Supporting their second album release, titled only as Miles Nielsen Presents The Rusted Hearts, Miles Nielsen and his band put on a thoroughly entertaining show Friday evening - for a sizable crowd of enamored fans inside the Fire Pit Bar at Milwaukee's Potawatomi Casino.
Through solid live musicianship, coupled with the room's fantastic acoustics, the band ran amok with improvised solos and rousing extended jam renditions of their repertoire - the center stage clarinet solo Adam Plamann took in the song "Wine", being the stand out moment of the night. Nielsen, too, was in top form, offering humorous little anecdotes between songs and playful back and forths with his fans, leaving you hard pressed to find anyone who would have left there after the set feeling unfulfilled. Miles Nielsen and The Rusted Hearts not only know exactly what it takes to put on an extraordinary show - they also know just how to pull it off proper! They feed on their fans' excitement, catch it, and they throw it back at them with as much vim and vigor as they can muster, and with the relentless drive and enthusiasm to keep it up from first song to the last. The crowd did their best to wear them out, demanding encore after encore - and to their enjoyment, the band was much obliged to accommodate them.
Nielsen, as a performer, shows the sincerest interest in his audience. He doesn't stand indifferently strumming his guitar and just arrogantly staring off at nothing. He doesn't put himself in a holier place than the rest of us, he doesn't seem aloof, introverted or bored in what he's doing. No, he and his band are fully there in mind and body - right there with every person in their audience. He'll take a shot with them between numbers, an arm holding a beer will reach up out of the crowd and he'll toast it; he'll let you sing along - hell, he'll let you sing the whole damn chorus yourself a couple times; and not once does the show fall into mayhem, or does the performance suffer. Nielsen and his crew never get distracted or lose direction, but they can somehow manage to simultaneously throw a party while putting on a fantastic show, all in perfect balance, and at no expense to the quality of their craft.
The band's newest album is no slouch either, though even with its strength, it still pales in comparison to what they're capable of on stage. No recorded media can reproduce the fervent vitality they offer live, but if the Rusted Hearts CD is the best you can get your hands on - rest assured it's as close as you could get to being there.
Where 2009's Miles had some painfully banal tracks on it (but still managed to be semi-decent first effort), Rusted Hearts shows the band expanding their sound and style both sonically and creatively. They stretch out a little on this outing, often times leaving the constraints of keeping things simple much less a concern. Nielsen sings a little looser in these new compositions, letting his method of exaggerated enunciation and over pronounced vowels hang and twist, almost lewdly, within the songs. It adds a fresh approach to his vocals, and does everything to save the day with even his more contrived lyrics - as in "Dear Kentucky (You're Killing Me)" - the one and only eye roller on an otherwise perfectly solid album.
Deceptively, "Baby Blue" follows up from that in the same kind of humdrum vein, but give it a minute - exactly one minute and nine seconds, actually - and it'll start kicking your ass. It's a uniquely composed song, because you don't really expect it to veer off into the abstract how it does. Guitarist Daniel McMahon floats up an open chord haze and the song starts climbing, plateaus, levels out on an even refrain and disappears into a hesitant pause. The song finishes off from there in its original form, landing smoothly with its repeating chorus. Very nicely done on the recording, but completely breathtaking in its live rendition.
The song "Cold War" is classically representative of The Rusted Hearts' standard fair, and reminiscent of just about everything that was on Miles, except the band seems to have a renewed interest in what they're doing - though admittedly, that could just be the afterglow of their performance of it last night still hanging in the psyche. It becomes apparent when watching them perform that there is, in fact, no ennui among the group's personnel. Each band member is dedicated to laying each and every note of every song with the utmost perfection. Even when Nielsen sings his more trite lyrical overtures ("Gravity Girl"), you can't help but notice that every word he sings, to him, is of primary importance, and that totally belies the song's overly formulaic presentation. It makes you wonder - is it truly a mundane message, or are you just choosing to be bored by it? Nielsen relays everything so passionately that even the live versions of his weaker songs are given new life and reception, and the already strong ones are made memorable in a whole new way.
Speaking to that, a starkly starting, and later erupting, recreation of "The Crown" pops up on the new album, serving to keep alive in the above mentioned way, Nielsen's work on Miles. It states itself more like a second installment of the first version's theme, however, and not as a re-recording or re-mix of any kind - suggesting that perhaps this could be a recurring title on future releases? This is Miles Nielsen building a legacy, and thoroughly constructing his catalogue with the completist type fan in mind.
The Rusted Hearts album shows marked departure from every weakness that Miles had, and it wholly expands on every strength, everything you wished they would have done more with on their first release. Nielsen's messages are more engrossing and thought provoking here. He always demonstrated a careful skill with interesting and illustrative metaphors, but the writing on this latest work has an organic, unconcerned emotion behind it - like he's no longer interested in following a path of convention, and more willing to let himself wander onto paths less traveled. He may have a rusted heart, but his mind for the creative is starting to shine - and it's getting increasingly sharper.
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