Recap Vic Chesnutt, Elf Power, and Whatfor at High Noon Saloon

A well-written tune can take on any number of forms, and Friday's crowd at the High Noon got to hear three artists' songcraft in tones from stately to playful to harsh to mysterious. The show began with Madison band Whatfor, in which Sleeping In The Aviary drummer Michael Sienkowski takes the lead. Sienkowski looked a little stiff at first in his gray waistcoat and a button-up shirt that looked mustard-yellow under the stage lights, but he gradually loosened up as a frontman, picking up the guitar for set opener "I Can Barely Breathe Here," also the first song on his 2008 album Sooner Late Than Never. On record, the songs are tightly arranged with a rotating variety of keys, strings, and horns, among other things, but in this simpler band setting, Whatfor's pop pleasures came through more directly.

Sienkowski always carries a tune well, and the vocals got higher and more expressive on sweetly crafted downers like "I'm A Disgrace," and on a new song he said is sung by the bad guy in a musical he's trying to write. For the most part, the growing crowd paid attention. So did headliner Vic Chesnutt, who later told the audience that, "though a bit precocious," Whatfor had been the best opening band so far of his tour with his Athens, Ga. friends Elf Power.

"Step Through The Portal," the gentle, psychedelic opening track of Elf Power's 1997 album When The Red King Comes, led into "Old Familiar Scene" and turned into the first agreeable punch of a set that was all about showing what a tightly, joyously rocking five-piece the band can become. It'd be a shame not to rock with a drummer like Eric Harris, who steadily kicked the band along and tumbled through fills like a fun jazz drummer, especially on the snappy "one-TWO-three" of "Owl Cut (White Flowers In The Sky)," from last year's In A Cave. Harris brought a slow-smoldering tension to the last song of Elf Power's set, "Back To The Web," which sounds like equal parts English folk and far-Eastern melody as it creeps toward a climax.

Not that the band's melodic side got lost in the volume. Leader Andrew Rieger's 12-string electric guitar kept up the jangle, and his voice floated cleanly through the songs, even when guitarist-keyboardist Jimmy Hughes dipped his Telecaster back toward his amp for well-timed swoops of feedback. It's also always great to watch a bass player who's more than just a placeholder, and Derek Almstead's lines often counted as hooks in their own right. His quick fingers popped his instrument up right alongside Rieger's vocal melody on "Paralyzed." Meanwhile, multi-instrumentalist Laura Carter switched among accordion, maracas, tambourine, clarinet, and a Moog, wearing a shy grin and a fuzzy green winter hat that looked like a frog.

After bringing some terrific muscle to its songs, Elf Power took a break and reconvened with Vic Chesnutt, who leaned back in his wheelchair and called the crowd to order: "Okay, motherfuckers!" The band struck a few triumphant chords, then lilted into "Mystery," the first track of Chesnutt and Elf Power's collaborative album Dark Developments. (They played the whole thing in sequence.) The mood certainly got a little bitter and wistful as Chesnutt sang of a "total absence / complete lack of / mystery" and let out some eerie, wordless wails. Next, Elf Power used its power-pop chops for more sinister purposes on "Little Fucker." "I wrote this song about me. It's a sad song," Chesnutt explained before scratching out a lead on his distorted acoustic-electric guitar and lashing out at himself with such lines as, "Little fucker needs a wide berth / little fucker's more trouble than he's worth."

The set was full of contrasts between Chesnutt's wickedly observant lyrics and Elf Power's instrumentation, which only made the songs better. What could be more devilish than using a glockenspiel (Carter), kazoo (Chesnutt), and brushes (Harris) on a song called "We Are Mean"? There was nothing cute about it, just a cleverly misleading set-up for a blunt report on human nature: "I exclaim, we're all the same, we are mean."

It would've been nice to hear more songs from the other albums Chesnutt's put out over the years, even if Developments has plenty of diversity on its own. After wrapping up the album set, Chesnutt and band reached back to the earlier songs "Independence Day" and "Old Hotel." The Elves left Chesnutt by himself to get through one verse of "a short song" with a bleak hint of winter: "The lake it's frozen and the store is closed." Chesnutt closed it out with a final taunt for our recently disposed-of president: "So concerned with your legacy / maybe you should've thought about that when you were actively making policy." Even when it came to Bush-bashing, Chesnutt found wry humor in the sad little details: "Gonna build a library to try and shape your legacy."