“She drives cause there’s a lot of road,” Brooklyn-based songwriter-composer Gabriel Kahane sings to the city of his birth in “LA,” one of the most arresting, and most straightforward, moments on his new album “Where Are the Arms.” The 30-year-old son of pianist and Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra conductor Jeffrey Kahane takes a wistful and rather dim (chorus: “The selfish city wins again”) view of the city, captured brilliantly in the video by celebrated collagist and filmmaker Lewis Klahr. Kahane, who first made waves in 2006 with “Craigslistlieder” (Craigslist ads set to music), has collaborated with Sufjan Stevens and Rufus Wainwright, composed for the Kronos Quartet and earned a host of theater commissions, so his is the writerly pop that draws from from a wide palette and fashions equally broad vistas.
||| Download: “Last Dance”
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||| Live: Gabriel Kahane performs Thursday night at Largo.
Photo by Josh Goleman
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are we listening to any rock and roll or are we trying to expand our horizons?