Concert Review: Jon Bryant Sings To The Sea At Mercury Lounge
Sometimes, I wonder if our hearts need to be figured to be understood. We try so hard to create a process and learn a strategy as to how we “work” as individuals, but Jon Bryant sings to the times when we can’t be figured or outwardly looking for a process obstructs finding it. He embodies when we are happy and sad, smart and dumb, loving and unloveable, or strong and weak, all at once. At Mercury Lounge, he lived in the spaces where life can’t be figured, but, somehow, is still lived.
“I’m Canadian,” he declared to the “blunt” New Yorkers that loved his high sensitivity. He makes feelings drip like watercolors on a canvas; they blot and blur with beauty that can’t be described even though they ignite causes and effects. Lyrically, he is not trying to be emotional as much as be observant of emotions; putting them in jars called verses and placing them in rhythmic cabinets he opens to stare into. The result is music that is the equivalent to magical realism in sound.
Bryant’s voice is high; pinching notes like he is closing balloons and letting them loose into the sky. Yet, that ability to reach the top his register makes his songs feel soothing. Tracks like, “Evening Sun,” “The Sea,” “Light,” and “Paradise” had the crowd silent. It was a hush that would have made heavy breathing sound like a vacuum going off. For the audience, Bryant’s music was something you absorbed like a sponge; giving you permission to be everything and nothing, all at once, which was my previous point. He sings to the moments when we stop trying to be and simply start being; letting ourselves love our partners or treating our “two-cent dreams” like the tiny luxuries that keep us going.
Jon Bryant’s is a unique concert because it is one to enjoy when you want to be quiet and pensive. He is like a sonic library, which to literary nerds like myself is a dream. Someone whom can turn the mute imagination of a good book into a vibrant soundscape that keeps you quiet and listening. In noisy New York, this peaceful Canadian was welcomed. For More Information On Jon Bryant Click Here.
