Live music listings: July 2008

Doors 7.30
£13.50 via Ticketweb and WeGotTickets

?What’s clear when you listen to Cope’s own music now, years after he sat transfixed in front of his stereo speakers, is that he *is* ordained. Or touched. Or blessed. Or however you want to say it: The man has the gift.

If you’ve heard any of the work that Cope has created over the past few years, you already know how quickly he can paint a masterpiece with the lightest of brushstrokes. How he captures a character in just a few words.

This is Cope’s gift: He takes snapshots of the world around him, and turns them into universal truths. He sets them to the simplest of melodies, and weds those in turn to the most soul-stirring grooves.

His RCA debut, “The Clarence Greenwood Recordings,” showed the world the brilliant simplicity of his tunes. The uplifting song “Son’s Gonna Rise” found its way into a Pontiac commercial, as well as several television and film soundtracks. In fact, the film world embraced his album so much that every song from it was licensed numerous times. In Cope’s latest release, “Every Waking Moment.” there’s a marked change in his writing from character-driven stories to deeply introspective ruminations on self, on love and its challenges: “Been stuck in the middle of a vendetta between me and myself, I sure could use a witness. But I just ain’t found one yet” (on “Back Together”); “Could you believe me somehow, you’re second to none and you got my love” (from “Somehow”); “Your heart is full of all I ever need, and I can’t take it, I can’t speak” (from “More Than it Seems”); “Here’s a song for you I play, from all of my life, from all of my days” (from “All Dressed Up”).

And even when he sings about politicians “ordering the killing of innocent civilians,” there’s still the background chant of “Without you I’d be all alone.” It’s the sound of Cope connecting with himself, connecting with the one he loves, and most profoundly, connecting with the listener. And in the sweeping, driving “Brother Lee,” he pulls us all in, wherever we are, from “Brooklyn USA to a tinsel town where now the Dodgers play.” It’s an emotional update of Woody Guthrie’s line in “This Land Was Made For You and Me,” the line “From California to the New York island.” Cope makes it clear that the things that tie us all together are stronger than the things that tear us apart, as he chants in his nearly hypnotic smoky, soulful voice, “I got a brother named Lee who looked just like me, both sides of the Mississippi.”

RSS