Goldenboy at the Bordello Bar on Tuesday December 21s, 2010 -Subtle Arrangements, Melodic Hooks, Floating Vocals, Same Old Same old -by Alyson Camus

I have known about Goldenboy’s music since their 2003 first release ‘Blue Swan Orchestra’, an album filled by lush ballads sung by Shon Sullivan’s smooth and eerie voice. But at the time, Shon, multi-instrumentalist David McConnell and drummer Bryan Bos were the three Goldenboy, a moniker supposedly given by Elliott Smith, and I will have to ask Shon about the veracity of this story when I interview him! Elliott had in fact asked Shon to play in his band for a world tour, and he even did the back-up vocals on ‘Summertime’, one of tracks of the album.

Since this time, Shon has played with many famous acts, like Neil Finn (Crowded House), the Eels, and his band has supported Stephen Malkmus, Grandaddy and Bright Eyes, but this hasn’t stopped him to make more music, ‘Underneath the radio’ in 2006, and the upcoming ‘Sleepwalker’ set to be released in February 2011

Now Goldenboy is Shon Sullivan, Jon Crawford, Katy Stone, Keith Brown, and Nicole Verhamme, so there are apparently some Golden …girls, but nothing else has really changed, the subtle arrangements, the melodic hooks, and the floating vocals are still there.

They played a few of these new songs on Tuesday night, like the melodic and galloping ‘Body and Soul’ and its interesting keyboard part, which made some people move their body, the mellow but more-than-it appears-at-the surface ‘Holiday’ which bears a heavy nostalgia and cannot hide the many influences that Shon has been exposed to from his playing with so many talented people. ‘Different Moon’ was more wide-screen and had these outbursts of furious guitars contrasting with Shon’s always quiet murmurs.

But there were also a few older ones like the upbeat ‘Summer of the evening’ and its light country feeling and chiming guitars, ‘Winterlong’ and ‘Kittens of Lust’ that they played without even a pause. If ‘Winterlong had a little bit of a Belle and Sebastian’s melodic phrasing, ‘Kittens of lust’ had this almost humoristic and teasing guitar line followed by a floating and spacey guitar solo. Really, nothing has changed since I saw Goldenboy!