There’s something about a cold, clear night that makes the stars shine brighter than any menagerie of city lights ever could. St. Paul and the Broken Bones frontman Paul Janeway acknowledged the cooler weather on Thursday evening, but his Birmingham-based band burned hot during the 90-minute set at Jannus Live.
“I know this is is a little cold for y’all over here,” Janeway said. “But trust us, you don’t wanna go any further north than this.”
Janeway and his band buoyed by Tennessee Rhodes God Al Gamble know a thing or two about upward movement; in fact, Janeway & co. seem to be the ones reaching for the heavens these days. The outfit hinted at their ambitions during a March 2017 Jannus set supporting its 2017 sophomore album, Sea of Noise, but made its lofty goals loud and clear on this year’s Young Sick Camellia, the first of what Janeway has called a trilogy of albums that the band will make with hip-hop and pop producer Jack Splash.
Slideshow: Check out St. Paul and the Broken Bones and Seratones at Jannus Live
Fans who got their hands on the band’s debut (2014’s Half The City) — or whose ears caught the sound of Janeway’s distinctive, soulful vocal (and then caught sight of his pasty, banker-meets-math-teacher appearance) — have long known that the songwriter possesses one of the most unique voices and personas in music, but Janeway turned inward for Camellia, which he describes as a very personal and self-reflective record.
Eschewing pretty much everything the Broken Bones played during its last Jannus set, Janeway walked onstage in a sequined black cloak and immediately leaned into a seven-minute, groove-heavy version of “LivWithOutU” from Camellia. He and the band were pretty much loose by the next cut (Sea of Noise highlight “Flow with It”), but the not-so-veiled politics behind “All I Ever Wonder” then proceeded to seemingly go over the heads of an audience more interested in moving, shaking and shimmying to the midtempo, horn and bass-driven songs Saint Paul and the Broken Bones laid out during the 15-song performance.
While lyrical fodder didn’t land on anyone’s radar on Thursday, the band’s musical muscle shone, especially on an extended instrumental break where Gamble turned up the juice on a Leslie that sent billowy puffs of fog across his section of the stage.
The next song, “Mr. Invisible,” opened with a triggered MPC sample and found Kevin Leon using a drum pad on the first verse before moving back to his kit. The cut is one of the strangest from Camellia, but it still wears the deep, stinky odor that permeates the best of the band’s output. For its Thursday performance of it, Janeway and his band stretched out and then transitioned seamlessly into a safer Camellia cut, “Convex.” The Broken Bones stayed in the box for a funky run through “GotItBad,” but then dipped back into the moon dust for a deeply soulful take on “Apollo.”
Janeway is a mostly-unhinged, powerful singer who seems to hold nothing back in the live setting, but he did right by Camellia during a quiet, set-closing take on “Bruised Fruit.” On the album, Janeway can be heard crying on the song, but he avoided tearing up onstage in St. Petersburg by removing his glasses and wiping sweat from his sweaty, round face.
A three-song encore appeased fans looking for familiarity (“Call Me” from the band’s 2014 debut is a set-staple), but the whole of the performance hinted at an ambiguous future that manifested itself in real life when Janeway pulled an oversized blue tarp onstage and began to writher underneath it during “Broken Bones & Pocket Change.” The cut is another one of the band’s most recognizable offerings; it’s a song that finds Janeway channeling Otis Redding with arresting results. But cloaked beneath the tarp, all fans were left with was Janeway’s voice and the sound of a seven-piece band ready to launch that vocal into whatever level of the atmosphere it needed to touch.
The novelty of Janeway’s look is old news by now, and fans have come to expect the power of his incredibly forceful performance. But St. Paul has started to hint at a new direction on Camellia, and if there’s anything Thursday night’s show proved, it’s that the sky truly is the limit with him at the controls.
Check out the setlist and listen to songs from the show below. Visit photos.cltampa.com to see pictures from the show.
Setlist
LivWithOutU
Flow with It (You Got Me Feeling Like)
All I Ever Wonder
Like A Mighty River
Grass Is Greener
(Instrumental Break)
Mr. Invisible
Convex
NASA
Got It Bad
Apollo
Bruised Fruit
—
Sanctify
Call Me
Broken Bones & Pocket Change
This article appears in Dec 6-13, 2018.