Mayer Hawthorne and The County are currently touring as "Mazda 2 Presents..." which may account for a certain slickness in presentation: the signs flanking the stage, the TV screens over by the merch playing what were presumably music videos on a loop. And some quantum of poise, whether corporate or tongue-in-cheek, is welcome: you gotta love a band that takes the stage in matching firetruck red cardigans over black ties, and the illuminated "M H" backdrop added to the Virgin Suicides charm. This was, as Hawthorne insisted, "a show, not a concert."
Hawthorne, rounding out the picture in Buddy Holly glasses and an expertly-played tambourine, delivered his Motown revivalism without distracting irony, and with a voice unwontedly supple and sure for one so short and white. His 'tween song patter always segued perfectly, if non-sequiturally: a story about being mistaken for Toby Maguire in baggage claim concluded, "And you know what I say to that guy? I say... oooooh, ooooh," and he slipped seamlessly into the classicist sweetness of "Maybe So, Maybe No."
You'd be well within your rights to hate on Hawthorne. There is not the slightest hint of danger in his scrupulous plundering, and little if any novelty. (Did you read that Sasha Frere-Jones piece on revivalism? Me neither). Hawthorne seemingly saw no irony in singing a (not half bad) new song all about Detroit in a show sponsored by the Yellow Peril, while making us all do a ludicrous hand-flipping dance apparently called (in Detroit) "the Errol Flynn." His guitarist is named Topher, no kidding.
On the other hand, he's really quite good as docent on a tour through early Motown. Topher delivered a song of his own that was sweet and nimble, making excellent use of a band that compressed the sound of a soul revue into five guys. "I Wish It Would Rain" is so close to "Tears of a Clown" it should probably hire a lawyer. And yet, for a moment, in the throes of doing Hawthorne's "rain down" dance, all that mattered was getting the drizzly flutter of your fingers just right.
The Heavy, from Britain, preceded Hawthorne, and didn't execute their borrowings nearly as charmingly. Their text was the tubesocked strut of earlier Chili Peppers, yielding a barrel of distilled-tar grooves, crude and of only moderate octane, despite the singer Kelvin Swaby's impressive sheen of sweat. Even at their triumphalist best, the Heavy were curiously inert, weighted by an affectless guitarist, a horn section twiddling its thumbs for stretches, and a singer who knows only how to rough up a song, not seduce it. I believe I saw considerably more dancing when I saw Tortoise the last time I was at the Paradise. One might have better luck with their sample-laden records, where the borrowings can speak for themselves.
