Amy MacDonald wrote the song “The Road Home” six years ago, more than a quarter of a lifetime for the twenty-year-old Scottish musician. Aged 14, three years before signing her record deal, she had no idea that in 2007, the song would play a role in a moment of great national pride for her country, when it was used as the soundtrack to the city of Glasgow’s successful bid to host the 2014 Commonwealth Games. MacDonald’s lack of foresight in this matter is understandable given that, as she revealed last week onstage at the Living Room in New York City, the song was actually written about her dead dog.

The diminutive Scot is playing her final night of a three-night introduction to America, following in the footsteps of so many before her who have tried to break into the US market. Declaring that this is every UK musician’s dream is perhaps no secret, but it is certainly endearing. She jokingly dubs her band (four equally youthful and spirited players) as “the aliens with unusual abilities” referring to their US visa designations, but the relief and excitement at having finally made their first trip across the Atlantic literally rises the temperature in the room. Her acoustic guitar is held high like a shield, and she strums it confidently. MacDonald and her band emit an aura that is at once assured and genuine.

Amy MacDonald and Julia Clarke

Whereas many overseas musicians like U2 and the Beatles have reigned in their accents in song to achieve success Stateside, or even acquired a vaguely ambiguous spoken English accent a la KT Tunstall, MacDonald seems clear she’s not going to temper her Scottishness to become more accessible. She makes no attempt to mask her thick Bishopbriggs brogue between songs, and the stories she tells on her debut album This Is the Life are equally local in theme. She sings that “nothing beats the feeling of the high Barrowland ceiling” in “Barrowland Ballroom” — about the famed Glasgow music venue where the country’s most famous serial killer scoped out his victims, and where past acts have included Dylan, Costello, Bowie (and now McDonald) — and includes a cover of Dougie McLean’s “Caledonia,” one of Scotland’s unofficial national anthems, as the hidden track.

Yet she’s not making a patriotic assertion of national identity. She’s simply singing about what she knows and who she is, which is exactly what a twenty-year-old should be singing about. The contrast between the young singer’s soft speaking voice and her nuclear-powered singing voice that blasts the room like a rough-edged Dolores O’Riordan transform her remarkable tales of ordinariness into an astonishing live performance. With enough confidence and skill to be impressive and convincing, there’s no sheen here, just real roots rock with the best of folk.

–Julia Clarke

“Speak slowly/My eyes are so bleary/I guess I’m young but I feel so weary”

A night after canceling their first New York City show due to illness, Zooey Deschanel cheekily apologized by way of self-deprecation, poking fun at her ailment with “Black Hole,” a dreary tale of loneliness belied by a chipper melody, twangy slide guitar and jaunty pace that is one of ten original songs on Volume One, her new collaboration with M. Ward.

Certainly she looked the picture of health; exuberant, and unapologetically effervescent, wearing an uncontained smile as she tapped a tambourine cheerily against her thigh. But at the end of the song, she turned her back to the audience to reach for something behind her, then returned holding up a large sign with a handwritten message: “Hello New York.”

She’d lost her voice the day before and in order to give it all during the performance, she had to silently woo the crowd between songs. The effect was in fact as charming and as quirky as Deschanel herself, who produced various signs (“Hi,” “Thank You,” and “You Look Great, You Really Do!”), held her heart in a mock swoon at the applause, and jumped up and down like an excited school girl before launching into “Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?”

But perhaps more importantly, her muteness presented her with the challenge of winning over a first-time audience without the safety net so many new musicians fall into – witty stage banter to fill up the 90 minutes. Instead, Deschanel was left with charm, which she oozes, and of course the sweetly crafted compositions she recorded last year with M. Ward.

The songs on Volume One are almost without exception playful: “I’m just sitting on the shelf” she sings on “Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?” teasing a lover to come sweep her up; and deliciously retro - “I Was Taking a Walk” is pure 1950s swing. But to say Deschanel is simply imitating art would be not only wrong, but a huge underestimation of her talent; she is genuine in her inspiration from the music of her forbearers. Her voice is buttery smooth, at times haunting when she evokes the distant past on Smoky Robinson’s 1962 hit “You Really Got a Hold On Me,” and she effortlessly harnesses country, blues and jazz.

