The Short List Gets It Right
Maria and I headed to the Wiltern on Sunday night to check out The Short List Concert, featuring eight of the ten artists nominated for this year's third annual Short List prize.
The music prize is awarded by a panel of musicians, record producers, and music journalists (the "Listmakers"), who come up with lists of their favorite albums of the year that have sold less than 500,000 copies. The lists are then whittled down to ten -- with the "Listmakers" meeting one last time to pick the winner.
Irish singer-songwriter Damien Rice won this year's prize -- and rightfully so. Where so many (David Gray, I'm looking at you) have failed to live up to their promise, Rice delivers as an energetic, soulful singer/songwriter.
Rice was the highlight of Sunday night's four-hour-plus concert, which also included performances by nominees Cat Power (who's got an amazing drawl, in the vein of Rickie Lee Jones -- as Maria pointed out -- and who's even nuttier than Tori Amos) and The Streets (who comes off better on CD than in person, since the key to his music are his wild stories about life in Brixton -- stories that you can't make out via loud soundsystem).
Also on stage: The Black Keys (solid garage rock), Bright Eyes (lead singer won me over with an anti-Clear Channel tirade), Cody ChesnuTT (smooth!), Floetry (even smoother!) and Interpol (the band Crispin Glover would be in, if he were in a band).
Every performance had their plus -- but Rice clearly deserved to win. Ugh, Nic Harcourt is right. He's good.
Beck, Musiq, producer/remixer Dan The Automator and Macy Gray helped introduce the performers; MTV2 will broadcast the concert as a one-hour television special on October 25th.
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