Parenthetical Girls

Parenthetical Girls
09.07.08 at LeftBank/the Works
2008 Time-Based Art Festival, PICA
Photo by CaroleZoom
All Rights Reserved, PICA
Playing in front of projected images seemingly culled from a home decorating magazine, the Parenthetical Girls play songs of grace, sexuality, morality, and desire. Eerily earnest, alternatingly plaintive and tongue-in-cheek, Zach Pennington’s lyrics and voice center this indie band’s compositions. “Everything you’re hearing tonight is true,” Pennington says at one point, half-joking and half-serious. As he romps around the room on a wireless mic, he taps and stomps and waltzes, his angelic, androgynous voice wavering above the hushed crowd. “This is art guys; let’s keep it real quiet… This isn’t Music Fest Northwest!” The crowd, enthralled, embraces him.
After the intermission, a twenty-plus member orchestra joined the band onstage, leaving Pennington a forward mini-stage to himself. Carrying his long spindly fingers in the air like wands, he seems to conduct the music. His lyrics are often grandiose and lovesick and mature: “with an indifference divine,” “all the years I casually exploited love,” “we had low hopes, frankly.” Still, as they work their way through the band’s new record, Entanglements, the songs tend to bleed into each other. The orchestration is too similar, the vocal range stays near the same register. With Pennington pinned to the four-by-four platform, the stage show is reduced to his wand-like fingers and the faces of over twenty musicians sitting in cramped quarters. The immediacy and gusto of the earlier set has faded, though the audience remains enchanted like acolytes beneath a new star.
Posted by Dusty Hoesly