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James Rhodes
In a disheveled button-down, Buddy Holly specs, black jeans and bed-head, James Rhodes could pass for a Strokes guitar tech. The black-and-white photography wrapping his provocatively titled debut, Razor Blades, Little Pills, Big Pianos, was snapped by Dennis Morris, documenter of the Sex Pistols. The 33-year-old Brit has earned the rock & roll posturing, growing up an addict and self-cutting nihilist.
Finding his salvation in Steinways, Rhodes now hopes for something far more unlikely than his own survival once seemed: to sex up classical for the Facebook generation. Talking to Time Out London last month, Rhodes said, “I hate the fact that you go to concerts and the guy is in his white ties and tails up there and there is no communication. It’s like visiting someone in prison.”
His publicist loves to trump the fact that Rhodes has no “formal academic training,” yet there’s nary a trace of amateurism in the upstart’s dynamic knuckle-pumping. If anything, the album’s opening, Bach’s fifth French Suite, tinkles away nearly mechanically, Rhodes’s right hand precisely chiseling each note into crystal shards. Beethoven’s Sonata in E Minor is pretzeled into an emotionally knotted, twisting, turning, racing, reflecting breathtaker.
Yes, he chomps Twix bars on stage, but the real sugar rush lies in Rhodes’s quicker tempos and jovial lilts—perhaps the clearest indication of the punk pianist’s redemption. Moritz Moszkowski’s Op. 35 “Etincelles” truly sparkles with confetti-like semiquavers.
There’s spine-tingling soul on display here, clean, brisk and joyous. “I totally get why Bach had 21 fucking kids,” Rhodes jokes before the French Suite’s climax in a Web performance. While not quite as stunning as those stylishly noir YouTube recitals, Big Pianos is an intimate and thrilling first step toward Rhodes’s quixotic goal. Hey, women threw lacy underthings at Liszt. It could happen again.
Download Razor Blades, Little Pills, Big Pianos from iTunes | Buy it from Amazon.com
