ZAMMUTO

In the feedback I've been getting from the EP I released last month, one comment I've gotten somewhat frequently is that it sounds very inspired by The Books - which is very true, as a few of their albums have been staples of my own musical diet for this past year.

Last night at the MFA I got to see the man who was the main creative force behind The Books, Nick Zammuto, with his new project who are calling themselves Zammuto.  They came out with their debut album earlier this year and I was initially pretty disappointed by it, simply because it was not The Books.  Although it's grown on me since then - this album does not compare to this group's live performance.  Everything you hear on the album they are able to effectively recreate live in a way that sounds very in the moment and organic, while often remaining synced with video that Nick was controlling.

While the first half of the set consisted of tunes from their debut album, the later half was much more unpredictable and grabbed me much more.  They played a couple of covers ("Don't Let it Bring You Down" by Neil Young and "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover" by Paul Simon) and they also played three songs by the Books ("That Right Ain't Shit", "Smells Like Content", and "Classy Penguin") which all sounded amazing in this more live instrument environment   The later of these was the most emotionally moving for me since it was so personal - the video component of it was composed entirely of his old family/home videos.  What made this even more cool was Nick and Matt (the bass player who is Nick's brother) had their parents and family in the audience (whose home videos were being used).

Here's The Books version of that tune (when they play it now the video is more linked with what is going on in the music and some different clips - but you'll get the idea):

What was perhaps the most exiting part of the show was the new songs they played that were not on the album in which the video played a more integral component and that greatly contrasted with the songs on the self-titled debut.  The best way I can describe the new tunes they played is it sounded like a more focused, further developed, and more live version of The Books.  The highlight of these (and the whole show for that matter) was a song in which Nick exclusively sampled an instructional video of how to play the auto-harp in which the teacher was showing how to play the Battle Hymn of the Republic.  I can not use words to adequately describe how the song develops from there nor find a decent enough video on youtube of them playing it - but I hope that you can see and hear it for yourself in the near future.  

I left this show feeling a happiness that I have not felt from a show in a really long time.  Seeing this last night reminded me of why I make music and further inspired me to make music in this direction.  And to make things better - this morning when I got back to RI, I found my A Dot in Time box set in the mail (a collection of everything The Books have ever done on vinyl, video DVD, and on MP3 on a cassette shaped flash drive).  So this has pretty much been Zammuto Christmas for me.  Needless to say I strongly recommend checking The Books and Zammuto out and am really looking forward to what is coming next from Nick.