Noe Venable Trio
Sat/26, Noe Valley Ministry

IN THE PROLIFIC songwriting of Bay Area native Noe Venable, fearsome talent collides with a fearless commitment to self-examination. Instead of random artistic wreckage, however, the results are invariably finely etched and gorgeously set musical gems. Boots, the diminutive bard's brand-new CD, on her own Petridish label, offers 12 more irrefutable reasons to bow down to Venable's prodigious gifts. From the time she first heard "some kind of weird, starved voice" explode out of her about six years ago, Venable has recorded four CDs, with material culled from more than 500 original songs. Boots, following the live Down Easy and the studio ensemble album No Curses Here, shifts slightly from a modus operandi of placing fictional characters in gritty and fantastic narratives to the investigation of womanhood – from the perspective of someone who has somehow garnered more wisdom in a quarter century than many of us glean from living twice as long. Enviably literate and awesomely disciplined, Venable amplifies her power through a riveting soprano voice that stuns and enraptures so thoroughly that multiple listenings are required to begin unraveling her mysteries of music and meaning. Etienne De Rocher opens. 8:15 p.m., 1021 Sanchez, S.F. $14. (415) 454-5238. (Derk Richardson)