December 5, 2007

Headed to Dearland
Elvis Perkins at Higher Ground

Patrick Smith l contributing editor

Elvis Perkins in Dearland returned to Higher Ground on Friday, headlining a tour without an album to support, only a re-recorded version of the song “All the Night Without Love."

To the gratitude of the crowd loosely gathered in the Showcase Lounge, the band did enough to fill the night with an entertaining show. In what has become expected fashion, Perkins took the stage alone for the opener, “Good Friday.”

Revealing immediately that it would not limit its performance to straightforward album takes, this opener was darker and slower for an already brooding song. At the same time Perkins revealed a strengthened, more confident voice.

When the full band came out, it became clear that he was not the only one who had improved and that there was reason to re-record an older song. The amount of time that it has spent touring and working with the same songs gave the audience an immediate payoff. For one of the few new songs the drummer rose from behind his set to pick up his marching drum for one of the most visually entertaining aspects of a Dearland show. The energy of a man dancing while playing a marching drum infects the rest of the band, and the audience. This enthusiasm and energy that the whole band reflected on Friday in its performance makes this group worth seeing repeatedly.

In addition to spicing up the show with reworked versions of older songs, Elvis Perkins introduced two covers, including a Phil Spector offering met with applause. It’s easy to envision the performance beginning in the long, idle hours of a tour before making its way into a show. Both covers showed the ability of the band to make its music distinct without shunning the influence of the past, and in the case of the Spector song, to get an audience to sing along to the end of a song they might not have known.

Showing his appreciation for fans, Perkins answered a request for a dance with a slow, waltz-y number “Sad World.” As some danced, it was the perfect time to appreciate the band’s ability to play a range of songs, and for Elvis’s voice to lead the group through it.

In some shows, the lead singer is the clear centerpiece and when his name is in the title, this is often the case. Other times, there is clearly a band on stage, and the singer is not particularly more important than the others. With Elvis Perkins In Dearland, the truth rests somewhere in the middle and the result is gorgeous. He’s clearly the leader, but it’s always on display that the rest of the band is key to the sound, playing wonderfully with each other.

The scattered new songs were more than enough to foster desire for a new album, fitting into the set well but still showcasing a style that fans weren’t quite familiar with. Both the main set and the encore ended with new songs, “1, 2, 3, Goodbye” and “Doomsday”, with the first being a pensive, yet cheery song, and the latter including an explosion of trombone and the ability to get the audience to dance more than they had the entire night.

In the end, though the new songs are as good as anything from his excellent first album, the way that Elvis Perkins and his friends approached the old songs, covers, and the new songs in his live set creates an enthusiasm for his live show more than for his recorded material.