Butch Walker steps to the fore with dramatic flair
Butch Walker has built an impressive resume from his production work for such marquee pop acts as Avril Lavigne and Pink. But the Atlanta native's performance at Axis Friday night proved his talent as a singer, musician, and frontman.
At Axis, the former Marvelous 3 leader mixed an equal number of new songs from his third album, ``The Rise and Fall of Butch Walker and the Let's Go Out Tonites," and older favorites, such as a gorgeous, aching ``Mix Tape," from 2004's ``Letters." He revived M3's ``Indie Queen" and dedicated the song to his former bandmates.
Wherever he roamed during the inspired 90-minute performance, Walker keenly inhabited every song with an A- list actor's flair.
He twitched through amped opener ``Hot Girls in Good Moods" and added a snarky, vaudevillian vocal to ``Too Famous." For the stellar , poppy ``Maybe," on which Walker switched from electric to acoustic guitar, his voice was pleading and urgent, his seeming emotional attachment Oscar-worthy.
His new band, the Let's Go Out Tonites, was superb, particularly guitarist Michael Chislett, whose leads -- which ranged from simply classic to wildly experimental -- were stunningly succinct.
Walker performed a mellow trio of songs -- ``We're All Going Down," ``Dominoes," and ``Joan" -- solo on piano. But with the band in tow, Walker ended the set with a passionate ``Best Thing You Never Had," during which he climbed onto the bass drum, thrashing chords from an acoustic guitar and wailing to the gods, before standing down and dropping to his knees. Astonishingly, he pulled off such faux drama without looking cheesy.
Even more remarkable was that he matched such high jinks with a fabulous encore that switched to a dance beat for a fun , snazzy cover of Gnarls Barkley's ``Crazy" and a, well, crazy ``Lights Out," which he performed standing commandingly among the audience, quite the singer-musician auteur.
Support came from two Northeast bands: Boston emo rockers Boys Like Girls and Portland , Maine, power pop troupe As Fast As, each of which played a perky set of pop rock that was as catchy as flypaper in a heat wave.
