Aaron Beamont: Wouldn't have it any other way!

With a newly-formed band and clear thrill for the stage, Aaron’s highly-textured instrumentation, introspective lyrics and animated presence hooked an impressively full Hotel Café audience on the 18th.

Knowing some of Aaron’s songs in advance of the show, it was gratifying to see a crowd of people who so visibly hung on each of his words: chuckling after all of the subtly humorous phrases, pausing at the intricate ones, wondering how it is possible for a musician’s hands to move so quickly along the piano and still leave him breath to sing, gently back-patting themselves for attending while crafting their “I knew him when...” stories in advance of the success that Aaron is so likely to achieve.

Between the ten songs from new album “nothing’s forever (Not Even Goodbye) and two well-chosen covers (Iron and Wine and Tom Waits), Aaron’s set-list wove a spectrum of many weights; from dreamy to vaudevillesque, to philosophical. Seaming this ambitious musical variety with notably witty stage banter (about purchasing goats for widows in emerging countries), Aaron painted himself as a romantic, a comedian and a modest philanthropist.

Somewhere in between these interludes, Aaron’s distinctive 20’s-inspired fashion, and the waltz-like tone of piano mixing with Celeste and bells, there was a charming formality to the show’s atmosphere; one that recalled simpler times when slower expectations let life and love unfold with the belief that a question can fulfill as much or more than an answer. Some of Aaron’s songs speak to this same notion. In “The Park Bench Song,” he reminds a girl that “Life is not a race, so take a breath-patience is the best way to arrive. In “Those Were the Days,” Aaron describes a time when “a word lasted forever and poverty made you rich with memories... [when] we could always remember the truth and forget the mistakes.”

After the show, many listeners noted that the sound Aaron created from his piano had the complexity that one would likely anticipate from several instruments. Equally impressive is how Aaron balances and aligns this intricate melodic texture with a lyrical density of the best kind. A clear appreciator of words, life and emotional intelligence, Aaron couples the insight that one might expect from someone many decades older with the optimism that is associated with someone early on their path. Such is exhibited in declarations like “risk aversion’s a lonely substitute for living. Will you ever learn it all takes place in the collisions.” From the song “The Time Will Come,” he adds “Its true, every leaf must fall for another to appear...love must blind us all or we’d never learn to hear...Its true, every sunrise is the front end of twilight...bad decisions are the way we get it right...so I’ll learn to love forgetting because it makes the world seem new.”

As a lover of both music and words, I felt alternately engaged and overwhelmed by a desire to drink every lyric and note throughout the show. Glad to have his CD in my possession for a closer examination later that night, I was struck by how the booklet of lyrics read like a work that could easily stand apart from the disc on its own literary merit. Following the words all the way through to the back cover with its statements of gratitude and then back to the beginning again, I read through slowly and kindly like I would a for novel whose end would require me to stop belonging to its characters and wisdom.

Visit Aaron’s beautiful music at www.myspace.com/aaronbeaumont and ask him how you can get your hands on a CD- it is worth clinging to.

Review by Bre Goldsmith (www.bregoldsmith.com