I’ve always been fascinated by The Books “cut-and-paste” approach to music. The duo, made up of vocalist/guitarist Nick Zammuto and cellist Paul de Jong, scavenge thrift stores for recordings – archaic exercise videos, discarded TalkBoy tapes, and other untouchables left at the Salvation Army – for sounds and samples. The result is a minimalistic sound pastiche sometimes described as “folktronica.” The same methodology is applied to the accompanying videos, which are used as a backdrop during their shows.
A word of caution: this is not a review of last night’s Books’ show at the Miller House in Lexington, KY. Due to unforeseen circumstances, I arrived in time to only see the last three songs. Instead, this is an account of a bizarre night that led up to those last three songs.
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The drive from Cincinnati to Lexington takes approximately 90 minutes. A wreck on 75, however, turned 60 of those minutes into a snail’s crawl across the bridge into Kentucky. With only funk CDs and cigarettes borrowed from an angel in an ‘87 Buick to keep our sanity, my friend and I managed to complete the drive in a little under 3 hours.
By the time we reached Lexington, the sun had already set. We stared into the depths of a dark, foreboding forest, the supposed location of the road to the Miller House. According to the omniscient Google Maps, the Miller House does not exist, so by now I was convinced I had been lured to a cult meeting. Still, the promise of a good show and a stocked cash bar beckoned us onward. We wound through the half-suburb/half-open fields, searching desperately for any sign of a venue. Finally, we called the promoter, who guided us to our destination.
What lay before us was not a music venue, but a building reminiscent of the ship on The Life Aquatic, or the stage set from Death of a Salesman. No wonder the Miller House is considered one of the few remaining extraordinary examples of Modernist architecture.
Inside, fans leaned over the balconies and sat on the many winding staircases to watch the The Books below. Others huddled around the tiny stage – a slightly elevated platform – inside what appeared to be a living room. We arrived just in time to see “Smells Like Content”, followed by Nick Drake’s “Cello Song” from the Dark Was the Night compilation. The band finished with “An Owl with Knees.”
I was disappointed that I missed the new songs from their upcoming album, which is due for release sometime next April. Still, I got excited when Paul de Jong mentioned the band is working on a few new covers for their spring tour, which may include covers of the Magnetic Fields and Bob Dylan.
Overall, were those three songs worth the seemingly endless traffic and the bizarre road trip to an unmapped house show? Absolutely. The journey is always the destination, and the actual destination was a fascinating house worthy of further exploration outside its function as an event space.
