Lydia Loveless @ The Studio at Webster Hall

Lydia Loveless; Nathan Xander; Xenia Sky

@ The Studio at Webster Hall

New York, NY - September 28, 2014

I've been calling this spate of shows The September to Remember Old Punks Concert Series. Lydia Loveless is by no means old and doesn't immediately qualify as punk and yet she is full on in the punk spirit of old.

Loveless's brand of alt outlaw alkie roadhouse country rock frequently sounds more like Ryan Adams than anything truly too far south of her native Ohio (in other words she aint Nashville and she never will be). Approximating the  human incarnation of a ball of fire, her music and her performance are sultry but tough. She's got a dark dont fuck with me demeanor but there is a vulnerability in her music. Witness tonight's performance of "Head" or "Wine Lips" from the recent record Something Else or from the work of Indestructible Machine (pity no "Can't Change Me") and Boy Crazy.

I should probably somehow tie this in to redheads and the tribulation-filled beauty thereof but I'll leave that for you to hash out.

Nathan Xander plays what I call night time on the highway country rock. Singer-Songwritery in good and bad ways, he needs a little zip. Cheer up man.

I only caught a few songs of the charming Xenia Sky. A couple of the songs were torch-like Jazzy numbers that showed off her peculiarly affecting voice and then she finished up with a country rock number. I wonder which she played more of and which I would have preferred.