SHORTLIST-FRIDAY: Show of the week: The striking chanteuse Jarboe--the former co-leader of New York's Swans--comes to the Talking Head backed by the enigmatic Italian band Larsen (whose 2002 Rever debut is a rumbling slow grind) and Birdland, the new group from ex-Love Life partners Katrina Ford and Sean Antanaitis.

CLOUDS OF TURIN

Jarboe, Larsen, Birdland Talking Head, Aug. 22

Before the sky opened and dropped a deluge over Baltimore the evening of Friday, Aug. 22, the sunset's eerie, yellow cast heralded the arrival of shadowy, ex-Swans chanteuse Jarboe and her enigmatic backing band Larsen--Turin, Italy's answer to Godspeed You! Black Emperor. On record, Jarboe conjures thoughts of sinister, Japanese storm spirits bleeding out their anger. Live, however, Baltimore got a kinder, gentler Jarboe.

Before she took the stage, Birdland (featuring members of the now defunct Love Life) whipped through a tight set of funerary love songs and Orphean laments. Lone multi-instrumentalist Sean Antanaitis wowed with homemade amps and harmonious dexterity, operating pedaled bass lines with his stocking feet and switching infrequently from twin organs to guitar. Husky-voiced Katrina Ford serenaded the waning storm with equal parts Glenn Danzig and Nick Cave in feminine form, as capable of choral acrobatics as ever.

Larsen's preparatory set was an appetizer for Jarboe's main course. On their first trip to America, the four Italians drew instrumental dirges out of simple themes, preferring repetition rather than embellishment to hammer home their musical point. Twin guitarists deftly interplayed with accordion and keyboard while the sturdy drummer pounded out rhythms behind them. The music was largely cinematic.

Jarboe took the stage late in the evening, a distinct counterpoint to her all-male accompaniment. The group worked through a sturdy list of Jarboe's solo work and a placid version of the Swans' classic "My Buried Child," though the customary violence of Jarboe's work with art-splatter filmmaker/photographer Richard Kern and J.G. "Foetus" Thirlwell was seemingly exorcised before her arrival in Charm City. She delivered a swooning set, but the opposing assault of caterwaul that sets Jarboe apart from her contemporaries was conspicuously absent.

But this restraint is what is to be expected from the Jarboe-Larsen collaboration. This tour, dubbed Screaming Fire, promotes a DVD release of the pairing's Gdansk, Poland, concert in a 14th-century church this past March and is more about conventional "rock" than many of Jarboe's other performances.

"I like to be an agitator and I refuse to become more conservative as time goes on," Jarboe said before her performance. "This tour is more a showcase to give us some grass-roots promotion for the Krzykognia DVD."

Throughout her performance Jarboe wore her heart proudly on her sleeve, and it's obvious that both in performance and on her blog there is little division between Jarboe the artist and Jarboe the person. "My art and my public diary are personal, but I want it that way," she said. "There's no separation between me and my Web persona, and I don't like the idea of putting on a mask with my performances. I made a record called Thirteen Masks that has 14 songs on it because one of them wasn't a mask." More tellingly, during her single encore, Jarboe stood among the audience wearing a prominent, completely unmasked smile.

Review by ryan boddy