2005-06-29
The New York Times
Stephen Holden
To watch the composer Jason Robert Brown perform his own songs is similar to observing a barnstorming politician on a roll. The spectacle of far-ranging musical talent harnessed to such unstoppable ambition may not be pretty, but the electricity it generates is contagious.
Complicating matters is the sense that the role of crowd-pleasing entertainer doesn’t come naturally to him; he conveys the insecurity of an introspective über-nerd struggling against his own self-consciousness.
Mr. Brown, the composer of the Broadway musical “Parade” and the Off Broadway musical “The Last Five Years,” is playing a six-night engagement through Sunday at Au Bar, introducing songs from his first solo album, “Wearing Someone Else’s Clothes” (Sh-K-Boom Records).
At Tuesday’s opening-night show he was joined by the singer Lauren Kennedy, who recorded an album of his songs for PS Classics, and by Randy Landau on bass and Gary Sieger on guitar. With his fervent cult audience in attendance, Mr. Brown generated the kind of razzle-dazzle that Billy Joel conjured more than 30 years ago around the time of “Piano Man.” The similarities are unmistakable. Mr. Brown, like Mr. Joel, furiously crunches down on the keyboard like a jockey driving a racehorse to the finish line; his supercharged pianism rarely diminishes from fortissimo.
From song to song, pop, rock, classical, Broadway and jazz influences erupt in a flashy fireworks display. The two composers’ work even shares common themes. Among Mr. Brown’s new songs, “Someone Else’s Clothes” suggests a more self-conscious answer to “The Stranger,” and “I’m in Bizness” to “Big Shot.”
But the similarities end there. Where Mr. Joel’s center of gravity is the rock arena, Mr. Brown’s is the theater, and the consciously literate lyrics for his often lengthy, highly verbal songs have an analytical component that’s closer to Stephen Sondheim. If Mr. Joel likes to play the hyperkinetic musical clown, Mr. Brown, even when pushing his folk-pop baritone to its limits, maintains the vocal reserve of a 1970’s folk-pop sage.
Had he appeared in the 70’s, he might have found a place for himself as a polished, sensitive singer-songwriter. With that genre pushed to the margins of pop, he has gravitated to the theater and become one of its brightest musical hopes.
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