DEVOUT: Parker-Renga embraces his eccentricity. |
Twenty-three-year-old singer-songwriter Andrew Parker-Renga is still clawing his way through the struggles of a recent Berklee graduate. He’s moved in and out of crumbling Allston apartments, tracking guitar parts in bedrooms and basements. He’s been shafted on payouts, has scrapped countless hours of session tape, and has shuffled through a roster of musicians in search of the right band. When we met for a beer at the Green Briar just two weeks before his CD-release party back in February, he was still recording vocals.For anyone else, this might be due to poor planning. For Parker-Renga, who recently played his first headlining slot at T.T. the Bear’s and has shows booked for the Sky Bar on July 26 and back at T.T.’s on August 16, it’s simply the strain he puts on his voice — a combination of channeled frustration and a habit of letting his emotions get the better of him. “I blew out my vocal cords the other day. Had to stay home from work all day and drink tea.”
It’s not surprising: eyes closed, fists clenched, neck and jaw muscles tensed, he summons every ounce of energy when he sings live. Although his music is a mash-up of alt-rock and folk (somewhere on the spectrum between Nick Drake and Dashboard Confessional), at times it sounds as if he might have taken voice lessons from Sammy Hagar.
The intensity of his vocals may seem disingenuous, but there’s nothing phony here. On his debut EP, Issue 1 (Inked Sound), he comes out beatboxing and riffing. He’s hardly the next Rahzel, but what comes across is the way he embraces his eccentricity. A skinny, scruffy, ex-hippie from the Midwest, he’s not afraid to let his quirky personality emerge. The five tracks tell his life story through a series of intimate portraits and vignettes. “Daylight” charts the journey of troubled Thomas Ashmore. “A pulsing light paints the waiting room,” Parker-Renga sings, barely above a whisper. “A young man cries wearing a mother’s kiss/Frustrated and afraid he sits alone.” Haunted by an apocalyptic vision, Thomas seeks the help of a therapist who offers him drugs. So is the song autobiographical?
“I was Thomas, but I’m not him anymore. The lyrics to the original song were ‘Lyin’ face down/Strung out on the carpet floor/I turn my head just to breathe.’ It was about when I had this breakdown about growing up. They gave me these drugs, and when I took them, my mind shut off and I wasn’t creative. It freaked me out.”
This kind of honesty is commonplace in his lyrics. And though he tends to flesh out his arrangements live — frequently with a bass player and drummer — on Issue 1 he’s accompanied only by hand percussion and vocal overdubs, so his voice seems much more raw and exposed. “What does it mean to be saved?” he shouts, as he contemplates whether Thomas will take the pill.
Yet he’s able to make personal lyrics feel universal. “JonBoy” is about a conversation he had with a high-school friend. “All of my friends kept talking about moving back to Indianapolis. Jon was branching out, and my friends hated him for it. The song is about loving a place and not wanting to leave. He knows he has the potential to have a positive impact on the world, but the most important thing to him is his home, and that’s where he’s going to stay.”
