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The Child Ballads – Cheekbone
New York City, NY
10/17/07
The demise of the short lived Jonathan Fire*Eater was a lost that rends my soul to this day. Most of JF*E formed The Walkmen, while good, did not come close to fill the black hole in my being that was left after JF*E broke-up. The Child Ballads is JF*E lead singer, Stewart Lupton’s follow-up band. As much as I miss JF*E, Child Ballads are quickly becoming my favored flavor. They play NYC fairly often, but with maddening abruptness. They seem to rarely announce a show more than a few days in advance which again was the case during CMJ. They were not listed on the CMJ line-up but alas, having accidentally perused their MySpace page, noticed that they were playing, not one, but two shows during CMJ! So once again, I, along with a handful of lucky souls was in rock n’ roll nirvana watching The Child Ballads. They have two new songs and one of the shows was presumably for RedEye Records which will distribute the long overdue record domestically. As of now, there is an import EP out on Loog Records. There is no way I can stress how much this band kills, especially live. On the surface, their songs don’t seem much different than bluesy Rolling Stones (a band I never cared for) numbers, but somehow Child Ballads manage to update a seemingly well tread course. How they do it? I hope I never know.
Download: The Child Ballads – Cheekbone (Live Video)
