Rocky Votolato Still Making that Indie Ticking Sound

Neumo's was humid as a swamp, and crowded with Rocky Votolato fans who sang along under their breath to every song, from the trim blonde woman in the black slacks and black summer-weight jacket, chunky blonde leather bag slung over her shoulder, to the greasy dark-haired guy in beat-up jeans, with sleeve tattoos. "It's good to be home!" announced Rocky, and then laughed post-ironically. After an 8-month European tour, he's back in Seattle for a breather before hitting the road again. Most of his solo acoustic set came from his Makers and Suicide Medicine albums--as a male singer/songwriter, he falls somewhere in the middle of the triangle formed by Springsteen, Yorn, and Radin, short-fuse music from a tormented soul with a keen observational eye and a rowdy, bootstrapped past. In "Goldfield," Nevada history, trainspotting, class consciousness, and transient empathy got packed into a single line: "Car 5032 of the Union Pacific / is passing by on the right and she's thinking of escaping out to Frisco / from the trailer park in the old mining town."

He sang some new songs ("Sparklers," "Lucky Clover Coin") and steadfastly refused to satisfy one man's regularly howled demand for "Tennessee Train Tracks." He strummed more than he picked, shoveling away at the bass string. He got Neumo's staff to turn off the smoke/incense machine huffing away in the back, to wild cheers from anyone in the smoky vicinity. At his best, his songs are as meticulously artless as Kerouac: on the page, his lyrics read like a vagabond's travel diary--but when he sings, you hear the crafty rhyme of "pennies" with "when is." Sometimes his rhythm wandered, lines staggering off into the distance, but then finally came the short, chopped, punch of "Is is the red wire / or the blue wire?" and the hulking, bruised men in dark hoodies and boots threw back their heads and shouted along: "Oh god I love you / I mean forever / I left my body to break the news."

He's playing a free, live show courtesy of KEXP at the Seattle Center Mural Amphitheater on August 16.