Séan Barna, Andrew Grossman, Julianna
DC9, Washington DC, May 15, 2023
I’ve followed the career of
Séan Barna for some time; he has roots in the DC metro area and we have mutual friends, and I would periodically speak to him when we saw each other at clubs. The only time I'd ever seen him as a performer was
back in 2018 at the DC pizzeria, Comet Ping Pong, famously controversial for the QAnon conspiracy theories. He was relatively new in his recording career at that point; he had one minor full-length and an EP,
Cissy, which had caught the ear of Adam Duritz of Counting Crows and who promoted his work to a broader audience.
Barna was a good performer, even a bit rough around the edges with an awkward mix of queer glam aesthetics, confessional folk-rock songwriting, and a fondness for grand cathartic choruses. The strongest comparison I had at that moment as performer was to Mike Scott of the Waterboys, although the Waterboys veered toward pre-Christian pagan and Arcadian imagery, and Barna’s songwriting topics circle around nightclub debauchery and subsequent regrets.
A lot of things have happened since 2018, the pandemic just one of them. In Barna’s life, he became far more open about his sexuality (he was very queer on stage but not out to his parents), he moved to Los Angeles and Brooklyn, his friendship with Duritz deepened to a significant musical relationship, and he signed to Kill Rock Stars. The pandemic and other matters combined to delay the release of his full-length on KRS, however, until just this past week.
An Evening at Macri Park shows the growth in his songwriting, as well as his increased sense of theatricality and grandeur. Macri Park is a gay bar in Brooklyn famous for its drag nights, and the album is a set of unconnected vignettes about the lives and loves of the characters Barna has met (“Sleeping With Strangers”, “Benjamin Whishaw Smiled”’) along with some heartfelt personal tales of loss (specifically “The Lonely,” about the death of his brother, who was hit by a car right as Barna was beginning to understand his own sexuality).
Barna played DC9 last night with a full band, including some members whom I know from other bands in the DC-area scene, notably
powerhouse singer Margot MacDonald, who also performs with The North Country and other ensembles, along with her own artistically overdubbed vocal pieces. Barna had an electric guitarist and bassist, keyboard, drummer, and MacDonald on duets and additional keys. He himself mostly plays acoustic guitar, but plays with raucous rock energy, along with a sense of camp and the fervent desire to connect with an audience. Interspersing his set with lengthy sidenotes about touring as a very gay man opening for the Counting Crows “somewhere in middle America,” leering in-jokes to past boyfriends, and heartfelt appeals to protect queer and trans kids, he also walked around the audience hugging people of all genders, flirting and singing all the while. He also talked thoughtfully about queer clubs and their role as safe spaces from the outside world, but their inability to protect their clientele from whatever personal demons they carry with them.
Barna has been vocal about the fact that he knows his music doesn’t appeal to a traditional gay male audience; he doesn’t do dance music and he’s not a vocal diva. He’s a cisgender guy with a mustache, and he’s drawn more to the catharsis and energy of rock music. Particular touchstones are Bowie, obviously, but also Springsteen and Lou Reed, specifically in his character studies but also the Velvet Underground’s belief in the unbridled cleansing power of rock and roll. That doesn’t prevent him from calling Reed out for his misogyny or mistreatment of his trans girlfriend. I’ll be honest: on the album versions of “Sleeping With Strangers” and “Sparkle When You Speak,” Barna favors a grand production and stately folk-rock tempos that can be a bit sleepy at times, but at DC9 the band rocked out more, and it was thrilling stuff. “Be a Man,” with its ode to “queens and freaks,” features an Adam Duritz vocal in one verse on the record that MacDonald ably took on lead in the show. The reminder is that while Barna is, yeah, a queer storyteller and songwriter, he’s also the frontman of a rock band and believer in the power of rock music. After the set spotlighting
Evening at Macri, Barna did a few of the earlier songs from
Pictures of An Exhibitionist, and
Cissy, and alluded to but didn’t play the Trump Inauguration-era
“Straight Motherfuckers and Their Famous Friends,” or 2022’s thumping dance-rock single
“Everyone’s a Queen on Halloween”.
Andrew Grossman is the primary songwriter of The North Country; in addition to sharing a singer in MacDonald, Grossman and Barna also play on each others’ records and the last time I saw The North Country, Barna guested on drums. I’ve seen The North Country numerous times so I am familiar with Grossman in a band setting, but last night he did an odd solo electronic set with pre-recorded synth loops and electronically altered singing, along with some electric guitar solos. If you remember the episode of
Friends where
Ross unveils his hitherto unknown synthesizer skills, it was not that bad, but it was puzzling.
Julianna is a Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter, a solo act with an impressive multi-octave voice. She accompanied herself on plucked electric guitar, singing sad little alternative pop songs about girlfriends and loneliness. It was fine, but indistinct.
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/17/2023 08:04AM by zwirnm.
