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HOT GIG TICKETS

BEN WEAVER + Jane Bartholomew

Tue 13th Jan 2009

The Luminaire presents
BEN WEAVER
+ Jane Bartholomew

£9 door

7.30 doors
8.15 Jane Bartholomew (30)
9.05 Ben Weaver (90)

"A startling talent." (Time Out)

"Elusive, poetic imagery. Bleak, but utterly compulsive." (Q)

'The Ax and The Oak' is "Ben Weaver's 6th album at the ripe old age of 29; it is by far his most adventurous to date. Produced by Brian Deck (Modest Mouse, Iron & Wine), the album juxtaposes electronic musical sounds with warm acoustic instruments with textural results that defy the usual expectations of the singer/songwriter genre. It's hard to argue with the results - evocative, hushed songs that illuminate Ben's affinity for the natural world of birds, phone booths, empty parking lots, strangers in the checkout line, plastic bags stuck in trees and whatever else typically goes unnoticed in the sidewalk cracks.

"Country-rooted Americana full of weary determination and aphoristic clarity, somewhere between the Band and Tom Waits." (New York Times)

"Weaver's voice - which makes Lee Marvin sound like Aled Jones - lends biblical portent to the most mundane detail. A one-man Brothers Grimm with no happy endings. Enjoy." (Uncut, ****)

A former Casket Company warehouse is Weaver's current world headquarters. Multitudinous organs, synthesizers, guitars, a sampler, a piano, a dog, Polaroid cameras, sketch books, New Yorker back issues, boxes of CDs and a PowerBook mark the territory. There is an air of controlled chaos and the musty smell of old tube amps. Weaver writes continuously, a process perhaps more akin to breathing than composing, "I have always identified with those people who make art because they have to, that sense of necessity and urgency. That is why I make art, to fulfill that need within myself and to connect with the people of the world who also cannot live without it." "Musical postcards that recall a rural Tom Waits, or Greg Brown in his dark, bluesy moments. He's like that spooky old guy who lives in a trailer but tells amazing stories." (Utne Reader)

"Ben Weaver is the most exciting young songwriter I've come across, an American original whose voice and guitar are matched only by the power of his words. His songs are an incredible, haunting gift of music." Author Larry Brown (1951-2004)

"...strange, skin-prickling tales picked up from the Moebius strip of a lost highway he's been compelled to travel on.... like a hillbilly Leonard Cohen." (Mojo)

"Weaver remains a riveting lyricist and A-level student of the Tom Waits School of Gutter Bum Poetry." (Twin Cities Metromix)

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