@ ZEPHYR
SAT | AUGUST 18

Surprise from Riverside’s one-man Pegasissy with a thrift organ for tones and beats and heaving reverb on the vocals that sounded like Timmy Thomas—the singer who demonstrated in 1972 that drum machines actually do have soul—through a Rallizes vox-box. Waiting for the hand of Arthur to come down and tap him on the shoulder: Pegasissy and Brightblack Morninglight should tour together powered off just one wall outlet apiece. Katie the Pest without band tonight (“You don’t wanna announce it,” singer/guitar Talia says. “That’s like saying, ‘I’m going out . . . without my boyfriend.’”) but with cookies and with a new song “Brazil” that’s waiting for its own pass through the vox-box. Then Ruthann, who cheerfully said after two songs that she’d been told she didn’t have to play “Windy,” and from the back of the dark room came a deep voice that said, “PLAY IT.” So Ruthann mugged through her most famous song (“ . . . by the Association,” she joked) and then back to a more personal set. Seems like we’re coming back around to all the crap we had to deal with in the sixties, she said—Ruthann is tough and capable and swoops a twelve-string guitar around by the neck while she tells stories about LSD comedowns in Half Moon Bay—and although I think it’s sick to feel the backslide beneath you, some consolation comes from old songs constantly renewed. Ruthann’s old (“Very old,” she’d sometimes say, smiling at the high school kids) blues songs and new pop songs (“My MySpace says I’m ‘folk’ ‘blues’ ‘pop,’” she said, making a little pop! to go with “pop”) and old folk songs (in modal G tuning, her favorite for philosophizing, she said) could have all snapped together as she walked up the street to the show tonight; same crap, same solutions.

Tags: katie the pest, live, pegasissy, ruthann friedman, zephyr