Husbands, Love Your Wives

Friday, August 8

In this gorgeous, lo-fi musical incarnation, Jamie Anne Spiess sings sparse, sentimental tunes that demonstrate just how much you can accomplish with a sweet voice and deliberate acoustic fingerpicking. Backed by a bevy of accomplished local musicians, including fellow minimalist Damien Jurado and Throw Me the Statue’s Scott Reitherman, it’s only a matter of time before Secretly Canadian, or perhaps Hardly Art, picks up Husbands, Love Your Wives and whisks Jaime Anne off into the great blue yonder of national indie fame. Her approach to songwriting reminds me of something I read in NYT Magazine about cooking perfect carne asada: most people ruin it by overseasoning, when all you really need is the right cut of meat, a hot grill, garlic, salt, and chile peppers. That’s it. Add anything else, and you’ve just ruined something that was pure and perfect already by saddling it with a whole bunch of extraneous flavors that detract from, rather than augment, the taste of the meat. Just as this minimalist philosophy often holds true in the culinary arts, it’s equally possible to overdo it when it comes to songwriting. Without all the fancy accoutrements, Husbands, Love Your Wives’ simple, crackly demo tracks manage to achieve all the cloying poignancy of a magnolia tree in bloom…or perhaps correctly-prepared carne asada sizzling on the grill.

Fri., Aug. 8, 8 p.m., 2008