A deep intimacy carried the night as Northcote and Jenny Owen Youngs performed at New York’s Cafe Wha?
This cramped basement venue nestled in Greenwich Village proved to be a deeply appropriate venue for the Sept. 30 performance.
The bold roar of Northcote, Canadian singer-songwriter Matthew Daniel Goud’s grizzled voice and Great Plains-navigating steel-string guitar accompaniment dominated the first half of the evening, offering a masterful painting of the hardships and victories of life and love in all its forms.
Between songs, Goud shared stories of his family’s agrarian roots in Saskatchewan and his grandfather’s ties to American highways as a longtime truck driver from Wyoming.
Tough and Chubbs were the stump names of the generation before him, Goud confessed onstage.
Then, the coastal Maine-based Jenny Owen Youngs took over the stage, her gentler, soulful presence and even softer nylon-string guitar drawing attention with a catalog of thoughtful, eloquent confessions of love, coming of age and parenthood.
“Most of the hard drive has been deleted without my consent,” Youngs joked, sharing how her mind now tends to wander after having her child.
Youngs’ stage banter has likely been sharpened even further by years behind the microphone recording podcasts, specifically a 10-year analysis of Buffy the Vampire Slayer called Buffering.
During this short tour together, Goud and Youngs offer a dynamic range that provides a deeply fulfilling and enriching experience.
This strength through contrast was made whole as Youngs joined Goud onstage for a moving rendition of Stephin Merritt’s “The Book of Love,” a song whose origins are deeply tied to a neighborhood blocks from where the two performed the duet.
It is difficult not to imagine the two rehearsing the duet while sharing shifts driving a rental car through a landscape quickly shifting from late summer to autumn.
The moment also offered a temporary renewal of Chuck Ragan’s folk-centered Revival Tour, of which both artists are alumni.
The intimate character of the venue, a former horse stable and garage basement that has long served as one of the city’s culturally significant “basket houses,” provided ideal conditions for this creative engagement, reflecting the sincerity and forthrightness of both artists’ voices.
To support his new album, To Cherish, Goud told the audience that this string of shows along the East Coast and Midwest marks his first time returning to the United States for a formal tour in nearly a decade.
The new album, released this summer through the independent German label Make My Day Records, offers another chapter of Goud’s keen ability to pen thoughtful, powerfully unfeigned ballads that embolden listeners to sing along in classic punk-rock tradition.
Youngs tours in support of her recently expanded 2003 album Avalanche, released through the North Carolina-based Yep Roc Records.
The undertaking is a carefully produced collection of Youngs’ tender and introspective songwriting.
That same year, Youngs also released the outstanding instrumental album OFFAIR: From the Forest Floor alongside John Mark Nelson. The project offers a musical depiction of a full day and night spent immersed in the wilderness.
The album is one part of the larger OFFAIR Records project, which calls on musicians from pop and alternative music to explore instrumental, ambient or experimental styles completely separate from their primary traditions.
After both sets came to an end and the room lights turned on, both artists stayed behind to chat with fans, share stories and foster community.
Stories of past shows, hockey and road trips were shared as the evening came to a close.
Although the two may have very different voices, it is clear that both Goud and Youngs are cut from the same cloth, delivering a unified message: Stay healthy, stay honest and boldly remain yourself.