Though she’s better known as an indie actress with roles in films like Almost Famous, Deschanel grew up singing in church choirs, and has been singing with the jazz cabaret act If All the Stars Were Pretty Babies since 2001. She and M. Ward first recorded a duet together in 2006, and their chemistry lead to the full-blown collaboration, which they recorded retro-style using as few machines as possible. A year has passed since they laid down the tracks, and when they play live, the songs take on the perfection of practice, and the comfort of easy improvisation.

For his part, M. Ward remains mostly mum, and at first, I wonder why he didn’t simply take over emceeing responsibilities, but as the show went on it became clear that despite his omnipresence on Volume One, the grammatical order of their moniker is intentional. Though he has several shining moments on electric bass, his aim seems to be to shine that spotlight on Deschanel.

–Julia Clarke

“White Guy at the Apollo” jokes were rampant Tuesday night with Joe Jackson headlining the famed Harlem venue, but it was Jackson himself who took the cake, covering a song by 1970s spandex-flashing, Eurovision Song Contest sovereigns ABBA.

“I guarantee you this is the whitest thing ever played at the Apollo,” Jackson declared triumphantly, before launching into “Knowing Me, Knowing You,” a hit single in 1977 when he was still in the band Edwards Bear and was yet to establish his eclectic New Wave/jazz blend that over the years has incorporated rock, pop, and R&B (and on this surprising cover, even calypso). With a high-energy performance, Jackson spanned thirty years of fame and loneliness, from New York to New Orleans, in a set marked simply by extraordinary musicianship.

It only took seven songs to bring the fervent audience to its feet, which the band did during “On Your Radio,” a song Jackson called Jurassic-era, either due to its approaching 30th anniversary, or possibly as a swipe at the state of radio today. “At least he didn’t sing ‘Sunday Papers,’” I thought, “that would be positively Triassic.” But when you’ve been around and prolific for as long as Jackson has, the different phases of your career must begin to seem like eons. And with the showmanship on display that night, you’d think the last three decades had been one long wait to make his Apollo debut.

Things kicked off with “Steppin’ Out,” setting the New York theme with a song released as he was making the city his new home in 1982. In the years that followed that top ten hit, Jackson’s success has often been contrasted by a desire for personal anonymity, and the next two songs confronted this longing pointedly. After “Invisible Man,” the lead single from the new album Rain in which he yearns for an invincibility to the pressures of fame, Jackson segued into “Too Tough,” a more personal proclamation of solitude:

“I know you think that I protest too much / I’m like a Diva with the tragic touch / But if I wanna hide from the pouring sun / It has to be alright”

At the end of the song, Jackson melodramatically shielded his eyes as he looked out at the crowd, before having the house turn the glaring spotlight away from the stage and onto his audience. Now at ease, he confided, “I never thought I could play here.”

Jackson’s delight at finally playing the venue is understandable given that he lived here for 20 years, mostly during the theater’s 1980s renaissance. He departed in a huff in 2003, not for the usual (and forgivable) 9/11 reasons, but in protest of the city’s smoking ban, a movement that Jackson has actively campaigned in essay and song. He now lives in Berlin, where there is no smoking ban. Appropriately, after the doomsday satire “Cancer” from Night and Day, he provided the antidote by detailing the exploits of a hedonistic immortal in “King Pleasure Time.”

Suffice to say, the songs on Rain do not elude Jackson’s trademark sharp wit, but there is plenty of romance and loneliness to go round; he closed the set with “A Place in the Rain,” which he called “angry, sad, funny, romantic,” and is startlingly akin structurally to the W.H. Auden poem “Funeral Blues.” During “Solo (So Low),” a song about being alone, he fittingly ordered his band mates off stage to perform unaccompanied.

His band on the road and on Rain consists of bassist Graham Maby and drummer Dave Houghton, original members of the Joe Jackson Band with whom Jackson reunited in 2004 for Volume 4. Paying tribute to cocktails and New Orleans on “Dirty Martini,” the trio appeared to have the most fun, with Maby dancing round to press his cheek against Houghton’s as they shared a mic for the echo refrain, while the drummer awkwardly tried to keep rhythm.

At the end of the day though, the city that got the most love was the one we were in, with “The Uptown Train” and “Chinatown” played back to back. Even sans ashtrays and nicotine-stained ceilings, Joe Jackson still hearts New York.

