wop “They Don’t Know We Know” and his Dylan-styled wordy  “When Canyons Ruled the World.” The latter maximized Walker’s gift for singalong hooks, ending the show with him roaming through the crowd and up to the balconies, leading an a capella reprise of its chorus while he orchestrated a slow fade-out. It takes a pro with a devoted fans to get an audience to respond so seamlessly to a request to slowly get quiet. The rest of the show built up the goodwill to allow it to happen. I’ve seen Waller wilder, but his current show is a great veteran act, showing his comfort and the presence earned from long tours over an enormous, amorphous career, but wrapped in a freshness that can only come from freedom from expectations.

The show opened with singer Will Dailey and his band The Rivals. They presented a polished Tom Petty-ish brand of classicist rock, which, come to think of it, is what the Wallflowers did. Dailey and crew are a bit more high energy than that band, but I almost feel like they might be the kind that loses most of its power without the enormity of a concert setting. Maybe I’m wrong; they impressed me enough to check him out later. They made for a great appetizer, at least.

The best summation of a Butch Walker show, I think, came from the fans waiting out in the rain before the show started. They included a man in his (I’d guess) mid-40s with a few younger people, including his daughter and her boyfriend. The older guy was as enthusiastic in the crowd of mostly people in their 20s (but he was not alone for his age group), singing along to all the words loudly. After Daily’s set, his daughter was telling her boyfriend how great Walker’s shows are. About three songs after the full band took the stage, I looked over to see him, mouth agape and smiling. On the way out from the show, there were two even older ladies there who sounded like they had enjoyed it. And that’s the best thing about pop music: you never know who’ll buy into the melody.

Butch Walker:

• Official Site
• MySpace
• LastFM
• Twitter

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Jere is not from Chicago. Nor is he from Parts Unknown. But he sure loves to hear things. Follow him on Twitter!

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