Also this issue:

Bad Is Good
There’s a reason for the sudden success of The Bad Plus.
-Nate Chinen

Minister of Information
This is Al Jourgensen’s United States of Whatever.
-A.D. Amorosi

suitespot
Peter Burwasser on Classical
-Peter Burwasser

Litmus Test
Clayton the Chemist-Sean O’Neal

The Mercury Program
-Paul Burress

Philomel
-Peter Burwasser

My Morning Jacket
-Brian Howard

Cousteau
-Nicole Pensiero

May 1- 7, 2003

musicpicks

Strawbs

From its early days as the Strawberry Hill Boys, to its brief tenures with Sandy Denny and Rick Wakeman, Britain’s Strawbs always managed to straddle the line between their folk roots and artsy prog-rock. By the early ’80s the band had fizzled out, with founding member Dave Cousins becoming the manager of a slew of British radio stations, and enjoying the occasional pub gig with fellow Strawb alum Brian Willoughby. A broken wrist led to a fill-in appearance by guitar virtuoso Dave Lambert (Willoughby’s predecessor in the band, and by then a ski instructor in Switzerland) and the new Strawbs were launched, creating music that Cousins says is "extraordinarily simple but also extraordinarily complex."

"People now hear the songs as they were written, not as they were recorded," says the 58-year-old Cousins, citing 1973’s "Hero and Heroine" as an example: "It ended up recorded as this big, gothic rock song but it started out as a simple little jig."

More than 15 years after its last (very limited) U.S. tour, the Strawbs are wooing their Stateside audience, doing 34 shows in two weeks. "The sound we make is surprisingly huge," says Cousins. "It’s really quite lovely how it’s all come ’round."

Sun., May 4, 6 and 8:30 p.m. and Sat., May 10, 7 and 10 p.m., $20, Tin Angel, 20 S. Second St., 215-928-0978.

—Nicole Pensiero