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HARD TIMES ARE IN FASHION
BY MATT ASHARE
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At one time, Ben Folds and Rufus Wainwright may have felt like piano-playing odd men out, but they now have plenty of underground company — bands like Spoon, Robbers on High Street, and the Midwestern boys in Koufax. Owing to the patronage of the Get-Up Kids, who got them on their Doghouse label and took them on the road, Koufax got stuck early on with the emo tag. And maybe that fit singer/guitarist Robert Suchan’s ruffled croon and lyrics that tended toward the confessional. But three albums into their career, Koufax are offering piano-driven social commentaries that seem to have been inspired by a trip to Prague that Suchan took while writing lyrics like "What the public wants is what it gets . . . Will someone just give us hope/Rescue us, rescue us" ("Why Bother at All"). "We could go back and forth on this one/Always in denial/About a president’s evident cheating through that awful smile," he sings against a melodic mix of piano and guitars and a rhythm section that has the precision of Elvis Costello’s Attractions. The staccato piano chords of his songwriting partner, Jared Rosenberg, on the closing "Colour Us Canadian" put one final exclamation point on Koufax’s general feelings about being American in the time of George W. Koufax + Kevin Devine + Frank Smith | Great Scott, 1222 Comm Ave, Allston | August 29 | 617.566.9014
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