Yahoo! Music Review

Gig played on 15/01/08

Damon & Naomi suckle on the teat of sadness. It's their lifeblood. For 18 years and seven records the Boston-based duo, both formerly of Galaxie 500, have been spilling their guts out. The contents are misery and despair. They wrap it, though, in an incredibly delicate cloak of folk created by Damon's acoustic guitar and effeminate voice, and Naomi's smartly played keyboard.

The Luminaire is filled with a cloud of mournful expectancy. From the opening strums of Tim Buckley's "Song Of The Siren", everyone knows they're going to get an onslaught of dreamy, folk-pop laced with unhappy tales of better times in better places. The keyboard is muffled. The vocal is strained. The tone is set.

It can be difficult to take music that's so persistently down seriously. It almost seems shallow, or lazy, to only cover one strand of extreme human emotion. Damon introduces "Lilac Land" saying "it's about as sad as you can get". Once you've reached the bottom, you go back to the top, right? Maybe. Between songs they're light-hearted. Damon tells a funny story of his afternoon in the Freud museum, followed by an explanation and a ditty about how living in New York is like "living in a box". You always bump into people. He doesn't like it. Then it's back to the serious business of his melodies. Back to the bottom.

The flitting creates an eerie mood. The Luminaire could be a camp fire, we could all be listening to ghost stories, or at an intellectual Christian camp dissecting the implied meanings of the Old Testament. They both have the air of youth camp leaders. It's weird. They're both softly-spoken and clearly deep thinkers. Naomi's role is secondary to Damon's, but her contributions are crucial.

With her keys, she either sends piercing squawks through the dense fog that Damon filters across the room like a human smoke machine, or provide organ sounds for him to rumble along on. They play old songs, and they play new songs. They play "Turn Of The Century", and they play "The World's Strongest Man", their contribution to a Scott Walker tribute album. It is stripped down to reveal its dark, cold soul.

They have short songs, and they have long songs. But all of their songs, without fail, are sad songs. Their words and overtones creep through the Luminaire like slow-moving tentacles. And they hang heavily in your mind, and around your heart.

by Tom Howard