Music Spectrum went on an unscheduled hiatus in recent months. This review is part of the “basement notebooks”—old reviews written by hand but only being posted online. Enjoy!
Mont Clare as an album makes Todd Martin seem less like the troubadour that he is. Seeing Martin perform on a small stage amid the hubbub of Summerfest in Milwaukee, underneath the imposing Hoan Bridge (I-794), he brought Mont Clare and his other songs to life. Where Mont Clare seemed sleepy at first, Martin woke it up playing live, performing solo on guitar and looping pedal effects. His set brought out the energy of the songs, guitar, rhythms, and emotions.
I had enjoyed 2005’s Time for Good (review), especially in the more driving songs which apparently echo more about Martin’s stage presence—easy-going, energetic, confident, experimental. At Summerfest, he plowed ahead in front of a small crowd, drowning out the reverberating sounds from nearby larger stages.
Martin develops a pretty deep sound with the pedals at his feet as he works around a country-influenced sound just barely rocking out ahead of the folk sounds of Peter Mulvey, David Wilcox, and Ellis Paul. Ellis Paul especially shows up in the sound of “Punchline” from Time for Good).
When Martin covered Ryan Adams’ “Oh My Sweet Carolina,” he gave it a much more sweet disposition than that bad boy Adams—like discovering the tender heart in early Replacements, Paul Westerberg-penned ballads.
When he played “Save Myself” (Time for Good), it was apparent that this is still Martin’s strongest song to date in terms of lyrics, riff, melody, and rhythm.
What sells all of his songs, though, is Martin’s stage presence—his way of telling stories, developing the sound for each song, capturing attention of an audience surrounded by distractions, and using humor to handling those distractions himself. Near the stage was a vendor selling trinkets and souvenirs, trying to catch people’s attention by blowing on a toy horn, punctuating Martin’s songs with a raspy, dying duck sound. Martin simply said, “Man, that guy. . . .” And we all knew what he meant, turning our attention all the more to the troubadour on stage.
Todd Martin
Operation Champion (label)
