Disparate Talents Displayed at Landmark

Review by Mark Underwood

Stories about government surveillance and privacy can strike a discordant tone. The audience at Landmark’s performance last Saturday may have been startled to hear a few of the same notes from one Nellie McKay, who had been daringly paired with the sweet-sounding sonorities of the oh-so-feminine folk trio, Red Molly. 

“Oh, and do your memories ever take you back into another place in time?” Red Molly had asked in their appealing cover of the Dolly Parton classic “Do I Ever Cross Your Mind.”

Indeed, might have been the enthusiastic audience reply.  Yes, to another place in time before surveillance cameras, stolen Facebook credentials and cyberstalking.  

That’s exactly where and when Red Molly went from the moment they took the stage with a tasty mix of country and folk-inflected idioms, delivered with a silken sheen.

Red Molly is Laurie MacAllister, Abbie Gardner, and Molly Venter. They provide all the vocals and all the instrumentals.

For most of the evening, Ms. MacAllister played a 1963 Danelectro electric bass guitar, Ms. Venter provided a sturdy 6-string foundation, and Ms. Gardner added a slide Dobro that is the signature sound of Red Molly’s instrumentals.

But as their a cappella work on Gardner’s original tune, “Copper Ponies” demonstrated, Red Molly’s outstanding feature isn’t the distinctive Dobro. Their vocal harmony is what one remembers: the combined voices of three women, each solo performers in their own right, blended like a fine Meritage. This blend was evident in Venter’s original, “Shaky Ground,” in which could be found traces of Adele’s vocal styling. Folk influences held sway in “Willow Tree,” “Coal Tattoo,” “Lay Down Your Burden” and the popular “Fever,” which the trio sang with just bass and finger snaps. One of Red Molly’s standout performances was Gardner’s song “I’m Only Right When It’s All Wrong,” co-written with Jonathan Byrd.

This blend seems only to get better --- this is the group’s third appearance at Landmark – over time.

But hold on. The trio’s refined harmonies served as set-ups for the sucker punch that was about to be delivered by Nellie McKay, who emerged after intermission wearing a full-length empire dress, as if to set herself apart from the cowboy boots that had just left the stage.

McKay’s half of the show was a little Gay 90’s, a little ingénue, and a little of the seer at the piano bar in the saloon. Scarcely past 30, she’s done cabaret, Broadway, jazz and starred in a musical show based on the life of the executed murderess Barbara Graham. Little wonder critics are uncertain what adjectives should be attached to her performances and 5 albums.

Her “A game” is to entertain, and she plays it well. She is also an unapologetic feminist who offhandedly reminds us that “fashion” and “fascist” have a common etymology, and who is not afraid to pair her lyrics to “Mother of Pearl” (“They say cheap objectification isn't witty, it's hot”) with “Georgy Girl” (“Don't be so scared of changing and rearranging yourself”). For her visit to Landmark, she brought a charming version of Ella’s “A-Tisket, A-Tasket,” but this was accompanied by the thinly veiled irony of her own tune, “I Wanna Get Married:”

I wanna partake in bake sales for the classroom
I wanna hear the sweet tune
Of Sally's little vroom-vroom
As she zooms around my broom
As I exhume the gloom
Of my shallow life.

A capable pianist and singer, McKay veered with calculated unsteadiness between amoroso and animato.  She seemed content to both confuse and delight her audience, as with her self-interrupted references to an Elaine Stritch story that never seemed to get told. Or did it?

By the end of the show, it was an audience perfectly happy to allow her sing-along to become a spoof of itself.

Can the disparate impulses represented by Red Molly and Nellie McKay be reconciled? Probably not. As Molly Ventner’s lyric insisted, “All of my life I have been living in extremes.”

These extremes of artistic vision are ones these artists are likely to keep under surveillance for some time to come. On June 1, the Landmark presents the Long Island Ballet Theatre with an original ballet adventure choreographed by former NYC Ballet dancer and choreographer Christopher Fleming.