–Julia Clarke

Wearing a simple blue cotton dress, Yael Naim flits waiflike onto the stage at the Bowery Ballroom around 9:45pm, grabbing her acoustic guitar and nimbly hopping onto a stool where she sits bathed in a warm yellow spotlight that might as well be the adoration of her audience. To call them “fans” might be a tad premature at this stage, it being one of her first ever US shows, and her self-titled collaboration with David Donatien having been released only on Tuesday.

Indeed, waiting outside the Bowery before the show, I overhear more than one conversation that indicates many of these concertgoers came tonight because they heard that one song. One twenty-something student-type says he checked out a few of her songs on MySpace, while his companion appears to be here based on buzz alone. They agree that the song “from the Apple commercial” is “really great.”

Inside, the sold-out crowd is similarly young, mixed-race, and slightly female-heavy. I note a solid showing of Eastern Europeans, which might be the Regina Spektor factor. Yet to call these people merely curious scenesters would also be an understatement. They have been locked in place for a while, standing firm to make sure they don’t lose their precious sliver of unobstructed view. There is an unmitigated air of excitement when Yael does make her ethereal entrance. “Oh, she’s so cute!” a few people squawk; having never set eyes on her before, there is something gratifying about seeing the enchanting voice physically manifest.

At the opening chords of “Paris,” the first track on her album, there are some delighted gasps of recognition at the song, which is sung in two of Naim’s native tongues, French and Hebrew (the latter, endearingly, with a French accent). Then, half way through, as she is nearing the French part of the refrain, she leans away from the mic — boldly, I think, for someone who has never played this city before — and invites the audience to finish the verse. They do.

“Thank you so much for coming!” she gasps afterwards, explaining in her heavy French accent how especially glad she is to be here after spending so many months holed up in the living room of her tiny Paris apartment with Donatien working on these songs “for an album we didn’t even know if it was going to be released.” With that, she launches into “Far Far,” an autobiographical account of a girl with music inside her that’s bursting to get out:

“How can you stay inside? / There’s a beautiful mess inside.”

This beautiful mess is what she and Donatien made in that Paris apartment. After a personally disappointing stab at recording with 2001’s In a Man’s Womb, Naim retreated from music, disheartened. Meeting Donatien has been the inspiration she needed. Listed as “Artistic Director” on the album, the multi-instrumentalist took her exquisitely simple compositions and added strings, horns, choirs, effects, even encouraging her to sing in Hebrew for the first time. When they were finished, they put it all back together, and what they have is a complicated, beautiful mess that sounds effortless.

Donatien, for his part, remains an invisible force in the music even in a live setting. He stays far behind her on stage, easy to miss physically, but he is there with every swell, twist and turn of the music.

Naim is no fool; she knows what brought the crowd here in the first place, and she takes great pleasure in teasing us, seated at her piano now and playfully tapping out the first three (now almost universally recognizable) notes of “New Soul,” then stopping as cheers erupt. “What is that song?” she asks gleefully. “I used to think I was an old soul,” Naim explains, adding “which means you’re really smart. But then, real life begins…”

Real life for Naim has changed irrevocably these past months. With “New Soul” being featured in Apple’s MacBook Air ad campaign before her name had ever been whispered in the US, it became her first top 40 US hit long before the album was released. The song tiptoes into your head before breaking into a whimsical waltz that subsides but never leaves.

In observing Naim in the flesh, you get all the proof you need that she is more than just one song. For one thing, her album doesn’t illustrate quite how powerful her voice is. At times boasting a soaring aria and others a bluesy roar, I’m reminded of Alanis Morrissette in her role as God in the movie Ðogma, with her earth-shattering voice (minus the exploding human heads). Also in her favor for staying power, Naim is delectably funny — whether she’s doing her “Dance du Canard” (duck dance, literally) or rhyming “mon coeur” and “fleur” with “for sure” — and charismatic, as she manages to keep wholly engaged a crowd that until this instant undoubtedly have had no real connection with her beyond a commercial and the internet.

She ends the set in this way, connected, having her now adoring fans take the place of her missing cellist by becoming her choir. After teaching the females in the room the aria, she instructs the males to take a lower pitch and we gladly oblige as her string section while she stands in the center of the stage again, leading us like a tiny fairy-conductor. Afterwards, those more-than-just-curious-scenesters and not-quite-fans-yet float out, probably deeply in love.

