The Musical Box

ben sollee performing last night at the dame. photo by rich copley, herald-leader staff.

At various times during his homecoming concert last night at The Dame, Ben Sollee allowed the cello to become a brittle melodic tool built for pop, a vehicle for jawbone-flavored country and a playground for keenly agitated string-driven funk. And yes, there were moments - brief ones, like the arpeggios that bloomed into the show opening blues-soul romp How to See the Sun Rise - that referenced classical traditions.

Suggestions of chamber music stopped there, however. Sollee employed cello during the performance the way most singer-songwriters might use acoustic guitar. It serviced the heady songs, like Panning for God, that were inhabited by weary gods and even wearier mortals. But Sollee also took full advantage of the instrument’s orchestral abilities even when the lyrical framework of his songs became a bit thin.

In some instances, he would tighten the cello’s sound around the neck during improvisations to give the instrument the deeper echo of a double bass. During others, most notably Bury Me With My Car, the sound loosened to offer the country flexibility (and fierceness) of a fiddle tune.

Sollee has been playing predominantly solo cello concerts this fall. Last night, however, marked only the second time he has played in a trio setting with Lexington guitarist Justin Craig (of The Scourge of the Sea and These United States) and drummer Jon Moore (from Louisville’s Chemic). Among other neat tricks, Craig favored electric slide ambience during A Few Honest Words, I Can’t and several other tunes that created a curious harmony with the cello.

Last night’s repertoire favored most of Sollee’s Learning to Bend album and both songs from his even newer EP disc, Something Worth Keeping. But there were also a few intriguing covers that included works by Gillian Welch (a revivalistic Everything is Free), Gnarls Barkley (what else? - the mega hit Crazy, where the chorus unfurled into artful screams) and Sam Cooke (a funkified A Change is Gonna Come).

The highlight was saved for last when whisper-quiet show opener Daniel Martin Moore finally broke the sound barrier for the snakehandling spiritualism of Rattlesnake Gospel. But when the tune morphed into Tom Waits’ Chocolate Jesus to end the concert, the tired gods that figured so prominently in Sollee’s own songs cast off their robes and surrendered to the boogie supreme.