Opening for Clairy Browne & the Bangin’ Rackettes at the Troubadour, Pony Boy, who was neither a boy or a pony but a ravishing blonde in a yellow dress, a denim jacket and red high heels, gave a memorable 7-song performance. Marchelle Brandanini, her real name, totally took me by surprise with her deep and smoky vocals, her mix of rock-country ballads and on-fire covers. I have read a lot of comparisons with Cat Power, and there was a little bit of this, but her voice was way more gravelling than Chan’s; in fact her style evoked many other names from Patsy Cline, to Gram Parsons, Tom Waits, and yes Nick Cave, after all she even had a murder ballad,…’ The Murder Ballad of Carrie Lee’, is it too close for you now? Nevertheless, the song was totally upbeat with a bluesy harmonica and Marchelle’s super expressive vocals. In some of her official videos, there is even a sort of Lana Del Rey style going on, Marchelle is super hot and can definitively play the femme fatale, but it is something I didn’t perceive live.
She calls her music ‘Junkyard Country’, and yes there was a little bit of everything, sometimes openly country (she did cover of ‘Even Cowgirls get the Blues’), sometimes more folky, or bluesy, all genres connected by the same doomed Americana mood. She started and ended her set by two covers, Karen Dalton’s ‘Blues Jumped the Rabbit’ – a Bob Dylan's favorite as she said, and she sounded like Billie Holiday – but she concluded with a triumphant and fierce rendition of Dylan’s ‘Isis’, as she was crawling, hurting and finally jumping.
But it was ‘Saint & Liars’ – a slowly-sprawling-aching ballad which made me feel at home right away, we were certainly in a Chan Marshall’s parallel territory, as the tune was deep, dark, heartbreaking and haunting, err, I thought at this point I had to know more about this Pony Boy!
Her show was all about restrain, sensibility and passion, as she was often holding back her powerful, raucous voice with a great agility; her performance was truly impressive, her tangled country songs bringing along a sexy atmosphere of smoky small town bars or desolated places of the old west
Setlist
Blues Jumped the Rabbit
Not in this Town
Saints & Liars
The Murder Ballad of Carrie Lee
Even Cowgirls get the Blues
Valley Girls & Silver spoons
Isis