–Julia Clarke

Caryl Churchill’s Drunk Enough To Say I Love You? debuted off-Broadway in New York last week after a critically acclaimed run in London. A 45-minute piece in which the political relationship between Britain and America is played out as a lustful yet wholly unhealthy homosexual affair between a whiny Brit with dependency issues and an arrogant, domineering American, it sounded right up my metaphorical alley! Apparently I wasn’t drunk enough.

I’d say a lot of the general populous of the New York theater-going crowd likely shares some of my lefty liberalism when it comes to the perversely poisonous relationship between Bush and Blair, but Churchill’s manifestation of this perspective as a series of rapid-fire unfinished sentences was, ultimately, more irritating than politically affirming.

“Drunk enough to say I love you?” is America’s pickup line when we first meet the pair (Britain and America, Bush and Blair, whatever…) sharing a drink together on a couch. It is on this couch they stay, alternately luxuriously lounging, sprawling exhaustedly, caressing and bickering as their love blossoms along with their plans for global annihilation. Their plans include, but are not limited to: bombing Iraq, Iran, Korea, Israel; star wars; bioterrorism; waterboarding. At the beginning of each scene, the couch is suspended ever higher in the air, as the men get figuratively high on power, their plans taking them further and further away from reality. (The bitter truth here us that all these plans to bomb, maim, torture, kill, and conquer space have largely been laid in reality.)

This aspect of the play is great, and is exaggerated once in a while as one of the men drops a glass off the side of the couch and it slips silently away into darkness. In addition, the dysfunctional relationship does produce more than a few laughs as the men unravel, the Brit being reduced to a sniveling wreck at times when he provokes the American’s wrath by bringing into question the harshness of a biological warfare act on innocents civilians. The American, meanwhile, has gone from a charming smooth talker in a bar to a frothing, attention-seeking child who screeches: “You must love me! You MUST love me!” at the play’s end.

Nonetheless, the stylistic scripting of unfinished sentences was tiresome within minutes. Perhaps Churchill was attempting to create an illusion to Watergate-style recordings that cut in and out, or maybe her metaphor was simpler: The U.S. and England are so co-dependent they finish each other’s sentences. In any case, it was enough to drive one couple out of the theater withing ten minutes, leaving the rest to collectively whisper: “This is so weird!” between every scene (which is irksome in and of itself).

So, just in case you were considering paying $40 to see this play, I have generously compiled the following list of eight ways to better spend that money:

1) Donate it to Amnesty International so the good folks there can continue to aid the victims of people like the two men in this play.

2) Buy yourself a medium-priced single malt Scottish whiskey, say Bowmore, and drink it until you are intoxicated enough to tell someone you love them. Then tell them. It will be more satisfying.

3) Enjoy a couple of $15 martinis with a friend on one of the comfortable couches at the Algonquin Hotel. Speak to each other about politics in complete sentences. It will be more satisfying.

4) Buy a copy of the script from the box office, then have fun with your friends filling in the blanks at the end of every sentence.

5) Buy a ticket to George Packer’s Betrayed, also playing off-Broadway, which makes a much more genuine political statement and boasts complete sentences.

6) Donate the money to the National Institute for Literacy, and help others to learn how to complete sentences.

7) Keep the money and just watch The Colbert Report. The writer’s strike is over!

8) If you’ve already arrived in New York with the intention of seeing the show, try putting to test Rachel Ray’s theory that you can eat anywhere for $40 a day.

–Julia Clarke

“Do you view the current situation as an occupation or a liberation?”

A loaded question, you might say, when the “current situation” is the US presence in Iraq, and the inquiry is being posed to an Iraqi by a US officer. Bill Prescott, an information officer at the US Embassy in Baghdad, is interviewing Adnan, an Iraqi, for a position as an interpreter in the Green Zone. Oddly enough, they agree on the answer.

