David Pajo (under his own name as well as notable variations of M, Aerial M and Papa M) has explored a surprisingly wide range of musical styles within a series of known bands and lesser-known acts in the past 30 years.
His influence has been far reaching and there is a clear, direct musical lineage to his support acts tonight (8 September) at Adelaide's Crown & Anchor Hotel.Elizabeth Prophet (a band) seemingly improvise a performance of meandering drones that recall an orchestral tune up, sounding somewhere between the Dirty Three or The Necks before a gradual transformation into something reminiscent of Neil Young's 'Dead Man' soundtrack.
A Broken Sail's performance is unfortunately less interesting, a derivative representation of a style of music categorised as post-rock of which David Pajo via Slint has been cited as one of the progenitors.
After the set up by the preceding support acts, those hoping for a further serving of post-rock get something else. "I'm David Pajo," he announces then opens his arms to indicate the stage around him, "and we are Papa M."
'World's Greatest Sin', 'Mountains Have Ears' and 'Ten More Days' are delivered in a country-folk style in which he continues, covering friend and collaborator Will Oldham's 'Ohio River Boat Song' apologetically and self-deprecating commenting beforehand that he is going to butcher it.
There is a slight although endearing awkwardness to the between-song banter and the set as a whole is very casual; at one point Pajo apologises to the audience for having had to pay to see a man tune his guitar.
He comments: "I'm just riffing," and performs a request for 'Over Jordan' giving the false impression that he might be diverting from the planned set list.
Among his own songs and covers as varied as Bob Dylan's 'Nobody 'Cept You' and The Misfits' 'Hybrid Moments' (incidentally both were outtakes that were belatedly released), there are occasional anecdotes from his long and varied career working with bands Slint, Tortoise and Royal Trux, but he jokes he can't comment on Zwan because he might get sued.
After having earlier given the impression he might not be able to perform songs from the 'Live From A Shark Cage' album, he clarifies: "I'm going to try some 'Shark Cage' songs," and plays the uplifting 'Arundel' segueing into 'Roadrunner' before the increasingly jarring but meditative clockwork-like 'I Am Not Lonely With Cricket'.
This is perhaps the closest we get to Pajo's beginnings in Slint, the epic set closer is fitting in that it is representative of that band's lesser abrasive material and while the experimental-effected guitars are a contrast to the earlier folk-singer vibe it is equally an instrumental summation of that earlier portion of the set.
