The Bowery Presents

The Mercury Lounge upcoming shows

Early Show

Soulfarm
8:00

Luke Elliot
7:00

Venue:
The Mercury Lounge
Date:
Mon 7/26
Notes:
21+
Doors: 7:00 PM / Show: 7:00 PM
$8
Soulfarm
official website
myspace
Soulfarm was founded in Israel by lead guitarist C Lanzbom and guitarist and lead singer Noah Solomon Chase. Their sound has been dubbed as New American music, full melodic song writing and progressive modern arrangements.

Their live shows are full of Mediterranean flavor with captivating guitar leads, dance rhythms and strong percussion breaks. Soulfarm has a wide range of influences from rock and Latin, to Hebrew and Celtic folk music.

Soulfarm has recorded with many well-known musicians such as Perry Farrel and Dispatch; and has opened for Bruce Hornsby, Shawn Colvin, The Wailers George Clinton, to name a few. They regularly sell out national venues, such as Whiskey-A-Go-Go, L.A., BB Kings Blues Club, NYC, Hammerstein Ballroom, NYC, The Knitting Factory, L.A., NYC, Fox Theater, Boulder, CO, and Firehouse – St. Louis, MO. Through extensive tours of the U.S. and Europe, the group has gained great popularity.
Luke Elliot
myspace
It’s a damn shame that the grinding squeal of metal-on-metal of a train coming into the station, thick steam billowing out through the waiting crowd of gunslingers, priests and thieves is imagery so co-opted by generic Americana bands and Morricone-wanna-be’s, because that is the stuff of poets. Guy Clark’s “Desperados Waitin’ On A Train” and Leonard Cohen’s “Ballad of the Absent Mare.” I’m talking about Nick Cave’s “The Proposition,” (not any of that Young Gun’s shit) the stuff with the kind of grit that stays under your nails when you die. And that brings us to Luke Elliot. This New Jersey native’s first full-length record, “In Our Embrace”, has all of that grit in every crack and crevasse of its runtime. And not in any sort of pedal-steel parody way, but in the way of withered waltzes, barreling ragtime, and hypnotic piano dirges underpinned by literate narrative that coats each melody like chipped paint on a broken down jalopy. There are some easy comparisons to the aforementioned Cohen, and occasional shades of Dylan (Ballad of a Thin Man, perhaps?), and maybe some of those real piano-y Tom Waits’ albums that still haven’t gotten their due (“Foreign Affairs” or “One From the Heart”). But that doesn’t really get to the heart of it. Those guys color the prose of everyone who’s written a song in the last 40 years. He’s channeling something much older and creakier than those guys, and still delivering it a way that connects him with a very short list of modern writers. Jagjaguwar’s Simon Joyner, perhaps, or Josh Pearson since he’s left the cacophony of “Lift to Experience” behind him. Basically, Luke Elliot is creating a sound without a whole lot of direct lineage, yet it still sounds lived in and familiar, the words streaming by as you try to catch up and parse the meaning like you almost knew the song from a dream. You know, the one where you’re being hunted by wolves while your lover calls to you from an impossible distance? For all the delicate intimacy of the record, Elliot’s live show is another beast altogether - backed by Ryan Stokes (drums and accordion), Richard Russano (electric guitar) and Ben Fleisher (bass), they re-engineer the songs into Jerry Lee Lewis piano-wrecking rave-ups, the band effortlessly funneling the brimming intensity under the surface of the record into a full-on euphoric rock show. They’re playing all over the Northeast these days, so make sure to catch them when they roll into town. You’ll know them by the fog of swirling steam and the shuddered shriek of old metal coming to a stop. -Morgan King, President of Yer Bird Records
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