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Bowery Ballroom, New York July 11, 2001 By C. Bottomley Gorky's Zygotic Mynci will never make any magazine covers. Not with a name like that, anyway. They're from Wales, home of such great - but unknown - bands with three-word monikers like the Manic Street Preachers and the Super Furry Animals. They sometimes sing in the glottal Welsh language, where "y" is the most popular letter. Gorky music is a genre-hopping imp too nimble for the ear to truly snag. A little psychedelic. A tiny bit T.Rex. There are dollops of folk in their sound. They once called a song "Kevin Ayers" after the Canterbury deity. But these guys are scrappers. Most of the material from the first acoustic set of a show billed as "An Evening With Gorky's Zygotic Mynci" came from The Blue Trees, a quiet EP released just after the band was dropped by its English record label. Instead of cursing their luck, Gorky impressed everyone by becoming even better. After a decade together and six albums, the group on The Blue Trees can be found crossing Renaissance music (think "Scarborough Fair") with mutant Appalachian ballads. Although singer/keyboardist/guitarist Euros Childs was succumbing to jet lag, violinist Megan Childs and an assortment of strumming associates made the show's concerns with the fair season and the fairer sex sound fresh as newly mown hay. Euros, Megan, and guitarist Richard James shared falsetto harmonies for "This Summer's Been Good From the Start," which evokes a youth spent sitting on country walls watching girls stroll by. Such gentleness might occupy days far from stinking sidewalks, but the show's electric second half confounded expectations. Unassuming charm was just one of the traits of the songs from the forthcoming How I Long to Feel That Summer in My Heart. See a theme developing here? The show's acoustic "Dead-Aid" sounded like a picnic under the gallows tree, but ornate electronic arrangements made "Christina" a shimmering mope with more melodic shifts than most full albums. "Her Hair Hangs Long" is also the band's neatest pure pop song since the glammy "Poodle Rocking." Typically, this radiant record will be released in September. Sweet-natured seduction alternated with bursts of temper during the show. "Sweet Johnny," from 1998's Gorky 5, ended with Euros throwing himself at his electric piano as if he thought his abdomen could play with more intensity. As the guitars took up a Velvet Underground mantra, he ruined the effect by putting hands on hips and staring in bewilderment at the instrument - not unlike a scientist whose experiment has just eaten the petri dish. Post-show reports claimed that the band's American label was impressed. Who knows? Maybe Wales will succeed in sending an export farther afield than the local college radio station. But as Childs trilled, "Isn't it a lovely day? My patio is on fire," on the set-closer, he was obliviously content in his fervid musical kingdom. For a moment it felt nice to have something tiny and wonderful to call our own. |
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