The Barmitzvah Brothers, “Agatha Read” (Mr. Bones’ Walk-In Closet, 2003)
Neko Case, “Margaret Vs. Pauline” (Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, 2006)
The titular character of “Agatha Read” is scruffy and unassuming and yet wise beyond her years, which is how I’ve always thought of the Barmitzvah Brothers. When I first encountered them in 2004, playing a barn-burning show at New York’s Sidewalk Café, they didn’t have many years between the three of them—drummer Johnny Merritt was 17, multi-instrumentalists Geordie Gordon and Jenny Mitchell were 18 and 19—and Mr. Bones’ Walk-In Closet was already a year old by then. Their solid musicianship and cunning way with arrangement on this album grant a compelling depth to the characters; far from your standard teenage antihero mewling about how parents just don’t understand, Agatha comes off as positively epic, striding down the block with a warm trumpet wind at her back. She moves through her world with grace and authority, confident that her talents will be appreciated one day. Neko Case’s Margaret isn’t quite so blessed—her musical backdrop is a beautiful one, but its brushed drums and crying pedal steel have a doleful quality better suited for shuffling one’s feet than walking tall. With a spirit broken by a lifetime of rotten luck, Margaret lives in bitter envy of the girl who got all the chances she missed; “Everything’s so easy for Pauline” is Case’s tragicomic answer to “Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!”
on Tuesday. It’s been three years since 