Thursday, December 9, 2010
Review: Jay Brannan at Urban Lounge
Posted By Jesse Fruhwirth on December 9, 2010, 12:54 PM
Jay Brannan's YouTube videos are as sweet, honest and direct as his lyrics but nothing compares to his stage presense on display last night at Urban Lounge.---
Special also was that the crowd of Brannan admirers had grown substantially since he was last in Salt Lake City in October 2009.
How is this guy not signed onto a label, I wonder? So much of the crowd sang along to his lyrics, he's certainly got the sexy looks so often required by modern pop music. It's a mystery to me. He such great stage presence. When Brannan's on stage, you feel like you're hanging out with a friend and he's playing his newest demo. Even when he stops a song and makes fun of himself for singing the lyric wrong, it's endearing. He's just so... personal... and, well, seemingly naked, sometimes, on his YouTube videos. It's easy to love all of him.
He's working on a new album now, so the material last night was similar to his October '09 show, including his most well-known songs "Soda Shop," "I Want to Be a Housewife," and the strikingly poetic "Goddamned."
Brannan is also a very vocal fan of Salt Lake City's renowned Red Iguana, saying New York City where he lives now hasn't got a decent Mexican restaurant and that Red Iguana is certainly on par with the best of Mexican restaurants in his home state, Texas.%uFFFD
You may know Brannan from his role in John Cameron Mitchell's Shortbus, the film originally referred to by the filmmaker as "the sex project," that was an experiment in collaborative film making. Brannan's scene involving the, ahem, anal rendition of the National Anthem was unforgettable.
But he's sustained a below-the-radar touring career that, if SLC's growing attendance is any indication, is going very well.
Salt Lake City's The Awful Truth, aka Brent Colbert, opened the show. His pretty ditties were just the thing to get the crowd into the serious singer-songwriter mode.
I don't have footage of the show (my cell phone has HD video but the audio recording is awful).%uFFFD Enjoy this rendition of "Goddamned."
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