Suoni Review - Ideal Lovers and Vic Chestnutt with Guy Picciotto and A Silver Mount Zion

Ideal Lovers opened Saturday’s Suoni Festival show at a packed Sala Rossa. They played funky blues that would be well-suited to an outdoor venue at the Jazz Festival. The standing crowd danced a bit and the band did a good job of warming us up, but I was anxious to see Vic Chestnutt and tired from a swelteringly humid day at work. Ideal Lovers’ sound was full and easy to listen to. Two women joined the band for a few songs adding energy and beautiful harmonies in their matching red-belted black dresses.

I would describe their style as “exactly music”. It’s like if aliens stopped by our planet and wanted to know what music was, you’d hit some spoons against your knee or take them to the symphony or play a Stones record. You could also take them to see Ideal Lovers. These guys play music at the most basic level. Not that the musicians are unskilled, in fact, they’re excellent blues players. But in terms of genre, they play exactly music.

Vic Chestnutt was joined by Fugazi guitarist and singer, Guy Picciotto and locals A Silver Mount Zion on drums, keys, and other stuff (reviews of their other Suoni show are here and here). Vic has a scratchy, kind voice like a human harmonica. His guitar tone is as rough as his voice, and both give off warmth as the audience itches and shifts.

With a band behind him, Vic’s country-jangling guitar became heavy and intense. I’ve seen him play by himself and the effect is just as strong. Vic gives a powerful sense of music being something that a person drives into the world. He throws his head back after yelling a line or holding a long note and swears while spinning a mock ego-centric rant. His conversations and lyrics are a kind of fable made from true-seeming stories and forced into our hands with a gentle urgency. His music is some of the most moving I’ve discovered in the past year and together with the dark rockingness of Guy Picciotto and A Silver Mount Zion the show was exhaustingly forceful.

Visit the Constellation site to read about Vic Chestnutt’s album, North Star Deserter, which was recorded at Montreal’s Hotel2Tango studio and features A Silver Mount Zion, Guy Picciotto, and others.

Photos of Vic Chestnutt by Marilis Cardinal