Pitchfork

Oakland sextet Subtle-- playing here as a quintet, minus Dax Pierson-- brought its unique and wildly inventive brand of hip-hop surrealism to Chicago's Metro, opening a sold out show for TV on the Radio. Like some postmodern prestidigitator, emcee Doseone-- whose ringmaster/musketeer/aristocrat/whatever getup apparently ate a cassette tape backstage and left its crimped contents dangling around the man's neck-- let forth varied verbal flurries and hopped from prop to prop almost as quickly as the music skipped from idea to idea. He settled on a zebra-striped skull perched atop a busted bust resting on a pedestal, did his best alas-poor-Yurik, then abruptly reached inside and flung the contents across the audience, unleashing a clattering rain of-- say what-- plastic forks!?

Despite desultory hysterics like this, there's something extremely sly and calculated about Dose-- who's blessed with, among other things, a comedian's sense of timing (naturally, he told jokes too). Taken altogether it leaves one with the fun notion that by entertaining every random thought that enters the mind, patterns-- sometimes even profound ones-- invariably emerge.

The uninitiated might well have been flummoxed by the whole schizophrenic affair, but those willing to suspend disbelief for 45 minutes witnessed a born showman, shimmying somewhere between left field and oblivion, and beckoning the rest of us to join him there.

Subtle's stretch opening for TVotR continues through March 25.

















Subtle:

03-13 Chicago, IL - Metro *
03-14 Minneapolis, MN - First Avenue *
03-15 Minneapolis, MN - First Avenue *
03-16 Madison, WI - Orpheum Theatre *
03-17 Kansas City, MO - Harrah's Voodoo Lounge *
03-20 Denver, CO - Ogden Theatre *
03-21 Salt Lake City, UT - Urban Lounge *
03-23 Portland, OR - Roseland Theatre *
03-24 Vancouver, British Columbia - Commodore Ballroom *
03-25 Seattle, WA - Moore Theatre *

* with TV on the Radio