MAGNET Live Review: Anders Parker

A pirate ship docked along the banks of the River Seine, La Guinguette Pirate is, to say the least, a unique concert venue. Three tall masts rise from its deck, stretching high into the air with a string of lights dangling where sails would normally flutter. In the lower decks, there’s a restaurant with, predictably, a glut of seafood on the menu. Vibrant paintings of fish and seafaring scenery adorn the bulkheads. And on the uppermost interior deck, cocooned inside the honey-brown hull, is a small area cordoned off for bands to set up their gear.

It is in this cramped, somber space that musicians are expected to rock your world. But not all pirate ships are floating bands of boisterous, rowdy thugs with hoop earrings, facial scars and eye patches, marauding like savages and partying like it was 1699. La Guinguette Pirate is a place you can take your grandmother. Remember: European audiences are tamer than those Stateside.

On this bitter cold January night, however, a little debauchery could have helped get the blood flowing. Instead, opener Tex La Homa immediately set a lethargic tone to the evening with its mournful, electro indie rock. The U.K. duo’s lo-fi dirges draped a thick stupor over the audience—one that was, paradoxically, received with a warm enthusiasm.

New York’s Anders Parker followed and instantly upped the energy level. The main creative force behind indie rockers turned alt-country geniuses Varnaline, Parker ripped through a bracing version of “Difference” from 2001’s Songs In A Northern Key, backed by tourmates South San Gabriel (the side project of Texas rock outfit Centro-matic).

Although Varnaline’s first four albums are currently being re-released by Parker’s own label, Cloud Records, the purpose of this brief European tour wasn’t so much to promote the reissues as it was to work out the new material. South San Gabriel therefore retired from the set after “Difference,” and the audience was treated to a preview of the tunes from an album that will come out this summer under Parker’s own name.

Alone, hunched over his guitar, Parker wrenched out three new pieces (“Tell It To The Dust,” “So It Goes” and “Goodbye Friend”), then stepped behind the keyboards and strapped on a harmonica for the poignantly stark “Innocents.” With their light-yet-effective melodies and Parker’s no-nonsense vocal delivery, the four new songs recalled the loose, backwoods brilliance of 1997’s A Shot And A Beer EP.

Parker apologized unnecessarily for the rawness of the new tunes before summoning South San Gabriel to the stage to support a spirited rendition of “Saviours” from 1998’s Sweet Life. Parker then made an inspired choice in closing with that album’s upbeat and majestic title track. After an hour-long set of somber indie folk, the refrain “It’s a sweet life” resonated with bitter, well, sweetness. Parker’s vocals were swept up in the current of SSG’s lively backing, spiraling under the tide one moment and breaching high into the air the next before finally drowning in the violent wake.

Over the years, Varnaline’s music has oscillated from gritty rock to rootsy folk to forlorn alt-country. The Ariadne’s thread weaving through the labyrinth of the band’s sound has always been a deceptively simple sense of elegant melodicism: like Neil Young covering Beatles tunes or Steve Earle and Bob Mould playing dreamy psych pop.

Fighting off mal de mer on this converted pirate vessel in Paris, the Man of Sin delivered an emotional set that drew from each of these sonic personae, energy rising and falling like the waves buoying the ship below. By the time Parker’s stint behind the skins for headliners SSG was over, thick sheets of snow were tumbling from the sky. Rain, it seems, would’ve been too obvious.