Kitty Daisy and Lewis @ Kung Fu Necktie, 8/5

POSTED: Thursday, August 6, 2009, 8:30 PM

Filed Under: Music Show

photos by K. Ross Hoffman

Kitty Daisy and Lewis

Endearingly familial bar-trading battle

There was a blood-red full moon over Philadelphia last night, and there might just have been a bit of hoodoo magic wafting through the air at Kung Fu Necktie, as a pair of doe-eyed British sisters in lacy black dresses, glossy bouffants and lavish eye-makeup took the stage, as though the room was built for them, and launched into an a cappella rendition of Jesse Powell's wryly off-color 'Walk Right In, Walk Right Out,' kicking off a fiery, barnstorming set that rocked the joint to its knees and then some. This family band ' the girls were soon joined by their equally stylish bro, mum and dad ' don't simply hearken back to the days when rock 'n' roll, r 'n' b, swing, country, western (yep, two different things) and juke joint blues hadn't yet gone their separate ways but were still all muddling about together ' they drag those days kicking and howling right back into the present, and it's an exhaustive, exhilarating experience.

Here's the skinny: Kitty (16), Daisy (21) and Lewis Durham (19), crackerjack multi-instrumentalists all, busted outta Kentish Town last year with a self-titled debut which was the first album in over fifty years to be issued on 78rpm 10' vinyl, cut by Lewis himself in the family's home studio (yes, it's also available at 33rpm, and however fast CDs and MP3s go ' it'll be out here at the end of the month on DH/Mercer Street records.) The album's a righteous blast from top to bottom ' a passel of covers and a few dead-ringer originals ' and a truly uncanny evocation of its sources (the trio's zealous devotion to vintage recording techniques certainly pays off, but even that can't account for the eerie throwback resonance of the sisters' singing voices.)

Lemon Treasures

Great as it is, though, the record seems almost like a mere curiosity in comparison to the powerful testament of KD&L's live show. Their parents may tag along to hold down the rhythm section ' Graeme (a noted mastering engineer) on rhythm guitar and Ingrid Weiss (former drummer for the Raincoats!) on stand-up bass ' but they mostly just hang back and let the kids run the show. One song might feature the gritty-voiced Kitty kicking out a mean blues harp solo between choruses while mild-mannered, pompadoured Lewis rips up a rockabilly riff on his hollow-bodied Harmony and Daisy, sitting side-saddle on the drum stool, wails mercilessly on a single snare drum, her heels flying up as she bangs away. But the next number might find them in a whole new configuration: an accordion and a pair of dueling banjos for bit of western swing; djembe, ukulele and homemade lapsteel for a mid-set diversion into Hawaiian hula music. When they invited the ridiculously pedigreed Jamaican trumpeter Tan Tan, who looked old enough to be their grandfather (but is probably more like a kindly older neighbor) to join them for some rootsy ska, Kitty even pulled a trombone out of somewhere to join him on the coda.

And so it went. I was dancing too hard to pay all that much attention to the songs, but they played 'Blue Moon Of Kentucky' and 'Got My Mojo Working' and Canned Heat's 'Going Up The Country' and Louis Prima's 'Buona Sera Signorina' (fake-out ballad intro segueing into red-hot stomp.) And their second encore (the hard-clapping, foot-stomping sweaty crowd would barely allow them to leave the stage for a minute ' not that there was anywhere for them to go) was an extended boogie-woogie piano jam that featured really the only breach in the siblings' uncanny professionalism; an endearingly familial bar-trading battle between the virtuosic show-off Lewis on keys and a somewhat flustered Kitty, his lil sis, on an apparently malfunctioning guitar, which ended when she responded to a particularly flashy run of trills by flashing her brother the bird. (The family that plays together, you know')

It's hard to imagine a better venue for these cats to play than the intimate, retro-vibed KFN, with its ruby-dim ambience and kitsch exotica decor. It's hard to imagine a worse place for them than half-empty, daylit stadiums opening up for the least enthusiasm-generating rock stars of this decade ' but that's exactly what they've been doing for the bulk of this, their first American jaunt; doggedly attempting to hep early-arriving Coldplay audiences to the jive. This was one of only a very few mid-tour small-room headling gigs. So we got lucky this time, Philly. Fingers crossed, we'll be this lucky again: the Durhams should return, or so they promised after the show, sometime around late October. If even a tenth of the excitement they generated last night works its way into local consciousness over the next two months, they're gonna need a bigger venue for darn sure, and it's gonna be a party for the ages ' don't forget your dancing shoes!

Philly's own Lemon Treasures opened the show in sweetly ditzy fashion with a mix of titters and titillation, offering semi-novelty covers (the best being Sam the Sham's 'Little Red Riding Hood'), cutesily comic originals, and somewhat bumbling burlesque shenanigans. The duo (plus-drummer) have an amateurish charm and a decent performance concept, but they're only halfway convincing as either performers or musicians: primary vamp Lisa Vega hasn't quite got the conviction to back up her pep (though she does have the outfit down), while guitarist Elizabeth Knauss might want to replace her toneless electric with something a bit more cabaret-style (a ukelele would do nicely.) It should be stated, however, that Vega made up for any deficiencies in on-stage swagger during the headliners' set, when she enthusiastically lead the way on the dancefloor along with her nattily sideburned partner.

Kittyfan

Posted 2009-08-13 09:40:29

Hi, Just check their official blog out!



http://kittydaisynlewis.blogspot.com/



Wow u rock! I love u! They are juz outta the world!



<3

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Featuring everything from event roundups to concert reviews and sex talk, City Paper's Critical Mass is a space for off-the-wall coverage of Philly's A&E scene.

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