The self-deprecating Live Stiff Wreckless Eric and his Mod housewife lady love Amy Rigby have running jokes from one end of their 90 minute set at Bowery Electric on Friday, to the other. But the jokes keep on getting stuck in your craw.
First and foremost at the busy but not sold out Bowery Electric? “At least it isn’t Albany on Tuesday”. Only 18 people showed three days earlier.
More fool Albany. In a stupendous and tightly focused set, Eric and Amy hammer home there powerpop rock, a timeless melange of self-written and obscure covers with Eric moving from bass to guitar and Amy from acoustic guitar to keyboards, the sweet of Amy’s soprano all the country bled out of it and the sour of Eric’s schoolboy in disgrace whinge mixing so well. With no reason at all for it to come together whatsoever, it it a rich, pure rock duo leaving both artists, both artists major on their own account, so much better together.
They open the set with a dead straight cover of “Put A Little Love In Your Heart” off the couples recently released Two Way Family Favorites and they never turn back. Wreckless Eric has enjoyed a fine career he compares to crashing into a wall. It is an inaccurate description. As this set proves, with barely two turns into his back pages, Eric has still had a, well, wonderful life. “Walls” is followed by “Another Drive In”. Three shots with Eric throwing out hard bass riffs and Amy playing follow the leader.
Then Eric turns on his drum machine and Amy pulls her self-portrait “Rasputin” -off her 2005 Little Fugitive and it is a more accurate impression of their real self-image than Eric’s all too English humored we no longer rule Britannia sense of decline and fall. Eric has a rock and roll swagger and Amy is esprit de corps at least and their running commentary is at odds with the music. “There’s nothing they throw at me, that I can’t take ,” Amy sings and they tear the song and spit it out, a touch light so you know it’s not, you know, country, which Amy is superb at but playing tonight, or even folk. It is a very powerful and intensely accurate translation of words on the duos ineffable abilities on stage tonight.. Eric and Amy start discussing the lighting, note the old fashioned lights compared to the current digital type. “Except for that one,” Eric says pointing. “This is what we do.” He explains. “We ride about in cars discussing the lights in last nights.”
Sure, but it isn’t all they do.
A song later the pair are jamming out on Pete Townsend’s “Endless Wire” when Eric’s fuzzbox, he has had it since 1978, gives up. “That was going so well.” He exclaims. “Shall we play it again?” And a little later performs the a/b side of their summer flop “Teflon/Bottlehead -a power pop jam out, with Eric’s barely restrained, tear out your throat, guitar solo. They had namechecked Yo La Tengo a little earlier and here the jam is a borderline experimental guitar jame on two buzzy brilliant slabs of pop.
These two are “used and battered things”? I don’t buy it and neither do they. Any one who loves rock will recognize fellow travellers. Eric is a charming, funny frontman who, if he really means how thankful he is to Yo La Tengo and even his New york audience, doesn’t see himself accurately. Rigby may have never hit the big time but she hits the big time for pop lovers fortunate enough to hear her through the clutter.
Before encoring with “Whole Wide World”, Amy sings her remembrance of their early romance for “Foxy Grampa” Eric and for us “Do You Remember?”.
We will remember now.