Now We're A Believer: Jesse Sykes @ The Triple Door

Saturday we were at Smith with friend Wade just before heading down to the Triple Door to hear Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter [MySpace], and we were saying that while we liked the band we didn't get the goosebumps some people do and were curious to hear her live to see if maybe that would give us religion. It was warm and humid and the rain was coming down harder, and we finished up the sweet potato fries and went to go see what would happen.

A few hours later we told Wade, "You know, if they never stopped playing, we'd be fine with it." Wade said, "Yeah, I'll have another Guinness," and we tore into the Molten Chocolate Cake which had a goopy chocolate-and-ginger center and vanilla gelato on top and which is -- with the Guinness -- a good metaphor for the Jesse Sykes experience. Rich, dark, and flavored with surprising roots. We have artistically altered our crappy cellphone picture to give you another perspective of the atmosphere.

At first listen, the band's blues-and-country blur spreads out before you like a prairie full of dark places, but it was Sykes' voice, that traumatized vocal-cord rasp making an instrument of her breath's passage, that pulled us in, and her way around the insides of a lyric that emptied the time out of a song until it lasted just as long as it lasted and every so often we'd clap. The new album's title, Like, Love, Lust & the Open Halls of the Soul, isn't an idle boast. The song "LLL" [mp3] gives you some idea of what we're talking about -- but make sure to play it loud. "The Air Is Thin" will chill your soul, assuming you've got one. From their alt-country back catalog, there was "Don't Let Me Go" [mp3], and guitarist Phil, to top off the evening, shared with us the story of the Albino Cactus, which we won't get into except to say it involves finding a dildo in the desert and Phil saying "Drummer!" just like Johnny Depp says "Pirate!" in that movie about pirates.

Speaking of alt-whatever, openers The Moaners [MySpace] were from Chapel Hill, NC, and were taken aback by their quietly attentive audience, admitting they were more used to playing to loud drunks in bars. Vocalist Melissa Swingle (on guitar, harmonica, and saw) plays with Laura King (on drums and guitar) and if there's a Southern roadhouse in Heaven, they can look forward to booking there. They've got a growly rock-and-blues sound -- Swingle gets a lot of mileage out of the bass strings -- and King goes after the drums like they've been very, very bad. They didn't play a hit single, but they play like there are more of them onstage than just two people and that's a neat trick if you can swing it.