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The hopes were high, so I was ready to be disappointed. In a horrible
Jungian way, that probably just means I wanted to be, but still, Rabbit Fur
Coat is an incredible, beautiful album and one that I thought too frail, too
delicately pitched to come across live.
Partly, it was the record's
astonishing vocals, but it was also the songs themselves, carefully being so
many different things at once, so precariously dangling over inferior single
moods. Even in the studio, it's almost too good to be true: a strange
double-take of opinion, where once the record's over, you can't believe the
quality hasn't lapsed.
I was wrong, obviously - splendidly wrong. Lewis got round the problem of
making her music ordinary by staging her gig like a piece of theatre,
beginning with a free programme: besides a set list and lyrics, there were
helpful biographies. Jenny Lewis "met the Watson Twins on a dare. Her
hobbies include whispering and fidgeting". Johnathan Rice "was raised
on the floor and ate crumbs from the table". Chandra Watson built her twin
Leigh "out of construction paper, sticks, chewing gum, and a matching
dress".
Rice's support, opening with a glorious tanked cover of Bo
Diddley's Who Do You Love, set the mood somewhere between 1955 and a
bottle of moonshine. When Lewis arrived, exactly fifteen minutes after Rice
left the stage, she was leading the Watsons through her audience in Southern
Baptist procession, singing the chilling album opener Run Devil Run - the
harmonies still sadder than on record. All evening, the vocals were, if
anything, better than when recorded, especially in the pure upper reaches of
Born Secular - throughout which the crowd collectively held its breath.
They ran through Rabbit Fur Coat - the Big Guns, crazed, guitar-bruising;
Happy, a haunting torch song for our times; You Are What You Love, which
exploded like the anthem it should become. In the last verse, Lewis was
smiling maniacally: "I'm in love with illusions/ So saw me in half / I'm in
love with tricks / So pull another rabbit out your hat." The band - Rice
back again on guitar, one Farmer Dave on lap steel, the Watsons singing and
swaying - drew breath and launched into the gorgeous swoop of Melt Your
Heart. Perhaps best of all was Rabbit Fur Coat itself: Lewis alone on stage,
and mesmerising.
Maybe the feeling was strongest then, but throughout this was a hugely
personal performance. Lewis said barely a word all evening - a thank you for
coming, a good-bye - but she was utterly engaged with the crowd. It may have
been a highly-choreographed night - the main set closed with a mirror
procession through the audience, to white noise and the cooing end of Born
Secular; the encore finished dead on 10.30 - but it was none the less
magical for that. When Rice returned to main vocals for a final,
microphone-sharing, hand-clapping cover of Cold Jordan, it was a wonderful,
joyful moment.
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