live: the dutchess and the duke, the charleston, 7.13.08

Watching The Dutchess and The Duke live, it can sometimes take a little while to realize just how focused they are. Their setup is beyond bare-bones: one six-string, one twelve-string, a floor tom, and a couple of additional pieces of percussion. It’s the vocals, though, that clue you in. On their debut, much of what pulled me in had to do with the nuances of the production: specifically, which lines were sung by Jesse Lortz alone as opposed to those in which he harmonized with Kimberly Morrison, or his own double-tracked voice. Live, it’s more the sheer force of things — both “Reservoir Park” and “I Am Just a Ghost” were elevated by the the sheer power of the three voices on stage going full-blast.

The basement of Williamsburg’s The Charleston might have been a better place for this kind of epiphany than the last time I saw them, a few days earlier at the Bowery Ballroom opening for Fleet Foxes. While they sounded fine there, the immediacy of their set in the much smaller venue was much more striking. There was also a more direct relationship with the audience, with Lortz occasionally calling out overly talkative folks in the crowd and others in the crowd contributing to the rhythm with handclaps and the occasional singalong.

And if you doubted punk rock’s roots in much older styles of music, their set served as a fine reminder.  While they’re clearly in the garage/punk tradition, I couldn’t help to be taken back to nights in 2000 at Old Devil Moon, watching bluegrass duo (and future Neko Case collaborators) Jim & Jennie and the Pinetops play with a frenzied energy both punk-friendly and unquestionably traditional.