Chris DeLine

The strange relationship between famous musicians and their children likely dates back as far as music itself. While some offspring attempt to distance themselves from their parents, refusing to follow in their chosen path, others choose to take their parents’ leads in an attempt to plow ahead and carve out their own lines in history’s sands. Norah Jones, for instance, has done well to follow a similar path as her father, the world-renowned sitar player Ravi Shankar, though she has distanced herself from his musical legacy. But what do you do when you want to create music of your own when your father is one of America’s all-time greatest singer-songwriters? You start a cabaret-punk band, of course. While that’s the direction that Harper Simon followed for several years after he graduated from college (the band being Menlow Park), his new self-titled album is something much more akin to the legacy of his father, Paul Simon. His airy harmonics flow with an eerie familiarity that is unmistakable. Not unlike Simon (either dad or son) vocally is the gentle-sounding Peter Pisano, one half of Peter Crier Wolf, the local duo who will open the show.

[This critics’ pick was originally published by City Pages.]