Tara Clerkin Trio, Jordan Deal
Johnny Brenda’s
1201 Frankford Ave.
Philadelphia
March 23, 2026
Like the blind men and the elephant, the best I can usually hope for here is description, not a summary of the complete picture. Jordan Deal’s opening performance last night was challenging, complex work I couldn’t hope to summarize: provoking a nearly hour-long hush, punctuated by the occasional nervous laugh, Deal dealt in a mixture of song, spoken word, and extended improvisation on piano and harmonica, with pre-recorded Roland 404-stored sampled audio, weaving in and out of narrative and more impressionistic lyrics. Live performances from Deal are apparently a rarity – described elsewhere (and accurately) as employing “a unique blend of avant-theatrical and improvisational techniques,” with “themes of anomalies and hauntings.” Often singing in a grave, wailing style, moving deliberately both on and off the stage – even wrapping audience members up in one of their microphone’s long cables – Deal was a steady, gravitational force. The music was loose and dense, bleak and dissonant, and strangely ancient: rather than using more modern avant approaches – noise and distortion, especially – to mimic the world’s ugliness and violence, Deal held a still mirror to it. Mostly I thought of provocative, darkly theatrical works by artists like Scott Walker (particularly The Drift) with the grandeur of 20th-century classical, as well as Kurt Weill’s notion of Gebrauchsmusik, music with a political utility. (Nina Simone’s spirit was definitely in the room.)
Deal was mostly drawing from their 2024 song-suite Seas of Triple Consciousness, with stories vividly addressing oppressive forces and abuses of power. When the performance began I wasn’t sure what to expect – at first it seemed like music made by an especially intense person – but as it unfolded, realizing that this was more a theatrical, political body of work, the framework shifted and Johnny Brenda’s became more like a theater or gallery than indie rock hub; toward the end, I witnessed further challenges to de rigueur participant-spectator relations, with Deal singing at the edge of the stage while the crowd stood close below them, holding the guitar aloft as Deal played. Later, they crowd-surfed in the curiously-quiet room, the act stripped of its usual elation or somatic release, a familiar gesture cast in new, strange, question-raising light. The phrase, “Now that space is open–” was a recurring motif, and it gathered meaning through repetition: the stock interpretations inevitably yielded to new possibilities, including that openness can sound like a threat, that clearings open both through creation and destruction. Needless to say, Deal didn’t play it safe: this was art unafraid of transgression, provocative without dead ends.
The headliners, Tara Clerkin Trio, from Bristol, UK, brought things back to the usual JB’s base with a perfectly nocturnal set, pitched in mood somewhere like the mind-state of waking up in the middle of the night, disoriented but at peace. The group – Tara Clerkin (vocals, clarinet, guitar, live mixing), Sunny Joe Paradisos (drums, percussion, guitar) and Patrick Benjamin (keys, synths, melodion) – performed a kind of psychedelic bedroom electronica, slow and steady, reminiscent of Stereolab and Air. From a live-in-the-flesh perspective, Paradisos’ playing was the pinnacle: I loved watching him patiently build loops by holding an SM57 microphone to each drum, layering soft, cloud-like beats, hitting with such delicacy it was like he was trying to coax an escaped inside cat out of a neighbor’s hedge.
Forthcoming new album’s lead single “Somewhere Good” highlighted the group’s intricate interplay, with criss-crossing dubby delays, like water rippling just slightly out of phase, remixing and reimagining patterns on the fly. What the music lacked in dynamism and volume – and I do think their overall mix, especially the vocals, could have been louder, more enveloping, or that the levels could fluctuate to keep the ear from settling – it made up for in subtle shape-shifting and sustained mood.