The two are central characters in Betrayed, a play by The New Yorker’s George Packer currently showing off-Broadway, which he adapted from an article he wrote for the magazine last year. In it, he exposes the disturbing plight of many Iraqi contractors who have risked their lives to work for the US government, making them targets for rebel forces, though they are offered no protection in return. The character of Prescott is based closely on Kirk Johnson, an Illinois native who three years ago at age 24 arrived at the Embassy. What appears as brash political rhetoric when we first meet him is later revealed to be sincere, yet naïve, patriotism. Prescott is here to rebuild Iraq, to improve it.

In this respect, his enthusiasm is matched only by that of Adnan, a gregarious 35-year-old Sunni who welcomed the US intervention in Iraq, even wished for it: “I was always fascinated with the English language.” But under Saddam Hussein, Adnan hadn’t even had the opportunity to get an education, so he worked selling books spread out on a blanket on the street. Meanwhile, he voraciously devoured anything written in English, particularly philosophy, adventure and porn (it is important, he explained, for the storyline to be interesting, so that you want to understand it). With the US invasion, Adnan saw his chance at freedom — freedom of thought and opportunity and expression and religion. Finally, he said, he would live in a place where you can speak anything you wish! This was indeed liberation.

In one act, using one set, Packer magnificently transports us between the original bombing campaign of March 2003 to the present day, from the hostile gates of the Green Zone, to the sterile offices of the Embassy, and from the dark, ravaged backstreets of Baghdad, to the deserted sanctuary of the Palestine Hotel in central Baghdad.

It is here at the hotel where Packer spoke to two disillusioned Iraqis about their experiences in early 2007, and it is here that his play begins. Adnan is waiting for his friend Laith in the now vacant hotel lobby. The men began working at the Embassy three years previously, with their friend Intisar, a zealous young Iraqi woman. Leading double lives to protect themselves and their loved ones, they concocted ludicrously complicated schemes to get to work, often involving multiple vehicles, to avoid being followed. After which, they stood in line in the blistering heat for hours waiting to pass security at the Green Zone. This line is a prime target for suicide bombers. During their job orientation of Green Zone and Red Zone procedures, Intisar asks, “What is the Red Zone?”

“Well,” comes the response, “it’s everything outside the Green Zone.”

“So,” ventures Intisar, “the Red Zone is Iraq.”

And here lies the answer to Prescott’s original question: the Red Zone is a place to escape from. Or, Iraq is a prison. Despite Prescott’s support, the three were denied upgraded passes that would allow them to skip the long lines. Intisar has since been murdered for her involvement (after which the remaining two have still been denied passes that would protect their lives), and Laith was fired for contacting rebel fighters under instruction from his supervisor. He has requested the meeting with Adnan in the hope that he can help him find asylum.

Today, Prescott and Adnan have changed their views about the nature of the allied presence, and still they remain in agreement: occupation. Prescott helps first Laith and then Adnan to escape Iraq, finding them asylum in Sweden (because for America to accept asylum seekers from Iraq “would be to admit that we have failed”). Liberation in the end comes not from Prescott’s arrival in Iraq, but by finding the Iraqis a passage out.

–Julia Clarke

“The Scots believe that life is pitiless and harsh, but that deep inside us all, there’s a churning sea of desire and optimism that’s usually suppressed by drink, stoicism and bravado.” — Justin Currie

In five acts, Shakespeare covered treason, murder, and supernatural evil as he recounted the fate of a Scottish king in his shortest tragedy MacBeth. Playwright and performer Russell Barr takes about sixty minutes to narrate the savagery of a more contemporary Scottish setting in his monologue Sisters, Such Devoted Sisters. The resulting performance is not for those of a nervous constitution.

The play was awarded Best Production when it debuted at the 2004 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and after three sold-out runs in London was brought to New York in January by actor Michael Imperioli for a run at Studio Dante, the space he owns with his wife Victoria. Those familiar with Imperioli’s most notable role (as Christopher Moltisanti in The Sopranos) will appreciate his attraction to the piece: like the HBO show, it offers a dark view of a controversial lifestyle that is simultaneously cataclysmic and comical.

Barr plays a transvestite; his alternate moniker is Bernice. The play takes place in his bedroom, a set with meticulously laid details leaving no doubt as to time and place: the Smiths records, Return of the Jedi curtains, rollout writing desk and gaudy floral wallpaper indicate early ’80s; a can of Scotland’s national soda Irn Bru, a box of Cadbury’s Roses and a Rampant Lion flag designate what dismal, rainy island this is.

