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Category: News and Politics
"As you may know from his previous Tea Bazaar shows, Brooklyn songwriter Tavo Carbone used to take his pop and folk tunes on tour with a revolving-door band and often with outlandish instruments (glockenspiel, accordion, etc). Things have settled down recently, though, so now we have Horse’s Mouth, the new stable band which should prove to be a) tighter and b) louder (we heard all that straight from the, er, original source)"
4/30/09
[Central Virginia Music Blog]
Nailgun Media
"Tavo Carbone is an exceptional songwriter, somewhere loosely in the
vein of Tom Waits and Frank Zappa and other oddball geniuses. His
arrangements are lush and orchestral and sound as if they were filtered
through a gramaphone. Anyway, it’s great, great stuff, and well worth
checking out. Highly recommended. Two more words on this: mouth
trumpet"
5/09 (Tulsa, OK) Under the Mooch Records " '2/3 Skeleton' demonstrates Carbone's ability to abandon the self
absorbent path of the typical singer/songwriter and, like Leonard Cohen
or Bill Callahan, take his listeners to another place altogether
allowing them to interpret the music in a way that is personally
relevant to each individual."
- Bart Ford, Under the Mooch
02.06.09 (Philadelphia, PA) Phrequency
http://www.phrequency.com/genres/folk/Music_its_Extraordinary.html
...Tavo Carbone, the quirky, expressive, Brooklyn songwriter who toured the East Coast with the Extraordinaires last summer. He too is joined by a back-up band, including a violinist, and for one number, a harpist, who help craft his poppy, vintage sound. Carbone himself is quite the performer, thrashing around, making funny faces, and tonguing each syllable dramatically like a chirpy Rufus Wainwright. His upbeat set sets the tone for the Extraordinaires.
02.05.09 (Philadelphia, PA) City Paper
http://is.gd/is6V
There's an off-kilter charm to Tavo Carbone's oddball, old-timey pop that makes you want to get a shoe-shine on your way to Franklin Fountain. Vocally, the Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter is reminiscent of the Trachtenberg Family Slideshow Players, while musically he employs the same quirky, whimsical sensibility that ensconced of Montreal's early material. Essentially a solo act, Carbone's been known to employ orchestral flourishes to flesh out his skeletal acoustics including, at one point, a 17-piece backing band. Don't forget to wax your handlebar mustache.
08.22.09 (Providence, RI) The Phoenix
It's sometimes nice to hear whimsy carry the day...just another day in the world of experimental folk music, I guess.
-Jim Macnie
07.29.08 (Charlottesville, VA) C-ville
http://www.c-ville.com/index.php?cat=121304064644348&z_Issue_ID=11802507081654186&ShowArchiveArticle_ID=11802807083248092
Tavo Carbone was quite the opposite, a songwriter that repopulated early blues tunes and country waltzes with unsavory characters and sang with a voice that owed as much to Bessie Smith as Bobcat Goldthwait. Following one song, an audience member turned to me and asked, “Isn’t that what Tiny Tim sounds like?” Yet beneath a voice that might’ve seemed repellent were endearing lyrics about uncomfortable people, including a girl that “laughs in a way that drives lemmings from a cliff” and a second that danced “like a dog in May/ When the hydrants are out of range.”
07.24.08 (Charlottesville, VA) Nailgun
http://www.nailgunmedia.com/blog/?m=200807
They’re playing tonight with Tavo Carbone, whom I believe played here almost exactly a year ago (although I missed that show).
01.31.08 (Lawrence, KS) Lawrence.com
http://www.lawrence.com/events/2008/jan/31/22493/
There
are so many bands out of Brooklyn these days it's almost hard to
believe that there's anyone living there that isn't toting around a
guitar or working on some obscure indie label. The quality and variety
as of late though has been impressive - so go ahead and add Tavo
Carbone to your list. Playing with a long list of rotating musicians,
Carbone makes the type of subtle glockenspiel-laden old-timey pop that
simultaneously makes you feel like you are both in the past and the
future.
01.30.08 (Fort Worth, TX) We Shot JR
http://www.weshotjr.com/archives/2008/01/
Brooklyn's Tavo Carbone, a singer/songwriter and backing band combo who should probably be commended for not being hipsters, if nothing else. Carbone writes these cutesy, Library of Congress sounding folkpop songs that could easily be much much
worse than they are. Not my thing, but certainly not bad.
01.29.08 (Kansas City, MO) The Pitch
http://www.pitch.com/2008-01-31/music/tavo-carbone/
Ever since the makers of Guitar Hero and Rock Band started snapping up
otherwise useful musicians, finding a dependable backing band has
become a real chore. That's why Brooklynite Tavo Carbone saw fit to assemble multiple bands from a rotating cast of 20 people — 17 of whom joined him onstage for his recent Forward: Live at Greenwall Auditorium LP. Blending the dapper folk of Andrew Bird with the eccentric lo-fi narratives of the Mountain Goats, Carbone is hitting the road with a Rock Band-style backing trio as well as a banjo, a mellotron, a glockenspiel and an accordion.
2:28 PM
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