In Which Magnet And Isobel Visit The Triple Door

Thursday night Norwegian Even Johansen of Magnet and Isobel Campbell of Isobel played at the Triple Door.

Ah, the Triple Door! Seattlest had the mocha chocolate chip souffle, which takes about a half hour to cook up, but it's worth it.

We thought a pint of Guinness might complement the one-boy-band vocal stylings of Magnet, as we were very familiar with Guinness and not at all familiar with the band. Even [sic] is touring in support of his new album, The Tourniquet (listen online), but he performed a good chunk of his previous album, On Your Side. He plays guitar (or steel guitar on his lap), while operating some foot-controlled recording/looping contraption, and manages to produce a mighty wash of sound despite looking fairly small in person.

He sang some lovely odes to codependent loss of personal boundary, mentioned how much his feelings get hurt in "Nothing Hurts Now," and memorably interpolated a few lyrics from the WWII "White Cliffs of Dover" at the end of another song. He's too prone to repeating his hooky lyric, but a few numbers on the steel guitar had an updated bluesy feel that we'd say thanks for. Perhaps unfortunately (depending on your preference), Even tends to sing with that raspy falsetto so much in vogue, to convey emotional duress (or indicate a traumatized larynx). However, he can also sing full throttle if the crowd seems in danger of dropping off.

The crowd at the Triple Door was in no danger of that. The boy from Bergen had them at hello. They wanted an encore, but it wasn't in the works. (Alert Seattlest reader Heather reminds us that the encore's tonight: Magnet's appearing at 7pm at Easy Street Records in Queen Anne. Or listen for him on KEXP at 3pm this Saturday.)

Isobel took the upbeat, engaged audience Magnet handed them and managed to empty the house by a third about halfway through their set. They were not encouraged to play an encore. Ghastly details after the jump.

Led by songstress Isobel Campbell, a Scottish entity previously associated with Belle and Sebastian, another Scottish entity. We do not know what their "deal" was (other than the annoyance of a delayed flight), but they took the stage without acknowledging the audience and sang about five dirge-like songs in a row, so grim as to have been penned by a '30s coal miner between double shifts the day his favorite pony dropped dead. They threw in a completely affectless version of "Love Hurts," too.

At this point, Seattlest switched to Bushmills.

Just when we began to suspect the band was an experiment bent on disproving neuroscientist Gerald Edelman's claim that "zombie" consciousness isn't a feasible theoretical construct, they began to produce signs of life. Isobel spoke directly to the audience, for instance, and at one point introduced a band member. (Near the end, she introduced all of them, for the benefit of those of us who, as she said, might not know who they were.)

The Isobel tour is in support of her new album, Ballad of the Broken Seas, on which she collaborated with Mark Lanegan (who's not on tour with Isobel). Lanegan's lyrics are mumbled tonelessly by Eugene Kelly (except for one or two songs which he wrote, into which he injected some modulation.) They actually closed with a rousing rendition of some song we don't know the name of but which reminded us of the energy thrown off by the New Pornographers, and we wished they'd opened with that, rather than the aural lithium drip. Other highlights were "Revolver" and "(Do you wanna) Come walk with me."

Finally, Isobel tends to pipe along in a wispy soprano falsetto that sounds much better in a studio than it does live in a large auditorium. About a third of the audience was there at concert's end, clapping in a chastened manner thanks to the band's refusal to acknowledge them.