Monsters of Folk
November 13th at Stubb’s BBQ, Austin

I’ll spare you the comparisons to Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, or the Traveling Wilburys. I’m sure if you’ve heard of Monsters of Folk by now, you understand that this band, like the aforementioned (sorry, I guess I couldn’t avoid it), is made up of four already-successful, talented musicians, coming together to form, in popular vernacular, a “supergroup.”

It’s easy to see how this kind of thing could be a bad idea. Just because a few musicians are good at what they do, and maybe even share similar genres, doesn’t mean they’ll gel together into a cohesive whole. But when it comes to Monsters of Folk, as with CSNY and the Wilburys (sorry again), one thing is clear: This collaboration has some chemistry. I hate to rely on a cliché that’s been used in pretty much every MOF review thus far, but it’s the most concise way to say it: The coming-together of these musicians creates a whole that’s greater than the sum of its parts.

Monsters of Folk took the outdoor stage at Stubb’s BBQ in Austin, Texas on Friday night, and pulled off an astounding 36-song set that could double as a how-to manual for collaborations. Jim James, M. Ward, Conor Oberst, and Mike Mogis (backed by Texas’ own Will Johnson on drums) swapped instruments, vocals, and center stage throughout the evening, moving seamlessly from covers of each artist’s solo songs to cuts from the group’s self-titled album released earlier this year. The effect was something like picking apart a piece of machinery to expose the gears inside, then putting it back together and watching how smoothly it works: Like the songs themselves, the performance alternately spotlighted and then blended the strengths of each musician to create something cohesive. And impressive.

And yes, I did say 36 songs. Monsters of Folk has been touring the US since October, performing two-and-a-half to three-hour sets each time, and although their stop at Stubb’s was at the end of the line, they showed no signs of flagging. In fact, James and Oberst, the two musicians whose voices are probably most prone to showing exhaustion, both sounded unusually strong and vibrant; there’s no way these guys aren’t loving what they’re doing, and it shows in their performances. Oberst’s heady expressive version of “A Song to Pass the Time” was one of his best moments all evening. His steady voice (who ever thought they’d read that about Conor Oberst?) stripped the song of its original uncertain wobble and shored it up from beneath, putting something strident and warm into the lyrics that gave them new impact. As for James, there’s something about his live performances that, almost maddeningly, can never be captured on recording. Sometimes on his albums, his voice contains just one or two dimensions, but in concert, it takes on 10 or 20. His apocalyptic mournfulness carried most of the band’s complex harmonies, and kept right on pulling its weight through the closing song of the encore, the haunting “His Master’s Voice.”

And yes, I did say encore. Let’s be honest: There aren’t too many bands, no matter how much I like them, that I can listen to play for three hours. That’s a long time. That’s a really long time. Even the most devoted fans will probably have one eye longingly on the exits during the encore after that amount of time. But apparently the Monsters of Folk aren’t just masters at collaboration, they’re pros at pacing, too. Sure, the show had its ups and downs—”Ahead of the Curve”, a song that’s filled with highway-humming tension and soaring skyline longing on the recorded version, came across as flat, rushed, and darn close to a throwaway performance. And every time Mike Mogis put down the pedal steel there was invariably a sense of disappointment, even if the song didn’t call for a pedal steel—the guy can play a mean pedal steel. But for the most part, the show was so smoothly paced that the energy level didn’t flag or lag. It was like the band wrapped up the audience, pulled them into the complex thing they were building on stage, then sent them off again at the other end of three hours, blinking at their watches in disbelief. Now that’s a successful collaboration.

Watch: Monsters of Folk, “Temazcal” [at youtube.com]

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