As Bowie’s farewell to glam rock “Rebel Rebel” pipes in, Barr rises from bed dressed in drag: spiked boots, skin-tight rubber pants, fur coat, wig, the lot. By final curtain, he has bid farewell to his alter-ego too, having undressed, removed his makeup and wig. What’s left is, simply, a man. A bald man. In striped pajamas.

Most of Barr’s tales are of a sexually deviant nature, involving illicit transactions, poppers, prostitutes… They’re usually uproarious, if uncomfortable at times. We are sitting mere feet from the stage, and he is not afraid of sitting in audience member’s laps (though thankfully not mine) as he recounts a sexual conquest, or to physically demonstrate a conversation overheard between two women in bathroom stalls as they take care of their business. Of course, the more he undresses, the more we wonder if and when he will stop.

In typical Scottish fashion, Barr is self-deprecating in his tales of drug-fueled misdeeds, maintaining a stoic sense of humor despite his decaying world in such a way that only a Scot could. But periodically Barr freezes, quivering, seeming to seizure, before abruptly changing tack, and it’s clear that more sinister details have yet to emerge. Barr is not just here to make us laugh at the follies of Glasgow transvestites; he’s slowly revealing the brutality of the men he runs with like a pack, men that call themselves sisters, but who possess a cruelty that can’t be hidden behind makeup and wigs. Ultimately, the façade of their so-called sisterhood unravels into a vicious betrayal against one of their own.

–Julia Clarke

Conor McPherson’s Broadway production The Seafarer doesn’t inspire much sympathy for the devil, even when he’s pitted against four deadbeat alcoholics. For one thing, he doesn’t like music. His features are arranged a constant glare, with hooded brow shadowing steely eyes that thinly mask an undercurrent of seething wrath with cold austerity.

He arrives in the small Irish town of Baldoyle one Christmas Eve in the form of Mr. Lockhart (Ciaran Hinds), an overgrown brute of a man, seemingly ready to burst the seams of his brown suit at any moment. He’s here to settle an old debt; after beating Sharky Harkin (David Morse) at poker, he intends to take him back to Hell. Over the course of the evening, Lockhart never once breaks into a smile, though he frequently sneers; and while he gets drunk on homemade pochine, he takes pleasure in nothing.

The main character Sharky is one of those terminal failures at all of life’s attempts, from jobs to women; a pitiful character who mutely suffers his brother’s incessant put downs. Recently returned from another failed exploit, his current goal is to stay on the wagon, at which you know from the outset he will certainly fail. He is surrounded from the crack of dawn by drunks and drink, namely his brother Richard, played brilliantly by Jim Norton, whose recent blindness serves as no obstacle to his constant quest for booze. Richard’s friend Ivan should have gone home to his wife and kids days ago, but never sobers up enough to make a rational decision or find his glasses. The fourth drunk is Nicky, the last person in the world Sharky wants over at the house. Nicky, who lives with Sharky’s ex-wife, was invited over by the antagonizing Richard, and not coincidentally it is he who brings Lockhart to darken Sharky’s doorstep.

Christmas Eve at the Harkins’ is a rollicking slapstick display of Ivan and Richard blindly undermining Sharky’s attempt to stay sober by forcing as much alcohol as possible down their own gullets. The hilarity is punctuated by more poignant moments, as Sharky’s failings are pointed out to him again and again. But later, when Lockhart and Nicky arrive, the revelry takes a sinister turn.

In a haze of gullibility and drunken ignorance, Lockhart easily persuades the men to join him in a game of poker, revealing his true identity only to Sharky towards the end of the first act, in order that he may suffer his impending doom for the entire second act. As Sharky reels from the revelation, the others carouse in a state of complete indifference, perceiving Sharky’s stunned anguish as his typical spoilsport attitude and nothing more malign. Even Lockhart’s sly revelation of each man’s past sins only briefly dampens the spirit, and the solution to that, Richard surmises, is to put on one of the CDs Sharky received for Christmas. At the opening chords of John Martyn’s “Solid Air,” Lockhart grabs his skull with both hands, as if trying to force the noise back out, his face a twisted mess of agony. Too polite a host to ignore his guest’s obvious discomfort, Richard turns the music off, but the unasked question lingers: who doesn’t like music?

