A wolf in dapper clothes

Talent's a lot like headgear; it depends on how you wear it. Red Hunter, the young Austin, Texas, indie-pop auteur who goes by Peter and the Wolf, wears his smartly, maybe too smartly, like a straw hat with the brim turned low, as if he doesn't want you to see how handsome he really is. Do you really want your lovelorn troubadour to be the coolest dude in the room?

Apparently so. Peter and the Wolf silenced a typically chatty Silverlake Lounge crowd on Wednesday night wielding only a duct-taped guitar. He did so by thinking outside the box; this is, after all, a guy who did a 12-stop tour this summer via sailboat. His song sketches (and they are not yet full portraits) featured  a little harmonica, a little whistling -- and whistling is the new handclaps, in case you haven't heard this -- and some brilliant but understated percussion from the San Francisco duo Dodo Bird, which opened. You know, the standard stuff: folk songs with island beats.

Having only released some spare home recordings, though, Peter and the Wolf bears watching. He'll be around Los Angeles the next month or so, making his first proper album at Moonshine Studios in Atwater Village. He says he'll play all 27 instruments on the record -- including a Chinese fiddle and an igil. Stay tuned.

||| Pitchfork has 2 downloads here.

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Tonight's touts: Softlightes at the Silverlake Lounge; the Colour at Spaceland

Photo: Peter and the Wolf, by Kevin Bronson/LAT.