The Center-Parting Of Certain Doom

So, this is a week where laid out for our delectation are Kill Henry Sugar, back trawling around the East Village with a Wednesday-night residence at B-3, and we are sorely tempted by Lightning Bolt at The Hook. But we are not likely to make either of these engagements, since our appointment at Motor City looms.

Buut we did make it to top showbiz Dolan-nest MSG, where Sarah McLachlan was playing. We'll confess we shuddered instinctively when we heard the news, since we approve of girls and guitars, but only in the plural, wearing ties, and snarling about severed genitals. This "McLachlan" of which they spoke, she seemed to be a somewhat anodyne prospect, although one colleague mentioned that she might be country.

Not so fast. She's sort of a bit more weedy and ethereal, a demented mix of Enya and Shania Twain, although the comparisons say more about our abysmal knowledge of the genre than any objective assessment of her style. Support came from a nondescript and rather derivative group called the Perishers, who take their name from a slightly twee comic strip that appeared in the UK's Daily Mail.

We'd love to give you a review. Really, we'd love to. We'd even try and give you one of those all context, no description, ones we fall back on when we're very drunk, as you will shortly see in Sugarzine. But, although we had a very reasonable amount of Heineken, and we were even watching the show for a few moments, we've forgotten everything. Nothing sank in. We found ourselves distracted by small talk from some of the city's finest legal minds, for which, we might, add, she's a fitting soundtrack.

For what it's worth, we heard that she spent a little time in the nineties almost being grunge, before describing an arc into the depths of teen-drama soundtrack hell, and bottoming out as mood music for stressed but none-too-discerning young professionals. A far more steep decline, then, than Natalie Merchant, whose occasional sidemen, in a neat, albeit contrived, piece of symetry, are Kill Henry Sugar. We have decided, during the course of this post, to go tonight. Whether there is any value in a review, however, we are rather sceptical.