Here you may secretly hope for a Wizard of Oz-style ending, whereupon discovering his adversary’s achilles heel, Sharky blasts the Stones until Satan is reduced to a pile of ashes, but McPherson is too smart and insightful for that. He has created an all-powerful enemy, and an underdog, and only a conclusion where the underdog beats the devil at his own game will satisfy, even if the outcome is achieved through sheer Irish luck. This, in fact, results in a more touching resolution.

As the devil finally slouches off in defeat, Nicky heads back to his girlfriend and Ivan goes home to make amends to his wife, Richard and Sharky are for once alone, brothers together. It’s Christmas, there’s plenty to drink, and they can play John Martyn’s “Sweet Little Mystery” as loud as they want.

–Julia Clarke

If I expect anything of Kate Nash walking into her show at the Bowery, it is perhaps that in person she’ll be a beer-swilling, shot-chasing sass with a mouth like a cab driver. Amy Winehouse sans beehive. But when she settles behind her piano in front of a full house, she is shy, gracious, and appreciative. She takes sips from a large mug filled with tea, rather than slugs from a forty of OE. There are no visible tattoos or gauntness from constant partying, instead she looks rather, well, wholesome. I think I hear her say her dad is there with her. Either way, there are plenty of men old enough to be her dad in the crowd, anxiously awaiting her set.

I’ve obviously been a little quick to judge, but after two days of listening to songs off her debut album Made of Bricks with titles like “Shit Song” and “Dickhead” delivered in a thick Cockney accent, tea-sipping girlishness just didn’t spring to mind.

In fact, Nash has good reason to be shy: at 19, nobody had heard of her; at 20 she has a #1 album in the U.K. Only one day after her CD made its U.S. debut, she found herself in front of a sold out New York crowd, packed to the hilt with not just fans but their bothersome expectations! I’d be nervous too. And as someone who didn’t even aspire to be a musician two years ago, yet has sold over half a million records worldwide today, humility might also be a sensible mindset to adopt.

On Made of Bricks, Nash sings about fairly common situations with a frankness that at times verges on crudeness, and her candor translates into accessibility. One might cringe at the sense of familiarity felt as she recounts the temptation to goad her dumbass drunk boyfriend at a dinner party to the embarrassment of her friends in “Foundations.” It’s a little too easy to think, “Well who hasn’t done that?” Many of us have even ended the night same way: with someone else’s puke on our new shoes. And her ordinary appearance in person only enhances the universal message of her songs.

Nash’s tunes often take the form of a conversation or argument between two people. The lilting acoustic number “Birds” paints a sweetly awkward picture of a teenage boy trying to find the poetry to tell his girlfriend how much he loves her, coming up with “…birds can fly so high and they shit on your head / Yeah they almost fly into your eye and make you feel so scared / But when you look at them and you see they’re beautiful / That’s how I feel about you.” To which she responds, dumbly: “Whaaaaat?” Her dynamic vocals always lend themselves well to this imagined interplay, but the technique manifests itself even better in her live performance. Once an aspiring actress, it’s here on stage that the acting classes pay off, as she effortlessly injects so much meaning into a simple “What?” using deep inflection, and throwing in just the right amount of extra syllables.

While it may not be such a stretch for a 20-year-old to sing about awkward silences, public displays, and juvenile courting tactics, Nash’s maturity shows in her fierce keyboard playing. Virtually all of the songs on Made of Bricks are piano-driven, high-tempo, frenzied arrangements in a style not dissimilar to that of Regina Spektor. Nash is a tornado on the keys. She has been playing since childhood, and the songs are fast-paced and unpredictable, yet she never misses a single note or beat.

By the end of the encore (“Pumpkin Soup”), Nash is on her feet. To wild applause, she raises both hands above her head, and slams them down on the keys again and again, working her way down the scale with the full force of her whole body, her red hair perhaps deliberately obscuring her face. Then she pants timidly, “This has been really fun,” and walks off stage.

–Julia Clarke

Rather troublingly, I have managed to live my entire 26 years on this Earth without ever seeing Bob Dylan live, despite having found enormous inspiration in his music. Of all the artists I’d desire to see as much as Dylan, the rest of them have long since passed. So, when I saw his co-headlining tour with Elvis Costello was coming to Albany, I decided to head north for the evening to fulfill a couple of ambitions. I was particularly taken with the idea of seeing the two singular artists share a bill, as both make timeless music, and both have taken on new relevance for each subsequent generation. In this respect I was not disappointed.

