Ted Leo Goin’ Solo at The Echo

October 7, 2003

If you’ve been reading Donewaiting at all this year, you’re bound to know who Ted Leo is. I don’t think any one single national act has gotten as much coverage as Mr. Leo and his Pharmacists on this site, and deservedly so. When someone can come along and combine touches of The Jam, Elvis Costello, The Clash and bits of 2nd wave ska together and make it sound all his own, he rightly earns a little press.

When Ted Leo arrived in L.A. last weekend, he was packing light. Sans Pharmacists, Leo was winding down his completely solo tour before criss-crossing the country again with the full band in tow. Despite my unclean love for Ted Leo, I’m generally wary of solo shows. Unless you’re a phenomenal guitarist like Richard Thompson or have a magnetic voice like Cat Power, there’s a certain coffeeshop/busker feel to solo guitar shows that’s difficult to escape.

Leo is neither a stunning technical guitarist nor a magnificent vocalist. However, he is a charismatic performer and an unparallelled songwriter. In the solo format, the real star was Leo’s songs themselves. Leo’s real talent as a writer lies in his ability to keep his songs intense and intellectual while maintaining a sincere emotional honesty. In “Timorous Me,” he captures the relationship between performer and fan in a single couplet: “I watched her singalong with every word/in the prettiest voice I never heard.”

Playing with only an electric guitar limited Leo’s song choice quite a bit, as many of his songs are multi-instrumental raveups. The aforementioned “Timorous Me” plays perfectly solo, and the untitled track (the one with the Sexy Mouth chorus) from Ted Leo’s first solo EP sounds far better live and solo than on record. In general, songs worked better if Leo was chopping away at fuller chords rather than single note noodling. “High Party” gets structurally inverted, with the solo becoming a slowdown bridge than a rip roaring climax. Older fans may be interested to hear that Leo also performed a lovely version of Chisel’s “The Town Crusher.”

Leo played three new songs that are all available on the Tell Balgeary, Balgury is Dead EP. The Cars-sy melodies of “The Sword in The Stone” are immediately memorable, making it my early favorite of the new material. The punchy “Bleeding Powers” and the power pop protest of “Loyal to My Sorrowful Country” round out the troika. Leo filled out the set with a few covers including the hyped up folk of Ewan McColl’s “Dirty Old Town.”

As Leo finished up his short set and began to leave the stage he made a quick 180 and decided to cut the bullshit. Realizing he didn’t really have a band to conference with, he went straight into the request encore portion of the show. He denied us “Squeaky Fingers” and “Dial Up” and rejected “Ballad of a Sin-Eater” by explaining that it’s the one song with no guitar on it. Of course, two songs later a lightbulb seemed to go off in his head and he tossed out a few maracas and tambourines and played “Sin-Eater” anyway with a spankin’ new guitar arrangement.

He closed with the only song that could properly follow “Sin-Eater.” He said “This one’s from my boss” before launching into Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancin’ In The Dark.” Leo strips the song of its 80s trappings and let’s it bleed a little slower and sadder than the Boss’s original. It’s melancholy but not moribund and Leo still plays the chorus with a touch of optimism and light. The only thing that would have improved it would have been Leo pulling a girl from the audience to boogie-down.

It was a short set but it was worth the negligible amount of money charged. I still don’t trust solo performances much but Ted Leo does a great job of keeping it loose and amusing and making a club show feel like a dude in his bedroom, playing just because it’s fun to play music.

Posted in From Blown Speakers