Claire Lodge

Claire Lodge

Claire Lodge is a guitar anti-hero. Though she’s active on social media and releases music consistently, she rarely performs. Social gatherings are kept to a minimum. Now, at least for one night, that'll change.Lodge’s recent records The Fainting Couch (2021) and Seconds (2022) are noisy, grimy, loosely constructed affairs that live in the moment, preferring to keep the listener guessing just as they did their creator. The Singing Bird's Soft Trap, Valladolid, and The Academy of Staring Daggers—a trip-hop influenced song cycle with frequent collaborators Jeffrey Bützer and Matt Steadman—all released in 2023, continue this trajectory. To say Lodge has been on a tear lately would be an understatement. If a record is indeed the document of an event, these are those. These exist in the moment, with little regard for what came before, after, or perhaps even the present. This is what makes them all exciting, if not wholly challenging. 2024’s A Decorated Place is the artist’s most ambitious album to date.For this rare live performance, Lodge’s first U.S. appearance in 10 years and first Atlanta appearance in 12, she assembled a coterie of Atlanta notables including bandleader/conductor T.T. Mahony; guitarists Ross Politi, Brian Kinch, and James Joyce; drummer Sonny Harding; violinist Ana Balka; and saxophonist Ben Davis. Think John Zorn meets Sonny Sharrock meets Sonic Youth.To better describe what is going on here, I’ve included a few words from a few of Lodge’s idols. Considering their own resumes and personal inspiration to Lodge, they seemed worthwhile to include here:“Countless guitar players employ electronic effects, but few embody a specific timbre the way Claire Lodge does. Spring reverberation, her signature color, tends to sound trashy, surreal, and eerily evocative. You can apply the same adjectives to Lodge’s compositions, playing, and production. Like spring reverb itself, she excels at conjuring vast, desolate landscapes occasionally punctuated by spasmodic violence. (And remarkably, she does so without sounding surfy-kitschy or Morricone-cloney.) This is mood music at its darkest and dampest."– Joe Gore (Tom Waits, PJ Harvey)“Claire Lodge is a bold and intrepid sonic explorer of the outer limits of electric guitar improv. Surrealist soundscapes commingle with spaghetti -western avant-skronk. It’s almost like her nervous system is directly hot-wired to her fretboard. Definitely an adventurous out-ride and not recommended for the timid or faint of heart!” – Gary Lucas (Jeff Buckley, Nick Cave, Captain Beefheart).

French People

Ben Trickey