NYT "Loser's Lounge" Review

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February 14, 2006
Pop Review | 'Tribute to Burt Bacharach'
Bacharach, They Long to Be Close to Your (Quirky) Style

By STEPHEN HOLDEN

The Loser's Lounge, the downtown musical collective that recycles pop music's recent past with an affectionately raised eyebrow, could only flourish in the age of karaoke. As this long-running agglomeration of musicians and friends performed a tribute to Burt Bacharach on Saturday evening at the Allen Room of Frederick P. Rose Hall, one had to admire the fact that the music was not a recording with live vocals on top, but the original music, recycled 100 percent live. That's not easy when the songs are by Burt Bacharach, a master of tricky meters, abrupt time changes and advanced pop orchestration.

It wasn't the first time the group had celebrated Mr. Bacharach, many of whose songs evoke an upscale but still slightly seedy Las Vegas sophistication that might be called ur-lounge. Part of the American Songbook Series at Lincoln Center, the program of more than 20 Bacharach songs — most outfitted with lyrics by Hal David — had the feel of a loving celebrity roast at which the blushing honoree was present in spirit but not in body.

The group's leader, Joe McGinty, wearing a white tuxedo jacket and black tie, conducted from the piano and set the tongue-in-cheek mood of the evening with his too-enthusiastic introductions embellished with nuggets of absurd trivia.

Throughout the program, the sublime and the ridiculous bumped elbows. Sublime was David Driver's angry, broken-hearted rendition of the Bacharach-Elvis Costello ballad "God Give Me Strength." Ridiculous was the off-pitch voice and guitar performance by John Flansburgh and Dan Miller (from They Might Be Giants) of a supposedly melisma-free version of "Make It Easy on Yourself" that wasn't as advertised.

The sublime and ridiculous came together in the silly but invigorating movie theme "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," performed by Chris Anderson wearing a serape and black cowboy hat. Among the singers who stepped into shoes once occupied by the young Dionne Warwick, Sherryl Marshall came the closest to evoking the old vinyl magic on "There's Always Something There to Remind Me."

In the age of celebrity worship, it was liberating to be reminded that pop canonization cuts both ways. Through its slightly distanced, knowing perspective, the Loser's Lounge makes you aware of the artifice of pop. The calculated instrumental hook, the backup singers' do-be-do, the clunky turn of phrase and the sloppy rhyme are parts of a whole that when all is said and done is still pretty wonderful.