Canada brought us so many good things in music, like Neil Young and Arcade Fire, but also Bahamas, a band that I hadn’t heard about before. Actually ‘Bahamas is Afie’, Afie Jurvanen, or so tells the title of his last album, whose release he was celebrating at Amoeba on Tuesday night. As I arrived early, I could hear the soundcheck and he may have been the only guy with a guitar covering entire songs of famous rockers (Dire Straits, John Lennon Tom Petty) just to test the sound. He seemed to already have a lot of fun, and the early birds at Amoeba were totally enjoying the pre mini-concert.
Wearing a LA Dodger cap, he seemed to be a sporty guy, totally comfortable in his running shoes, but he also played very quiet songs, in particular a sad ballad with honeying harmonies, which sounded like something from Neil Young’s catalogue with this lap slide guitar. It is difficult to exactly pinpoint Bahamas’ music, the set was quite eclectic with a few of these quiet songs (he said he was really into these quiet ones for his new album), and other songs more classic-rock-inspired, but overall, the music was distilling breezy and exotic soundscapes with soothing harmonies. Exotic, but not obvious either, subtle and evoking either distant country or plain middle America.
If he plays all the parts on his record (‘I know Brian Wilson did it and Elliott Smith did it — everybody does it — but for me, it was really new’, he declared in an interview), at Amoeba, he was accompanied by a drummer and a female guitar/slide guitar player and especially superbly backed up by vocalist Felicity Williams, who was adding an ethereal and artistic beauty to any tune. The music often very lovely, sounded a bit out of time, dreamy, melancholic, soft rock, 70s California (weird for a Canadian?) and I alternatively heard a pinch of Young, Petty, even Warren Zevon may be, with changing vocals reaching falsetto on occasion.
Afie Jurvanen looked very laid back, friendly talking between songs, but he also was a great guitarist (he is actually Feist’s former guitarist), making his electric guitar resonate, or getting some honest emotion from his acoustic instrument, with really pretty melodies. I would say that his most rocking numbers sounded a bit more traditional and a tiny bit Jack Johnson to me, but he was also proving how diverse his songwriting was… and this is precisely what he is talking about in this same interview: ‘I look at Beck or someone like that — that would be a modern guy who’s making lots of different types of music and he’s still himself through all of it. I think that’s cool. I’d like to do that. I’d like to have a career that allows me to do that. I think that’s probably why I like playing more as a solo artist than as a band. I just feel a lot more agility musically.’
Before playing the less quiet ‘Stronger Than That’ he explained that he recorded the song twice, as the first recording was done very Celtic with pipe organs, but not very good on a commercial level, so he decided to record it again,… sure, you have to put some limits to this musical agility. His last song ‘Please forgive my Heart’ (an old one) had even some old school soul feeling in the vocals, not really a surprise for a guy whose pop heroes are George Harrison and Sam Cooke. The girl next to me was doing all she could to totally enjoy the music, closing her eyes to better hear it, and if I didn’t end buying his album (blame Spotify for this) he was certainly a nice discovery for an ordinary Tuesday night.
Setlist
Waves
All the time
Bitter memories
Can’t take you with me
Stronger Than That
Nothing to me now
Caught me thinking
Lost in the light
I Had it all
Please forgive my Heart
More pictures of the show here.
