Vic Chesnutt

A A A Comments By Rick Mason Wednesday, Nov 18 2009

More About

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Events Newsletter: What's happening in town? From underground club nights to the biggest outdoor festivals, our top picks for the week's best events will always keep you in on the action.

As eccentric, inspired, and riveting as the most provocative outsider visual artists, Vic Chesnutt writes songs that cut to the quick while twisting things beyond their normal frames of reference, inverting perspectives, perceptions, expectations. He's also unflinchingly self-aware, which may come from having an unusually agile mind inside a body ravaged by a car accident at age 18 and dependent on a wheelchair. "I am a monster like Quasimoto," he quietly sings in his characteristically creaky voice on "It Is What It Is" from his latest, At the Cut. He goes on to dissect his own character, showing the dichotomous nature of human nature ("irritable as a hornet...agreeable as it gets") while making sharp, universal points ("appearance is everything so nothing is how it seems"). Elsewhere he flirts with death as he would a lover, contemplates the nature of courage, and finds an astonishingly unsentimental tenderness in memory on "Granny." Using many of the same musicians who were on 2007's North Star Deserter (members of Fugazi, Thee Silver Mt. Zion Orchestra, Godspeed You! Black Emperor—who will also be along on tour), Chesnutt fashions a sound you could call post-Southern gothic, with stark, almost primitive folk-like passages, at times elegantly haunted by violin and cello, but also sometimes exploding into blistering, raw, even epic rock. With Liz Durrett.
Thu., Nov. 19, 7 p.m., 2009

Check out this week's featured ad for Arts

Mayslack's Restaurant

View Ad View Website

More Ads >>

Get the Events Newsletter

What's happening in town? From underground club nights to the biggest outdoor festivals, our top picks for the week's best events will always keep you in on the action.