Doing Its Thing, with Strings
The Section Quartet plays rock 'n' roll with a classical flair
All bands at one time or another have been known to play cover versions of other musicians' songs, but the Section Quartet does something altogether more daring. After all, this is not, strictly speaking, a band. It's a string quartet - a string quartet that plays instrumental versions of rock and pop tunes. Celebrating the release of its third album and Decca Records debut, Fuzzbox, with a free Troubadour concert last Monday night (August 27), the TSQ - violinists Eric Gorfain and Daphne Chen, violist Leah Katz, and cellist Richard Dodd - performed all of the new collection, as well as a few songs with featured guests.
At first, I was taken with the novelty of a group billing itself as the "loudest string quartet on the planet" transmogrifying songs by the Strokes, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Muse, and Queens of the Stone Age into classical-music-sounding compositions. The initial effect was a bit disorienting and somewhat liberating, as though I'd stumbled upon some raucous recital rather than a rock concert. If you were familiar with the selection being played, you might begin by being impressed with yourself for identifying it, only to be transported someplace altogether different; if you didn't know the song, or if it sounded only vaguely familiar, you'd be immediately smitten by the musicians' virtuosity. Sometimes they produced startlingly un-string-quartet-like effects with the simple plucking of strings or by beating a bow against strings as if keeping time on the drums. The quartet played with that peculiar tension between the recognition of and the reinvention of the song.
Listening to these songs bereft of their lyrics, you can appreciate as-yet-unheard
aspects of them and imagine them belonging to the repertoire of another kind of concert-going audience. In its rendition of Radiohead's "Paranoid Android," the quartet discovered new depths of mysterious and dolorous shadings. You might even decide, as I did, that you prefer TSQ's version. No surprise, then, to learn that the quartet, along with Dark Side of the Moon, has performed all of OK Computer in concert. The quartet's renditions reveal the hidden beauty that lurks in the margins of the rock 'n' roll incarnations.
TSQ, or, as some onstage guests called it, "The Section," was joined at the Troubadour by Sam Phillips, Grant-Lee Phillips, Jon Brion, and Linda Perry, who produced all but one track on Fuzzbox. Sam Phillips opened the evening by captivating the crowd with her song "Animals on Wheels," accompanied only by a backing track on a microcassette recorder she held in her hand. She later joined the quartet for "Edge of the World," which played like a cabaret number worthy of Brecht and Weill. Grant-Lee Phillips played four songs at the start of the night and then joined the quartet and a French horn player to sing "Dream in Color." The quartet performed two David Bowie tunes, a moving version of "The Man Who Sold the World" and "Life on Mars," with vocals supplied by Brion. After powerful renditions of Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun" and Failure's "The Nurse Who Loved Me," the quartet closed with the Zep classic "Heartbreaker," with Perry stepping in for Robert Plant. Gorfain's violin arrangement of Jimmy Page's guitar solo was impressive and only too appropriate for the guitarist who employed a bow for some of his own infamous solos. For an encore, the quartet returned to the stage with its translation of Tool's "Undertow."
The visual montages by Carlo Grasso that played on a screen behind the band during some songs were entirely unnecessary. The group created more than enough of a soundtrack for any imagination all by itself. The Section Quartet is both a string quartet and a band, presenting its songs in an engaging and original form that unites the reflection of classical music with the incontestable intensity of rock 'n' roll.
Published: 08/30/2007
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