Live preview: Jordan Klassen
Time Out New York
Aug 1–7, 2013
“Let me give, let me talk, let me live in your pillow / Kill your
fear, whisper words in your ear,” Jordan Klassen intones reassuringly on
“Go to Me.” Slipping easily between intimacy and grandiosity, the track
is the first single from Repentance, the British Columbian
singer-songwriter’s forthcoming album on Toronto label Nevado. That “Go
to Me” was also the initial cut on Klassen’s 2012 EP, Kindness, and LP, Monastery, shouldn’t bother you—it’s that solid, elliptical lyrics and all.
Interviewed by a Vancouver newspaper in June, Klassen listed as his
chief influences Belle and Sebastian, Paul Simon, Joanna Newsom, Nick
Drake, Radiohead and Sufjan Stevens. You’d have guessed as much from
spinning Repentance, a clutch of memorable tunes gently intoned
by the singer, and whimsically adorned by producer Jonathan Anderson
with ukulele, glockenspiel, toy piano, parade drums and whistling.
Klassen’s writing earned him early cred, but comparing his fledgling
self-releases with the imaginative refinement of Repentance, you hear the distance from aspiration to inspiration.—Steve Smith
Rockwood Music Hall; Aug 5
Mercury Lounge; Aug 6
اترك رد