I’m bummed that just as I’m really starting to warm up to them, B for Brontosaurus is going on “Total Hiatus”. Doug and I caught their excellent show tonight Lily Pad in Inman Square.

This incarnation had them as a 12-piece ensenble, doing “American Standards”, including some Magnetic Fields, some obscure-ish 60’s pop songs (including a Lennon/McCartney song the Beatles never recorded), “Smile” (you know, the one that goes “Smile, though your heart is breaking…”, which was written by Charlie Chaplin- who knew?), and, happily, some B for Bronto originals.

Yeah, they do remind me of Jonathan Richman and TMBG and The Magnetic Fields, but I think it’s especially unfair in their case to treat them as the sum of their influences. I don’t think they’re trying to sound like anyone or be anyone other than themselves, but I bring up the comparison, because they do have a similar way of making short, heartfelt, simple-ish songs that have a deep melancholy streak, but that make you smile and feel like a kid in spite of yourself. I think it’s something that couldn’t be pulled off without an overabundance of enthusiasm and originality, and I very much think they pull it off.

So while I’m throwing out he comparisons, I will also say that as a big ensemble, they also remind me a bit of the early Belle & Sebastian albums and EPs, where there are some ambitious arrangments pulled off with a kind of Andy Hardy lets-do-the-show-right-here!-in-the-barn! kind of optimism. I am sad that they’re going on hiatus, too, because I think that if the large ensemble version would get more used to playing together, they’d really be fantastic.
Another thing I like about them: despite the small, simple songs, they think big. The whole “American Standards” thing had its own kind of ambition. Also, Ben Morse helped organize the very fun Jonathan Richman tribute show at PAs Lounge this past March.

Update: correction: It was a Rooney/Garland vehicle (and a Busby Berkeley one, too!) where they put the show on in the barn, but not an Andy Hardy movie. Also, sorry, Doug, I corrected the spelling of melancholy.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 20th, 2006 at 10:47 pm and is filed under local, music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.