Dent May

Related Content

• Kimya Dawson and Aesop Rock sign to Rhymesayers as the Uncluded
  February 12, 2013
• Joe January
  February 4, 2009
• Top Five Most Hummable Indie-Rock Smash Hits of the '00s
  December 10, 2009
• Bret Michaels, James Cotton Blues Band, and more
  February 4, 2009
• March 5, 2009: Grizzly Bear & the Submarines
  March 5, 2009

More About

• Joe January
• Adam Green

If Dent May wasn't traipsing around the country strumming his magnificent ukelele, he'd probably be a regular on the standup circuit. There's a literalist tragicomedy to the lounge-pop on the Mississippi native's debut, The Good Feeling Music of Dent May's Magnificent Ukelele, that recalls Adam Green's Gemstones, only without all the jerky gross-outs and look-at-me wordpies. Sad sacks of one variety or another populate tunes that sound like a cross between Hawaiian luau standards, Morrissey drunk at a karaoke bar, and that scraggly dude who's always performing his own songs in the stairway of your apartment building—if that guy were actually talented and self-aware. Good Feeling wouldn't be worthy of its title if May lacked a world-weary sense of humor and the ability to laugh (probably) at himself. He's very likely the "College Town Boy" he serenades and attempts to prod out of inaction: "He's smoking reefer every day, now/His tastes are awfully highbrow/College town boy, get off your ass and do something/College town boy, how does it feel to be nothing?" With AA Bondy and Joe January. 18+.
Thu., March 5, 8 p.m., 2009