The Good Lovelies took a short segue from singing dreamy, nostalgia-filled Christmas songs to become “The Hood Lovelies” and rap the Beastie Boys’ Fight For Your Right to Party.
It was this mixture of sweet and salty that made Sunday night’s concert at The Matchbox in Red Deer such a treat for a full-house crowd of about 120 people.
The winsome trio opened by singing a cutesy version of Santa Baby, followed by an ethnic-flavoured God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, performed with guitar, keyboards and bells.
But later Caroline Brooks, Kerri Ough, and Sue Passmore let loose with some banjo jokes. (Why are there no banjos in Star Trek? Because it’s the future,” quipped Brooks, who explained the banjo is like the hayseed cousin of the roots-music world).
The three singer/musicians also recounted stalking their musical hero Fred Penner in the Yukon, where they found themselves rapping the Beastie Boys song at the request of “death country” indie band Elliot Brood, with whom they shared the concert bill.
At one point, the Good Lovelies discussed family members. And Brooks described her 70-year-old grandpa as looking “eerily like a garden gnome . . . I’d like to take grandpa on tour with us and take random pictures of him in different places, then send them back as postcards . . . ”
Meanwhile, her Guinness-drinking grandma is 80 — “that makes her a cougar,” said Brooks, who used this as a lead-in to Another Year to Wait, a honeyed song about the magic of Christmas, falling snow and family traditions.
Amusing banter aside, anyone expecting to hear gorgeous singing from the Juno Award-winning group from Ontario was not disappointed.
The trio, known for seamless three-part harmonies, delivered them beautifully on seasonal selections such as the Hawaiian novelty song, Mele Kalikimaka, an a cappella version of The Chipmunk Song, and a banjo-driven Silent Night — which wasn’t at all as weird as it sounds.
The group, backed by stand-up bassist Ben Whiteley, also blended voices on some winning original material, such as Kiss Me In the Kitchen, previewed from a new album due out in February, and the favorites Lie Down and I Want.
Maybe This Time is a lovely song written by Passmore about taking a chance on love with a new person at Christmas-time, while Ough wrote Hurry Home for her boyfriend — an engineer working in Thompson, Man.
The three talented Good Lovelies, who all seemed to interchangeably play the guitar, mandolin, ukulele and banjo, proved it’s never too early to hear the New Year’s Eve standard Auld Lang Syne, when the lilting results are so ear-pleasing.
The trio received a standing ovation for performing a slow, soulful rendition of Leonard Cohen’s hit, Hallelujah, as an encore.
Ough said Cohen actually came out asking for a moratorium on the much-covered song in a newspaper article, but the Good Lovelies decided to go for it anyway.
Somehow, I think Montreal’s poet-musician would have made an exception for these Lovelies.
lmichelin@www.reddeeradvocate.com