Elvis Costello took the stage first, armed with just an acoustic guitar, and easily commandeered the 7000-person audience. Showcasing perfectly preserved vocals, and his trademark stark yet heavy-handed (in the best sense) guitar work, his songs are as powerful today as ever. Throw in his eloquent satire between songs, and there couldn’t have been a better prelude to Dylan.

Costello began the set with “(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes,” a song that started his recording career in 1977. Thirty years and almost as many albums later, Costello’s personal priorities may have changed, but the issues close to his heart are all too familiar. Now in his mid-50s, he lives in L.A. as a permanent U.S. resident, meaning he doesn’t get a vote (but, as he points out, he pays taxes). His infant twin sons, who turned 10 months old last Saturday night, are U.S. citizens, a fact that brings him a certain glee: “I quite like the sound of President Frank and Vice President Dexter.” He dined in the same L.A. restaurant as Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger last week, and he told us what he would have said if he had been able to get past the bodyguards: “You can never be president. But my son can.”

Love and politics have always been central to Costello’s music, and his performance showed that for all that has changed in his life and the world since his first release, much remains the same. Or, if you prefer: same song, different war. Though it was impressive to hear the classics “Veronica” and “Blue Chair,” it was songs like “Oliver’s Army,” “The River in Reverse,” and “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love & Understanding?” that spoke directly to our current state of affairs. It is as much his delivery as his songs that makes Costello consistently relevant; his performance is so rousing and his witty stage banter so sharp and articulate that his form of political protest comes across as persuasive and contemporary, not merely angry.

Costello played two new songs, “Sulphur to Sugar Cane” and the closer, “The Scarlet Tide,” both of which he co-wrote with T-Bone Burnett. The latter, which was sung by Alison Krauss for the Cold Mountain soundtrack, tells the story of a woman left a widow by war, who feels that questioning her country is the act of a traitor. “I would call that the act of a patriot,” Costello argued.

Though Costello’s political tone was welcomed by the crowd, the moments when he paid homage to his peers were among the most memorable. In addition to including a fragment of John Lennon’s “I Don’t Wanna Be a Soldier” during “Either Side of the Same Town,” the set’s crowning moment was easily “Radio Sweetheart,” the first song Costello ever recorded, which segued into a rendition of Van Morrison’s “Jackie Wilson Said (I’m in Heaven When You Smile).”

While Costello the Entertainer shone between songs, Dylan characteristically let his music do the talking, also delivering a spectacular show. He took to the stage dressed in a long black coat and black gaucho hat (which he later traded for a white version), his five-piece backing band adorned in crimson suits. He is still technically promoting Modern Times, and though he began the set with “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat,” he set the pace for the evening by transforming it into an almost unrecognizable blues and rockabilly number, in the same vein as the new album.

I’ve read and heard that Dylan performs better the closer he is to his Woodstock home, and seeing him live less than hour from there, I believe it. Adopting a wide-legged stance, he played electric guitar for the first three songs: after the opener came a countrified but fairly true version of “Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright” followed by “Watching the River Flow.” After that Dylan alternately growled and purred his way through “Ain’t Talkin,” “Rollin’ and Tumblin’,” “Things Have Changed,” and others, his gravelly voice backed by one of the best live bands on the road today. It’s easy to see why Dylan is the oldest artist in history to have debuted at #1 (with Modern Times): he is one cool cat. He prowled around his electric keyboard, he killed on his harmonica solos, and then pointedly brought us back to reality as he concluded with “Masters of War.”

Predictably, he didn’t interact with the audience, instead bringing the lights down between songs — presumably so we couldn’t steal his secret recipe. But when the band returned after a lengthy applause for the encore, he did finally break his silence to introduce the band and play “Thunder on the Mountain,” which I’d been anxiously awaiting all night. As the show ended with “All Along the Watchtower,” I was finally able to tear my gaze away and examine the crowd, which I happily noted contained a whole new generation of Dylan and Costello fans who could grow up to become anything. Maybe even President.

–Julia Clarke